When I finally saw it pop up in the Google Play store this week I decided to put my preconceived notions about Home aside and give it a whirl. Immediately after installing my whole phone changed. It was as if I had just switched operating system, I was no longer on Android I was on Facebook OS.

Facebook Home is effectively a launcher and replaces your home screen with a full-screen sliding news feed. The user interface now consists of a tiny bubble of my face which can be dragged left to launch Messenger, up to access the app launcher, or right to open my most recently used app. These are the only options available to you and everything else is hidden away behind fiddly drag and swipe options.

The Facebook Home UI.

All of this sounds lovely in Facebook land where guys dressed in hoodies and flip flops laugh at videos of screaming goats all day, but for those of us who want to use our phone for tasks outside of Facebook it is a real hindrance. My apps aren’t just there anymore, I have to go through a series of steps open them. And my widgets have completely disappeared, which for any Android user is like losing a limb. Important features that I had customised to be accessible with one touch such as Google Now, Twitter, Phone, Messages, and Email now take several actions to access. I counted that it took me 5 different actions to open Gmail as opposed to one before. I can’t even see basic information such as the time, notifications, battery indicator, or the weather.

Home also takes over your lock screen and only allows you to unlock your phone after you choose a specific app to open, it then takes you to your old lock screen where you still have to swipe and enter your pin. So effectively it adds two or three extra steps to unlock your phone. This is a real inconvenience, although it can be disabled in the options.

The news feed itself doesn’t exactly lend itself to the full screen experience. Images don’t fit on the screen properly and look dark and pixelated, even high-res images. The posts displayed on Facebook Home appear to be completely random, sometimes it would show me something posted 5 minutes ago and other times it would show a post from 3 days ago. With such a push for content to be instant Home seems to be overwhelmingly slow and irrelevant. Home is also very slow, after pressing the home button on my device when inside another app it sometimes took 5 seconds to load the Facebook Home screen. Another issue I found was that after scrolling through a number of posts there was no way (that I could find, anyway) of returning to the most recent post.

Engagement is one thing about Home that is easy and intuitive. Simple ‘Like’ and ‘Comment’ buttons in the bottom left hand corner work nicely, although I did find it easy to accidently hit the ‘Like’ button (always awkward).

One of the most talked about features on the launch of Home was Chat Heads. Despite the name, Chat Heads is a feature that makes a lot of sense. One thing that has always bugged me about the phones I’ve owned (both Android and iOS) is that messaging takes you out of whatever you are doing. Chat Heads tackles this by allowing you to view and reply to a message on-the-fly without it interrupting what you are doing. This feature works quite nicely and is something I would like to see implemented into Android.

How Chat Heads appear.

So after using Facebook Home I’ve decided I’m probably not the target market, but even looking through the eyes of an avid Facebook user I can’t see the benefits of it over the standard Facebook app. It’s clunky, disruptive, slow, and actually makes the whole Facebook experience rather tedious. The main reason I, and most people I know, own an Android device is for the customisability, Facebook Home takes all of that away. It cuts off access to your widgets and home screens and makes it difficult to access other apps. It’s early days, and it may well improve with future updates, but I fear that once Zuckerberg and co. roll out ads on the platform it will be even more unusable.

I’m not alone in my feelings toward Home, the app has an unimpressive 2.2 star rating in the Play store. Here are a few comments from other users:

“Not an intuitive app. Made my phone so frustratingly complicated to use that I uninstalled after just four or five hours.” – Victoria Wiley

“It limits my phone. If I wanted a single company to take over my homescreen appearance, I could use an iPhone.” – Lee Milstein

“Not intuitive and it makes my phone butt ugly.” – Ric Brown

Although, it seems to have won a few fans:

“It does exactly what it’s suppossed to do. It has a beautiful interface and is quite handy for people that use fb often.” – Keanu James

“Simple and easy to use. I love it.” – Gregory Ro…

Have you used Facebook Home yet? What do you think of it?

The post Hands On with Facebook Home appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Adria richards and that ‘joke’

When is a joke between two people private? The answer it seems is never.

