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Facebook Home sees 500K Google Play downloads in five days

But Facebook Home has racked up a dismal user review average on Google Play. 

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Facebook Home has been downloaded from the Google Play store 500,000 times.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Earlier this month, Facebook took the wraps off Home, a suite of Android apps that converts your phone into a Facebook-centric device. Generally speaking, critics liked the software – "if you are a big Facebook fan, Facebook Home can be a big win," wrote one reviewer – and the HTC First, the first smart phone to come prepackaged with Home. So how is Home doing? 

Moderately well, but maybe not as well as Facebook had hoped. According to Facebook's Benedict Evans, Facebook Home has been downloaded 500,000 times from the Google Play store since its debut on April 16. Mr. Evans posted the announcement to Twitter on Sunday, meaning that downloads averaged about 100,000 a day. Still, as Jordan Crook notes over at TechCrunch today, "these aren't blow-out numbers." 

Mr. Crook name-checks Instagram, which "launched on Android and hit over 1 million downloads in a day [and] 5 million downloads in six days... Those were blow-out numbers," Crook adds. "You also have to consider that Facebook has over a billion users, so 500K doesn’t really move the needle." 

In addition, it may be worth calling attention to the dismal write-ups of Home posted to the Google Play store. Home is averaging two out of five stars in the user review category, with a whopping 6,129 one-star reviews, as of this writing.

"This app adds nothing that I can't get from the regular Facebook app AND it takes away everything I already love about my Android phone and the care I've taken to set it up," one user complained. "Uninstalled."

Of course, Facebook Home is in the early stages of what will eventually be a much larger-scale roll-out. Home is currently available only for a relatively small range of devices, including the HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II. Over at Mashable, Christina Warren learned this the hard way when she attempted to install Home on her Nexus 4 – a pretty advanced phone – and received a simple message: "Your device is not supported yet." 

Bummer. 

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