Facebook Home Tops 500000 Downloads - PC Magazine

April 22, 2013 09:40am EST VIEW ALL PHOTOS IN GALLERY Facebook Home hit the Google Play on April 12, and has already garnered more than 500,000 downloads. Mobile analyst Ben Evans noted the milestone on Sunday, tweeting that the new "Android experience" had surpassed 500,000 downloads on Google Play. According to the online market's install graph, the application has been downloaded between 500,000 and 1 million times, though specific numbers are not available. The number may not seem too impressive, though, once stacked up against an application like Instagram, which, within 24 hours of reaching the Android platform, saw more than 1 million downloads. Facebook Home, however, reaches a much smaller audience; the new feature is available only on certain devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung Galaxy Note II, HTC One X, HTC One X+, and HTC First, which comes pre-loaded with the application. The social network's new mobile experience was unveiled earlier this month, amidst speculation of a "Facebook phone." Home remakes the Android experience into an interactive Facebook feed, where users can skim through their feed, find notifications, and access content from their home screen. Facebook Unveils Home, New Experience for Android Phones Not everyone was excited about the new function, though. Two days before it launched in the Google Play store, analytics firm Salorix found that reaction to Facebook Home was largely neutral or negative, mostly due to users' concerns over privacy issues. Looking at the Google Play user reviews for Facebook Home, many people gave the application just one star, resulting in an average rating of 2.2 stars among more than 11,300 reviewers. "It was cool at first but needs some tweeking [sic] to be more user friendly," Matt Higgins wrote along with his one-star review. "I installed it last night and uninstalled it this morning." Balazs Lehotai agreed. "I don't want to say Facebook Home is bad, but it probably won't save the world…," he wrote. Still, poor reviews aren't stopping people from trying out the application. According to a Google cache published by The Next Web, Facebook Home install numbers were at 100,000 to 500,000 on April 19. By Sunday, the range grew to 500,000 to 1 million. Facebook and Google did not immediately respond to a request for download details. For more, see PCMag's Hands On With Facebook Home on Android and a guide on How To Get Facebook Home. VIEW ALL PHOTOS IN GALLERY via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNHA8QaBQ1VgsiriOlTs11_i9TTTVA&url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417987,00.asp

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