Facebook Home Gets Few Downloads, Poor Reviews

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Since its release on April 11, Facebook Home has been downloaded 500,000 times. However, many of the people who downloaded the Android app didn’t like it, giving Facebook Home a meager 2.2-star rating.

The Register reported, “Facebook Home has been downloaded 500,000 times from Google’s Play store since it was released by the free content ad network earlier this month. If the app was to continue to be downloaded at that pace then it would roughly take 76 Gregorian years for Facebook to have 1 billion Android users running the software, which skins the Google mobile OS with a constant stream of updates from the Mark Zuckerberg-run network.”

Salvador Rodriguez with the Los Angeles Times noted, “Although 500,000 is a large number, for Facebook that is somewhat of a disappointment. The Android Instagram app, for example, was downloaded more than 1 million times in less than 24 hours after it was released on Google Play last year, and the main Facebook app for Android has been downloaded more than 100 million times.”

InformationWeek’s Eric Zeman observed, “At the time of this writing, the application had received approximately 11,500 reviews. More than half of them, about 5,900, rated the app with one star. Only 1,900 users gave it five stars, with 900 rating it four stars, 1,200 rating it three stars, and 1,600 rating it three stars. The average of all ratings is a dismal 2.2 stars.”

Meanwhile, in related news, reports suggest Facebook may be opening a new data center in Iowa. The Des Moines Register’s Donnelle Eller wrote, “Facebook is the company behind a $1 billion data center that’s expected to land Altoona, a project that’s being touted as ‘the most technologically advanced data center in the world,’ legislative sources told the Des Moines Register today. The project is expected to be completed in two $500 million phases near Altoona, where leaders have provided a green light for a 1.4 million square foot facility. When completely built out, experts expect the facility will cost $1.5 billion.”