Last week in the United States at a PyCon programming conference a developer who worked for PlayHaven made a joke amongst other things about ‘dongles’.

Adria Richards, a developer for a company called Sendgrid, was sat in front and tweeted this;

Not cool.Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles.Right behind me #pycon twitter.com/adriarichards/…

— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) March 17, 2013

The developer was thrown out of the conference and subsequently fired from his job.

This act led to the lynch mob on the internet attacking Richards on Twitter with a flurry of offensive comments. Pressure was put on SendGrid to fire Richards and a few days after the original incident they relented. On Facebook they wrote;

Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.

So at the end of it all two developers lost their jobs and the internet was outraged. This could have all be avoided had Richards turned round and said to them that the joke was inappropriate. The fact that she tweeted their picture and publicly shamed them was not the smartest idea and made her position untenable.

Once something hits the web there is no going back, think before you tweet.

Google Keep

In the wake of announcing the demise of its Reader service, Google last week launched a new product – Google Keep. The note-taking app was released last Wednesday for Android devices, to mixed reviews.

Keep was immediately thrown into the ring with the likes of Evernote, although I don’t necessarily think Google is going after the note-taking giant. If they were, surely they would have released it across all platforms. I agree with Danny Sullivan’s take that it’s simply a service for Android users to sync notes across different devices, like you can with the iOS Notes app. It’s something that was missing from the Android setup.

So what’s the app like? Being an Android user myself I was looking forward to testing the app as most of my life is synced to Google anyway. My initial thoughts were that it’s a typical Google product, simple, clean interface, easy to use, and did the job. There are a variety of ways to enter a note; you can add a standard note, a list, take a photo or speech input. There is also an ‘Add quick note’ textbox at the top for additional simplicity. The notes appear as tiles that can be colour customised, re-organised, and synced to Google Drive.

The app looks good, but once you start using it on a day-to-day basis you realise that there’s a few things missing. The lack of a sharing function is a bit of an oversight, if I want to send a shopping list to my girlfriend for instance, there should be an option to share it across to her Keep account. There is also no way to set a reminder for a note, which is very annoying. This is a bit of a dealbreaker because it’s such a basic feature for an app of this kind, I couldn’t replace Any.DO or Google Calendar without this functionality. It’s also hard to access your notes on the web, I was expecting a ‘Keep’ tab to have appeared on Google’s black bar but instead I have to manually type in drive.google.com/keep/. I’m sure there is an easier way, but the fact is it’s not intuitive.

In my opinion, Google have got an opportunity to make a really good app out of Keep, but it’s not there yet. I’m sure there will be numerous updates in the next couple of months that will make all of these improvements.

Have you tried Keep yet? What do you think?

Dropbox buy Mailbox for $100M as reservations reach the 1 Million Mark

Early in the week, reports were going around that Dropbox were launching a bid to buy Orchestra, the company behind Mailbox. It was reported in a blog by GigaOm, that Dropbox paid more than $50 million for Orchestra. However, this was questionable with other sources saying the fee was much closer to $100 million.

On the official Mailbox blog, they wrote about moving to the new office move after being bought by Dropbox. They also announced that they reached the 1 million reservation mark after six weeks of being available in the Apple store. After our blog on release, the demand still remains high for access to app. With this benchmark they also released version 1.1 of the app to fix a few bugs and adds “shake to undo” to its feature set.

“Today we’re releasing an update to Mailbox in the App Store. Among hundreds of fixes and improvements big and small, we’ve added shake to undo—the feature our users asked for most. You can download the version here if you haven’t already updated.”

What will Dropbox do next with Mailbox? Rumours circulating around a file attachment integration with Dropbox’s own services.

TWITTER TURNS SEVEN

Twitter reached the ripe old age of seven this past week, and it looks like its popularity is going to continue to grow.

When did you first tweet and how often do you use it?

And We’ll leave you with this Chrome Experiment called Maze to keep you busy during the week – Try it on the PushON Homepage! 

The post Digital RoundUP 25/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

google+ Sign-in

Last Tuesday Google launched Google+ Sign-In for third party developers, they can now allow users to sign into applications using their Google+ account. This is Google’s latest attempt to get ‘normal’ people using the social network, it will also give the search giant plenty of user data to slobber over.

