I recently saw on the news that Facebook was introducing their newest product, the Facebook Home. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced this family of applications (for Android) to solve a pressing issue his company was facing. There aren’t enough people using the Facebook app (or Facebook in general) on their mobile phones. With the current Facebook apps, it is difficult to implement advertising through the mobile interface. With the advice of Horace Dediu (owner of the consultant agency Asymco), Facebook decided to create the Facebook Home.

Every since I was introduced to Facebook in 2007, it has changed the way I interact with friends and family online. Facebook’s messaging system has replaced my usage of Windows Messenger. Facebook definitely has some good ideas on revolutionizing the way we connect with our friends and family. Back in highschool, I remember everybody writing notes and ‘tagging’ friends in notes. The notion of writing on someone’s ‘wall’ was also new to me back then. I remember when we could draw pictures (which were called graffiti) and post in on peoples’ walls. I thought this idea was pretty neat, as pictures drawn on the walls of buildings are called graffiti.

I am interested to see how the Facebook home app will play out. Do people really want Facebook to be the home page of their mobile devices? I wonder how the ads would affect peoples’ decisions to adopt the Facebook Home app. So far the project seems to be promising, as Facebook’s stock rose 3.1 per cent to $27.07 USD after the announcement of Facebook Home.

For now Facebook is partnering with HTC Corp. They are releasing a phone called First on April 12, running on AT&T in the U.S., with Home built in. This is most likely an example of co-branding.