Facebook Home Finally Hits 1 Million Downloads

Facebook Home has finally hit 1 million downloads exactly one month after being released for Android, according to install numbers in the Google Play store.

At a press event on Thursday, Facebook's director of mobile engineering told reporters that Home had been downloaded "just about" 1 million times. On Sunday, Facebook Home was classified as having been installed 1 million - 5 million times in the Google Play Store. Facebook did not immediately respond to our request for comment about when exactly it passed the million mark.

While it's certainly a good milestone to reach, demand for Facebook Home appears to be dropping off. It took Facebook 10 days to hit 500,000 downloads and about twice that long to hit 1 million. Data from App Annie, which tracks app store rankings, shows that Facebook Home is currently below the top 100 Android apps in every country where it's available. In the US, it barely cracked the top 50 at its peak and has since dropped out of the top 300.

Many developers would be ecstatic to have their app downloaded 1 million times, but for Facebook, that represents a drop in the bucket considering it has more than 750 million active monthly mobile users. It also seems unlikely that all of those who have downloaded the app continue to have it installed on their phones, considering that Facebook Home has just a two-star rating in Google Play right now.

In another troubling sign for the product, AT&T and HTC recently dropped the price of the first phone that comes with Facebook Home baked into it — the HTC First — from $99 to $0.99 (with a two-year contract.)

Image courtesy of Facebook

How to See EVERYTHING in Your Facebook News Feed

Facebook introduced its overhauled News Feed in early March. If you're one of the few who can access the new design, you may wonder how the changes affect what surfaces on the homepage.

While Facebook's algorithms determine by default what appears in your stream, a few additional, new options give you much greater control over what appears in your News Feed. For example, you can choose to view only photo-related posts, music-themed updates, or posts from pages and people you follow via Subscribe (as opposed to simply users you're friends with).

But if you don't want to miss any updates whatsoever, you can kick it old school and set News Feed to view every single post in real time.

The change effectively turns your News Feed into an expanded, visual version of Facebook Ticker. That means you'll not see status updates, but also more granular actions, for example, when your friend likes a photo — even if that photo was posted 48 hours ago. Yes, it's that detailed.

If you've already got the new News Feed, follow the simple instructions below to surface everything in your stream. If you're still on the old version, consider adding yourself to the wait list for the new look here.

From your Facebook homepage, click on the grey arrow at the top-right of your screen:

This gives you a list of new News Feed options:

Next, click "See All." This shows you all the different News Feed settings, including any groups you may be part of and any friends and family lists you've set up.

If you want to see everything in the order it is posted, select "Most Recent."

Your News Feed will now change to show you everything, in time order. To change it back, simply hit the down arrow again and select a different setting.

How will you use the new News Feed? Do you want to see everything in your stream? Have your say in the comments below.

Zuckerberg Debunks the Biggest Myth About Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg used Facebook’s third quarter earnings call to clear up what he sees as the biggest myth about the company: that Facebook can’t make money on mobile.

Early in the call, Zuckerberg referred to Facebook’s “opportunity on mobile” as “the most misunderstood” aspect of the company right now. “I want to dispel this myth that Facebook can’t make money on mobile,” he said during the call on Tuesday. “This might have seemed true earlier this year because we hadn’t started trying yet.”

Facebook released its first mobile ad product just a few months ago and now mobile revenue makes up 14% of the company’s total  ad revenue. As Zuckerberg put it, “We’re just getting started.”
In fact, Zuckerberg argued that the company will end up reaching more users on mobile than desktop and will see better monetization from mobile users than desktop users. Part of the reason for this, he says, is that mobile users are actually more engaged with Facebook than desktop users. Facebook has found that mobile users have a 70% likelihood of logging onto Facebook on a given day, compared to a 40% likelihood for desktop users.

Zuckerberg also noted that engagement on iOS devices in particular has improved since Facebook overhauled its iPhone and iPad apps in August, improving speed. Facebook has apparently seen an 80% increase in News Feed loads and a 20% increase in likes, comments and other forms of user engagement within those apps in the past two months.

It’s no surprise that Zuckerberg spent so much time talking about mobile, as concerns about mobile monetization have plagued the company’s stock to date. In fact, Zuckerberg revealed that monetization has become such a big focus for the company that each of Facebook’s product teams are now tasked with coming up with a revenue strategy for their products. This is a marked shift for a company that has traditionally been very user-focused, rather than monetization-focused.

Overall, Facebook’s third-quarter earnings came in slightly ahead of Wall Street estimates, posting an adjusted earnings per share of $0.12 on revenue of $1.26 billion. Analysts had expected Facebook to report earnings per share of $0.11 on revenue of $1.23 billion. Shares of Facebook rose by more than 11% in after hours trading following the earnings report and call.

Aside from debunking the myth of mobile monetization, Zuckerberg also tried to put a positive spin on the impact of declining revenue from Zynga, another big concern of investors ever since Zynga pre-announced some particularly lousy earnings results earlier this month. According to Zuckerberg, payment revenue from Zynga did decline 20% in the third quarter year-over-year, but revenue from the rest of Facebook games increased 40% year-over-year.
Nevertheless, Zynga continues to make up a significant portion of Facebook’s total revenue. Zynga accounted for 7% of Facebook revenues in the third quarter, down from 10% in the previous quarter and 12% in the third quarter last year.

Facebook’s earnings call got off to a sloppy start, as someone apparently forgot to press mute on the phone. As a result, listeners could hear Facebook executives fumbling and saying, “Oh my god.” The issue was fixed quickly enough and the rest of the call went relatively smoothly.

Facebook Testing ‘Save for Later’ Feature

Facebook is testing a new feature for desktop and mobile, Save for Later, which will let you add stories to a Saved folder. Saving stories will provide a similar experience to adding a tweet to your Favorites on Twitter.

The folder lives under Apps in Facebook’s iOS and desktop versions. To save a story, hold your finger down on the feature and a pop-up saying “Save” will appear. On Facebook desktop, the Save option will be under stories next to Share, Comment and Like.

“We are testing the ability to save news feed stories with a small percentage of users,” the company told Mashable.

According to iMore, your friends won’t receive a notification when you save their stories, distinguishing the new Facebook feature from Twitter’s Favorites.

As we’ve learned from other recent features Facebook has tested, such as “Find Friends Nearby,” rolling a feature out for a few members is by no means a guarantee of universal adoption. Facebook pulled that feature just one day after it began testing.

As of Tuesday, the feature is available to just a few iPhone, iPad and desktop users. Has the feature appeared for you yet? iMore says you won’t need to update your apps for Save for Later to appear.

Does this sound like a useful you would use? Let us know if you think Facebook is on to a great improvement.