Avid users of Facebook have something to rejoice especially if they are planning to buy an HTC in the future. Facebook is soon coming up with a version of Android called ‘Facebook Home’ for HTC phones, which will prominently feature the social network’s various features. Last week, Facebook sent an invite for an event it’s hosting on Thursday (4th April 2013) and the invite simply said “Come See Our New Home on Android.” This only revealed that event would be Android related, but left everyone guessing as it specify much else, seen increasingly alongside Apple, Blackberry and Playstation launches.
With a Facebook Android OS one can possibly expect features of Facebook to take precedence. For example: the camera of the smartphone running Facebook’s versions of Android could come with inbuilt Instagram features.
Also, the new device’s home screen would be Facebook-centric, so it could include Facebook news feed stories and data displayed on the home screen, along with easy access to Facebook apps. This new device would allow Facebook to collect a huge amount of data on its users from who they are calling to who they are texting. This could in turn be used by Facebook to refine its contents and make it user specific.
HTC and Facebook are yet to zero in on a carrier for this new device that is in the offing and are already in talks with a bunch of them. The two companies are also working on an ad campaign in order to promote this new product.
It needs to be mentioned here that Facebook is not creating an OS from scratch, however will showcase a modified version of Android, similar to Amazon with it’s Kindle devices. This new move by Facebook might not make Google too happy with the release in direct competition of Google’s aggressive promotion of Google Plus through Android.
