While the Google Glass storm settles, Facebook has announced 'Facebook Home', which is essentially a skin on top of Android-powered mobile phones.
Facebook Home is not a phone, but more like an app or a launcher that provides a Facebook-centric home screen on your mobile.
The Home's main screen is focused on Cover Feed, which displays status updates, full-screen photos, and notifications.
A feature called Chat Head, which is integrated in your home screen, provides the ability to chat with Facebook friends right from the screen. The chat notifications popup with the user's profile picture alongside the update text.
In the initial launch, videos and group activities aren't supported, but it might be added in the later versions (of course).
Facebook has moved out from being app-centric to being people-centric. Also, another smart move by Facebook is the rollout of Home as an add-on feature for Android mobiles, rather than pushing it as a stock-app on devices.
Zuckerberg says,
"After noting we spend more than 20% of our mobile time on social apps, we asked ourselves — if we’re already spending this much time on our phones, how can we make it easier? What if they were designed around people first, and you could also just happen to interact with apps?”
Home will be available as a free download from the Google Play Store starting April 12.
Home works on the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung GALAXY S III and Samsung GALAXY Note II, forthcoming HTC One and Samsung GALAXY S4, and on more devices in the coming months.
Facebook also announced a special version of Home that will be pre-installed on the new HTC First phone on AT&T.
Now, what all these means for the travel industry?
Travel marketing compass might shift towards Facebook
At the moment, the time spent by a user on Facebook's current mobile offerings is already far higher than other social apps.
With Facebook trying to blend its features right on the home screen of every possible Android device (if Facebook could convince Apple, then perhaps on iOS platforms as well), user time on Facebook will most likely increase.
This simply means that travel brand updates will now get more eyeball-time from users.
Also, photos are going to appear in full-screen mode. While this is happening in the current native app of Facebook, the difference here is that a user might see a travel brand's photo post in fullscreen. This reduces the effort of the user of finding Facebook app, opening it, and scrolling the newsfeed to see the same photo.
Advertising is on its way
In the initial launch version of Facebook Home, there will not be any ads. But Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed in a press Q&A (post the launch event) that Ads would be integrated at a later date.
According to eMarketer, Facebook's mobile ad revenue in 2012 was $390 million. It's estimated that this number will touch $1 billion for the first time this year - an impressive year-over-year increase.
Displaying ads on the home screen is going to be interesting, especially if a user immediately sees an ad right after unlocking the home screen.
The scope for this is phenomenal. If Facebook could leverage the location of the user and its proprietary FBX Exchange retargeting platform to display personalized ads to the user on mobile, then that's going to have potential conversion spike.
Recently, Facebook rolled out 'Nearby' feature that would display near by places like restaurants, hotels, and coffee joints depending on the user's location. This feature can nicely be blended in Facebook Home to take advantage of more targeted ads.
An example: An Australian resident is on a holiday tour to Phuket. He has searched for hotels to stay in his mobile. While in Phuket, when the user opens the mobile, ads related to hotels and activities in Phuket are displayed.
However, this will also potentially lead to furious pushback. Do users really want to see an ad every single time they unlock their phone?
The key here will be relevant, targeted ads useful to the individual user - something that Facebook needs to address explicitly to avoid a Beacon-style fiasco with Home's advertising product.
Overall summary + remaining questions
Facebook has done it first. But it won't take much time for the other popular social networks to replicate this, especially Twitter, Pinterest and obviously Google+.
The gap between consumer and the service provider is reducing constantly, and Facebook's Home and Google's Glass are starting points towards that journey.
The question is how consumers will respond to full-scale takeover of their mobile experience by one social network provider.
Do they want to spend more time in an immersive Facebook experience? Will this new experience convince those on Facebook hiatus to return? Will this limited experience provide more value and utility to the social network or will it simply seem too overwhelming and one-sided to succeed?
And will this new branded Home experience play well with other 3rd-party apps popular with Facebookers?