Facebook, Social Networking | featured news

Facebook was once a darling of investors, then a turnoff. Now, a year after going public, the social network seems to have settled into a more stable relationship with Wall Street. But the company has still been taking pains to prove that it can make more money from its base of more than a billion users, especially from those using Facebook on mobile devices.

Facebook's Home app for Android phones has been downloaded more than 500,000 times from the Google Play store since its release on 4 April. But it has received mixed reviews from users, with an average rating of 2.2 out of five stars.

The celebrity gossip machine had burbled for a day or two about Ozzy Osbourne's marriage, and for weeks about Jada Pinkett Smith's. Yet both stars hit a breaking point at about the same time — and took to Facebook.

Douglas Rushkoff says Facebook's new app just increases disorientation and isn't getting rave reviews from users... And when I looked up Facebook Home online to try to find out just what it was, the first search results that came up were from users sharing how to disable it. This way, consumers can buy the discounted phones on which Facebook Home ships, and turn them back into a regular Android smartphones, where Facebook is just another app we can use in our own good time.

All in all, Facebook Home is ideal for true social network addicts. But those who aren’t constantly checking Facebook mobile for updates might find it more distracting than helpful.

Facebook announced their new social home screen replacement called Facebook Home last week, and today it's available in the Play Store for certain devices. The suite of apps puts more focus on your friends and social sharing than the separate apps you use to communicate, with a new home and lock screen, a new notifications area, and (of course) serious Facebook integration. Facebook Home is available for the HTC First, HTC One X and One X+, the Samsung Galaxy S III, and the Galaxy Note II. Support for the HTC One and Galaxy S4 are coming in the future, along with (hopefully) other devices. Check out the video above to see it in action, read our original post for more information, and if you have a supported device, hit the link below to try it out.

Facebook is developing software for Android mobile devices that would display content from Facebook accounts on a smartphone's home screen.

We knew that the Human Right Campaign’s (HRC) red and pink logo in support of gay marriage had spread across the web at a record pace, but Facebook is now confirming that with some numbers. Facebook says that millions of people change their profile photos every day, but on Tuesday, March 26, the day the HRC asked gay marriage supporters to “paint the town red” with a new logo, 2.7 million more users changed their photo compared with the previous Tuesday. Profile photo uploads were up by 120 percent, it says. Facebook has more than a billion users.