facebook)

The new Facebook Home ad, complete with drag queen

The lovely thing about Facebook Home is that it allows Facebook to follow you, everywhere you go. You've always wanted that, haven't you?

You've always wanted Facebook to follow you onto your flight to Chicago, for example. Yes, even when you're flying coach.

So here's the launch TV spot for Facebook's new app-less Windows Phone-inspired creation.

A very nice-looking man is on a plane and he wants one last look at everything that's happening to and with his closest humans, before the airplane doors shut and the flight attendants start being passionately rude. … Read more

One-on-one with the guy who built Facebook's Home

If Facebook Home, the company's family of applications that make the social network unavoidable on Android devices such as the HTC First, had an architect, it would be Director of Product and project lead Adam Mosseri.

CNET sat down with Mosseri on Thursday after the company lifted the curtain on Home. Mosseri proved a lively interview subject. He didn't completely divert away from our first serious question as to why anyone would want this much Facebook in their phone, and he admitted that if you don't want to see the feed all the time, then this isn'… Read more

Facebook's one small step for mankind

Soon after Facebook announced its new family of apps for mobile devices, Michael Gartenberg, who works as an industry analyst at Gartner, quipped over Twitter, "So I pay $99 for a 2-year-contract on a sub standard phone. Turn my life over to Facebook and get ads on my home screen?"

Gartenberg's tweet contained more than a kernel of truth and, besides the snarky humor, it was appropriate to the occasion, as big companies like Facebook are always looking for ways to shove advertising in front of our faces -- in this case by locking you into Facebook'… Read more

Facebook Home isn't where your privacy is

When Mark Zuckerberg and friends debuted Facebook Home yesterday, they downplayed the ever-growing importance your data has for the company. While the Facebook-obsessed may love Home, chances are your privacy won't feel welcome at all.

Facebook has earned a reputation for developing new products and features that are respectful of user privacy, and then slowly, sometimes with great subtlety and sometimes with mastodon-like lumbering, walking those policies back to a decidedly less-respectful state.

There's little indication that Facebook Home will be any different. At the Facebook Home question-and-answer session that followed Thursday's announcement, Zuckerberg said, "Analytics … Read more

Microsoft: Facebook Home? Wait, that's Windows Phone

You may have been one of those who felt enthralled and delighted at Mark Zuckerberg's launch of Facebook Home yesterday.

You also may have felt appalled and slighted. Especially if you worked at Microsoft in 2011.

The morning after the morning before, Microsoft's forthright head of PR, Frank X. Shaw, offered words to suggest he'd have liked to X-out most of Zuckerberg's wide-eyed unveiling.

On the company's own blog, he wrote: "I tuned into the coverage of the Facebook Home event yesterday and actually had to check my calendar a few times. Not to … Read more

Navigate your Facebook News Feed with keyboard shortcuts

Facebook doesn't have a large collection of keyboard shortcuts and many of them require browser-specific modifiers. Still, if you spend a lot of time in Facebook, using the keyboard shortcuts can be time-savers. The News Feed navigation shortcuts in particular, are convenient and easy to remember because they work the same in every Web browser (no modifier required).

To scroll through your News Feed, just use j to scroll down and k to scroll up. To comment on the selected story from your News Feed, use c. To like or unlike a selected story, use l.

Keep in mind … Read more

Confused about Facebook Home? Ask Maggie has answers (FAQ)

Facebook wants to take control of your smartphone. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? And what the heck is Facebook Home anyway?

Facebook, which has been rumored for more than a year to be building a new so-called "Facebook phone," made a big announcement yesterday at its headquarters in California. The company took the wraps off Facebook Home, a set of apps that can be installed on your smartphone and integrate your whole experience with Facebook. Following the big announcement, I started getting questions from readers, friends, and other reporters about what this new software … Read more

Friday Poll: Will you adopt Facebook Home?

Facebook is looking to get cozy with the home and lock screens of your Android device. The just-announced Facebook Home is a suite of apps that replaces your normal home and lock screens with social-media content. It puts Facebook in your face every time you power up your phone.

Users will get notifications from friends, plus photos, status updates, and link shares. It pretty much serves up all your Facebook information without you having to ask for it or open up a separate app.

Users will be able download Facebook Home from Google Play, like a regular app. It does require a special confirmation to install, since it makes such radical changes to the existing look of your screens.… Read more

Facebook wrestles Google for control of your phone

Facebook doesn't want anything to come between you and your friends, not even Google or Android.

Facebook today unveiled a new downloadable user interface that takes over your smartphone's home screen, lock screen, and wallpaper. Instead of the regular Android features, you're treated to a slideshow of updates, photos, and shared links.

Facebook wants to take direct control of its user base, and it's going about it in a smart way. Home, which will be available for download on April 12 on select Android phones, isn't a new phone or operating system, or even a … Read more

Hey haters, 'Home' is the right amount of Facebook on your phone

Toss aside the remarks about making people more prominent than apps. Throw out the blurb about changing our relationship with technology. You don't need the warm-and-fuzzy spiel to get Facebook Home, you just need to see it.

Thursday, the social-networking company unveiled Facebook Home, a family of apps that takes up residence at the center of your Android smartphone.

Facebook will be unavoidable to those who opt to download Home. And yet the company has tactfully pushed its way further inside the smartphone with a technique that's neither too obtrusive nor too bland. In fact, Facebook Home is … Read more