Facebook has announced that it is adding new content to its Facebook Home lock screen. This new content will allow beta testers to access Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr and Tumblr content without having to go through the trouble of unlocking their phones.
Facebook Inc. is the world's largest social networking site. The company was founded in February of 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates at Harvard University. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 or older.
Image via Shutterstock
Facebook Home, introduced in April, is an interface for Android phones that takes over the home and lock screen. It allows a deeper social integration between the two products.
Facebook is hopeful that, by making Facebook Home more useful, it will not only attract more users, but also lead to more engagement with branded content that appears on its screens.
There is no guarantee that this new update will help the company gain higher adoption rates for Home, but with Home’s availability limited to only a select group of Android smartphones, it is unlikely to have a major impact on user's engagement or reach. More than 250 million people access Facebook over a mobile device, and they are twice as active on Facebook as desktop and laptop users.
"Today you can view more of the content you care about on your lock screen. When you wake up your phone, swipe through photos and posts from Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram, in addition to Facebook," Tom Alison, Facebook engineering manager, wrote on the company blog.
This move did not come as a major surprise, seeing as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the incorporation of social media sites at the TC Disrupt, which he attended just last month.
Edited by
Alisen Downey