Google is claiming that its new sign-in functionality is more secure than the likes of Twitter and, in particular, Facebook. It also gives users sharing options so that their social networks aren’t spammed with app updates and activity. Google+ director Matt Waddell released an image taking an indirect (but quite obvious) shot at Facebook with the tagline ‘Try the red pill.’ Facebook have received criticism in the past for ‘social spam’, however, Danny Sullivan took a closer look at Google’s new feature and decided that it’s not too dissimilar.

Take a look at Google’s launch video:

Google: how search works

A busy week for Google, it also released a stunning interactive infographic called ‘How Search Works.’ If you haven’t seen it yet and are thinking, ‘urgh, another SEO infographic’, take a look it’s pretty cool. The infographic itself gives a pretty basic and general overview of how Google indexes and ranks websites, but it also has some useful stuff for professional SEOs.

The coolest part is probably the live spam screenshots which show examples of ‘pure spam’ that Google has penalised. This is updated in real-time and some of the examples are pretty humorous.

These pages are examples of ‘pure spam.’ They appear to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking and scraping content from other websites.

This page also goes on to list the types of spam that Google looks for and takes action on such as cloaking, keyword stuffing and unnatural links to/from a site.

Google also published data for the first time on manual actions, webmaster notifications and reconsideration requests. The data in these graphs is really interesting. The graph below shows the number of websites that have had manual action taken against them over the last 8 years and is broken down by the different spam types.

YAHOO CEO BANS WORKING FROM HOME

Marissa Mayer, the Yahoo CEO, sent an email out to thousands of her employees last week in which she announced she was banning them from working ‘remotely.’

As a result, several hundred staff must relocate to their nearest Yahoo office by June or quit. Mayer’s said ‘to become the absolute place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we all need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.’

Those who only work one or two days in the office will have to submit to the new regime. ‘Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings,’ she says, ‘speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.’

groupon send andrew mason packing

It came as little surprise last week when Andrew Mason was relieved from his post as CEO of Groupon. The company has been going through a rough patch since going public just over a year ago, and its poor 4th quarter earnings sent its stock reeling.

Rumours of Mason’s exit have been floating around for a while now, and he seemed to be expecting it as on Thursday he released this letter to his employees on Twitter.

For Groupon Employees: jottit.com/v5wux/ (Apparently, sharing oranges is necessary but insufficient #leadership)

— Andrew Mason (@andrewmason) February 28, 2013

‘After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today.’

Mason took full responsibility for his role in Groupon’s recent poor performance and told his former employees; ‘You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I’m getting in the way of that.’

Groupon, now valued at less than £2 billion, is searching for Mason’s replacement. In the meantime, Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis are taking the reins.

That’s our weekly RoundUP of industry news, I’ll leave you with this little treat from Qualcomm:

The post Digital RoundUP 04/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Text version:

Social media became even bigger in 2012:

The post A Look Back at Social Media in 2012 [Slideshare] appeared first on PushON Ltd.

NFC, or Near-Field Communication technology, has been somewhat of a buzzword in the mobile market in the past 18 months. It is clear that the technology, known predominantly for mobile payments, is an opinion-divider and no one is really sure of its future. Are marketers underestimating the potential of NFC marketing?

So what is NFC?

NFC uses short range wireless frequencies to securely transfer data between NFC-enabled devices by simply tapping them together (technically they only need to be in close proximity, but tapping is way cooler).

NFC is not a new technology, in fact, the first NFC-enabled phone was released back in 2006, but it’s never really found a role or purpose until recently. The financial industry has adopted the technology to roll out mobile payment systems, with Visa, Mastercard and American Express all signing up. But a lot of retailers have been reluctant to implement it. A study by M for Mobile suggests that things will change in 2015 when NFC handset penetration reaches 51 percent.

nfc in marketing

The jury is still out as to whether or not NFC mobile payments will take off, but what about NFC marketing?

