Facebook Home hits 500,000 users, with an average rating of just 2.2 stars

Facebook Home has gained the attention of early adopters, with the alternative Android smartphone interface and launcher having been downloaded by 500,000 users.

However, the news is not all good for Facebook, with Google Play listing the average user rating for the app at just 2.2 stars, with the user review feed showing a steady stream of users opting to uninstall the app.

“It was cool at first but needs some tweeking [sic] to be more user friendly. It takes a lot of different moves and clicks just to get to your main home screen. I installed it last night and unistalled [sic] it this morning,” one user stated.

“Cool way to use Facebook, but with no support for my other widgets, it limits my phone. If I wanted a single company to take over my home screen appearance, I could use an iPhone,” says another.

References to uninstalling the app are ominous for Facebook, as Google Play’s figure includes all downloads (including from users who later uninstall an app), rather than the number of active users.

Currently, an overwhelming 52% of users rate the app just one star, with a further 13.5% rating it at two stars, accounting for two-thirds of users who rated the app on Google Play.

According to TheNextWeb, the take-up rate for the new app has been significantly slower than for Instagram, which managed reach the million downloads milestone in its first 24 hours on Android, with Facebook Home remaining a tiny fraction of Facebook’s one billion user-base worldwide.

As SmartCompany reported, Facebook Home is an app launcher that completely replaces the standard Android interface and was launched by the social media giant at the start of April.

It is available for selected smartphones through the Google Play store and comes pre-installed on the HTC First, and was released after years of speculation about a possible Facebook smartphone platform.

Facebook product director Adam Mosseri recently confirmed the social media giant is in talks to bring the app to Apple’s iPhone and Windows.

“We’ve shown [Apple and Microsoft] what we’ve built and we’re just in an ongoing conversation,” Mosseri says.

“It may or may not be Home. We could also just bring some of the design values to the [Facebook] iOS app. That might be how it ends up. Or we could build just the lock screen. Maybe then it’s not called Home, it’s called something else.”