{"id":45,"date":"2013-04-05T21:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T21:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/?p=45"},"modified":"2020-08-07T03:22:31","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T03:22:31","slug":"home-turf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/2013\/04\/05\/home-turf\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Turf"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You\u2019ve built an enormous business around a desktop website. Unfortunately, people around the world are spending more and more time on mobile devices. The vast majority of these devices run software from only two companies. One of these companies is\u00a0actively competing with you<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You cannot put your future in a competitor\u2019s hands. So what do you do? Do you enter uncharted territory, make your own mobile operating system, and hope people switch?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course not. You make your competitor\u2019s system yours \u2014 overnight.\u00a0Facebook Home<\/a>\u00a0is a trojan horse designed to steal the Android experience, and the Android user base, right out of Google\u2019s hands. The majority of speculation over the last year or two had been that Facebook was working on its own mobile OS. It may well be, but this move is so much smarter on a number of fronts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Time.<\/strong>\u00a0Home significantly increases Facebook\u2019s mobile presence without being\u00a0everything<\/em>. A lot of time and care seems to have gone into it, but it\u2019s surely far less than a full-blown operating system would require.<\/li>
  2. Installed base.<\/strong>\u00a0Built in. The sales pitch is very simple: If you have a device that Home supports, download it. No money, no switcher headaches. Blackberry and Windows Phone sales prove that people aren\u2019t looking for new platforms right now.<\/li>
  3. Software Experience.\u00a0<\/strong>Facebook\u2019s engineers have surely learned a lot from this project. That experience will be reapplied not only to expanding Home itself, but to building a full-blown OS if they want.<\/li>
  4. Hardware Experience.<\/strong>\u00a0While the software is the real news here, Facebook took the initiative to also start working with a handset maker. The HTC First is hardly a \u201cFacebook phone\u201d, but it\u2019s a chance for Facebook to experience the complexity of coordinating hardware, software, and carrier partnerships from a distance. Remember the\u00a0Motorola ROKR<\/a>? Remember what happened\u00a0fifteen months later<\/a>?