It seems a lot of marketers are waiting for Apple to make NFC mainstream, we were all expecting the iPhone 5 to incorporate the technology but Apple decided against it. But does Apple still decide what the next trend is? 2012 saw its UK smartphone lead slashed as Samsung doubled its market share to 24 percent, just 4 percent behind Apple. Android also increased its lead over iOS, claiming nearly half of the market compared to Apple’s 28 percent. Many of the latest Android devices come equipped with NFC chips, and Samsung especially is pushing NFC.

NFC holds some great marketing opportunities for businesses with tech savvy customers, it allows users to simply tap their phone on a poster to trigger a voucher, website address or download. Movie companies could implement NFC on film posters which users tap to view the trailer. A coffee shop could have an NFC point at the counter that automatically checks customers in on Facebook whilst they’re waiting for their coffee. A beer brand could distribute NFC-encoded beer mats to pubs which punters can tap to take them to a promotional website or video. Or how an NFC poster outside a restaurant that puts its menu, phone number and address on users’ phones. You could even have an NFC business card that associates can just tap with their phone to get all of your contact details. The possibilities are vast.

NFC marketing is effective because it’s interactive. Instead of force-feeding consumers marketing messages, brands are enticing them to interact, communicate and engage. Users that see these NFC tags will want to tap their phone on it to see what happens, they don’t see it as an advert they see it as a personal discovery.

QR codes never really revolutionised the industry the way many people thought, and maybe marketers feel NFC is going down the same route. But QR codes were fiddly, confusing and temperamental. The process of interacting by tapping your phone on something is simple, quirky and fun.

Another avenue for NFC is loyalty schemes. We all hate rummaging through the dozens of loyalty cards in our wallet trying to find the appropriate one whilst the queue behind us gets longer and the sales clerk grows more impatient. Some companies have already rolled out this functionality including Orange, EAT and Starbucks. Besides the obvious incentive for customers, loyalty schemes are a great way for organisations to gather data on consumer behaviour.

So I guess now I need to sum up and provide some kind of definitive conclusion. Is NFC a great tool for marketers to interact and engage with consumers? Yes. Is it going to be a guaranteed, runaway success? No. The truth is that NFC faces some challenges; educating consumers, increasing NFC mobile penetration and getting all concerned parties on board. Only time will tell, but getting your ducks in a row now and being the first in your industry to launch an NFC marketing campaign could just be a risk worth taking.

The post Does NFC Marketing Have a Future in Digital? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Vine is a great looking app and its user-friendly interface makes it a breeze to record and share videos. Users simply hold their finger on the screen to record; this effortless approach allows users to incorporate multiple shots in each video, sparking huge creative potential.

The great idea behind Vine is that it’s direct, instant and quirky. Consumers and brands alike can express themselves in these little 6 second windows, and just like Instagram makes us all think we’re photographers, Vine will make us think we’re video directors.

It’s going to be exciting to see how Vine is adopted by the business world, I recently looked at the possible marketing opportunities it possesses. Some brands have wasted no time in playing with the app; take a look at some of our favourites:

tech

So earlier on we showed off the cover…but here it is in action, courtesy of new Twitter Video service Vine. vine.co/v/b5FgPUL5LAg

— tech. (@techdotmag) January 25, 2013

thinkmodo

this is @whoisthebaldguy‘s daily morning routine: vine.co/v/bJJpFt0pxh6 #starbucks #coffee #vine

— Thinkmodo (@thinkmodo) January 28, 2013

red vines

We made a @vineapp Vine video of Red Vines. #Vineception vine.co/v/b5D7vzrz6OY

— Red Vines (@RedVines) January 25, 2013

al-monitor

Trying out the new #Vine @twitter app! Courtesy of @callysally, here is a glimpse at our Washington, D.C. offices! vine.co/v/b5deDmJFlKQ

— Al-Monitor (@AlMonitor) January 24, 2013

the barbarian group

We’re crazy for Vine at the Barbarian Group: vine.co/v/b5dOK5Etp7F

— The Barbarian Group (@barbariangroup) January 24, 2013

The post Introducing Vine, Twitter’s New Video Sharing App appeared first on PushON Ltd.