Facebook today announced an update for its Android homescreen experience Facebook Home to address performance and stability. Facebook also revealed at a press event at its headquarters today that in four weeks since the launch of Home on April 12, Home increased user engagement by more than 25 percent compared to the standard Facebook app.

Facebook measures engagement through two areas — feedback such as commenting and liking, and time spent in the app. Facebook director of mobile engineering Cory Ondrejka adds that Facebook Home, with its Chat Heads feature, has also increased the use of messaging. He says participation, which is how many users are actually using Messenger, saw a 7 percent lift, while the total volume of messages sent was up 10 percent.

Facebook plans to update Home on a monthly basis with the latest update arriving today, and future updates landing on June 9 and July 11.

Ondrejka revealed that Facebook Home has nearly reached the one million downloads mark. He adds that, for the amount of devices Home is compatible for, one million downloads was within Facebook’s expectations for Home in this time frame.

Facebook also addressed issues users have experienced with Home, including the lack of folder and doc support as well as a more intuitive way to initiate a discussion with Chat Heads. In a future update within in the next couple of months, users will be able to slide up as they normally would to bring up their apps — as seen to the right — but instead of a small pane with apps, it will be a full screen of apps set in a translucent background with folder support.

For Chat Heads, users will soon be able to drag their profile picture to the left, which will initiate the messenger list to drop down from the left. As for widgets support, Facebook is looking into it, but didn’t reveal any specific plans to integrate it. The upcoming launcher screen, including folder support, is visible below. “We wanted to ease the transition from your old launcher to your new launcher,” says Adam Mosseri, director of product at Facebook.

Facebook is also addressing the tutorial for Home. In a later update, when a user first installs Home, they will be greeted with a “Welcome to Facebook Home” message at the top along with a prompt to drag their Facebook profile picture up to go to the app launch. Facebook wants to hold the user’s hand more before they let them go explore Home on their own. Once the tutorial is completed, the user will be popped into Cover Feed.

“Because it’s a novel interface, we’ll gently lead the user into the experience so they can figure out how to use it,” Mosseri says.

Keep in mind that none of these new features for Home are launching today, which is just about performance. Facebook plans to roll these features out in the next couple of months.

Mosseri says Facebook hasn’t cross-promoted Facebook Home through the Facebook app for Android on purpose. Cross-promotion within an internal network is an important viral tool many mobile app and mobile game developers use to move their user base from one app to another. He adds that once Facebook feels Home is ready, the company will begin marketing Home in all of its apps.

Facebook Home is currently only available for Android, which is supported on four devices — HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Facebook released a new version of Messenger for iOS on Monday, bringing its latest stickers feature from the main app to the standalone chat application.

Stickers are now available in Facebook for iOS, Messenger for iOS and Messenger for Android. Facebook also released a new set of stickers available for free in the “sticker store” within Messenger and the main Facebook app. Some chat apps sell stickers, but so far Facebook has made all eight of its sticker sets free. The newest set is called “Skullington.”

Another change that brings parity between Messenger and the main app are photo filters for images users share in private and group messages, as well as the redesigned contact info page in the latest version of Messenger. This design was introduced in a Facebook for iOS update last month. It includes a “shared photos” album that lets users quickly access images that they exchanged with a friend through private messages, similar to what email clients often include.

A feature exclusive to Messenger is the swipe-to-delete feature, similar to other email and chat apps. Before Monday, users could swipe to archive messages, but couldn’t completely delete from the app. Facebook’s main iOS app doesn’t have this feature because swiping right opens the bookmarks menu and swiping left opens the chat menu.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Facebook video ad units could come with TV price tags – Facebook is reportedly prepping to sell its new video ads with an “upfront”-type marketplace and TV-like prices. According to AdAge, Facebook will have four daily summer slots — women over 30, women under 30, men over 30 and men over 30 — with an asking price close to $1 million. The exact ad format hasn’t been locked down, but it is believed that the videos will be 15-seconds long and users will see no more than three per day at launch. It is unclear whether the ads will autoplay in the feed or not.

More Messenger for Android users get free calling - Facebook this week released an update for its Messenger app on Android, bringing free VoiP calling to users in the U.S. and 23 other countries. Previously, this was in testing with Android users in Canada and iOS users in several countries. From Messenger, users can tap the “i” button inside a conversation and then select “Free Call.”

Facebook simplifies logo – Facebook has updated the look of its “f” logo, eliminating the light blue horizontal line, which was in the previous version. A comparison is available here on the site of developer Tom Waddington, who first noticed the change. The company also created new logos for several of its Facebook pages, such as those for security, privacy, government, journalists, universities and others. The one for safety, for example, accompanies the roundup item below.

Facebook and Attorneys General launch online safety campaign- Facebook and the National Association of Attorneys General are partnering to educate teens and their parents about safety and privacy on the social network. Part of the consumer education program includes a ”Safety and Privacy on Facebook” page, which will be a resource for information and tips on privacy settings and “Ask the Safety Team” videos.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Facebook Home is due out today and will likely arrive soon, but the standalone Messenger app update is already here, and it brings Chat Heads support to most Android devices, regardless of whether or not you have Home installed. That means that when you’re using other apps or on the home screen, Messenger messages will pop up with the Chat Head icon of the person messaging you, allowing you to quickly jump into a conversation without leaving your current app.

You can also dismiss the conversation by swiping down from a Chat Heads message. I’ve been testing the feature and it works well out of the gate, displaying multiple incoming conversations and letting you switch between them, overtop of any other Android apps you may be using. The feature is a killer one, no doubt, and makes Messenger a lot more of a threat to other messaging apps out there, by placing your messages where they’re actually useful to you.

It’s a little like having Growl notifications on your Android device, but more useful since it actually doesn’t require you to switch apps to engage with the ongoing conversations. The only downside I can see is that if you get a lot of FB messages, you may feel a tad overwhelmed while trying to keep up, and it’s definitely a visual and auditory distraction. Luckily, you can disable Chat Heads in Messenger at any time from the app’s Settings menu.

While some users may be reluctant to turn over their entire phone to Android, this added functionality in Chat Heads is useful for pretty much anyone who uses FB Messenger, and could provide impetus to convince others to switch away from competing services. I have to wonder how other developers will feel about Facebook interrupting their experience with customers within their own apps.

It doesn’t appear as though Chat Heads in the standalone Messenger app pulls in your text messages too, based on our tests. Still, it’s already turning out to be pretty addictive in just a short time using it. Update: Turns out you can have Messenger field your text messages, too. You just need to enable it in Settings under “SMS/MMS.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook is slowly beefing up the capabilities of its Messenger app as it moves to combat the rise of free VoIP apps like Whatsapp, Viber and Line. Today it’s taking another baby step by expanding VoIP calling to U.K. users of its iOS app, following its initial test of the feature in Canada in January, which was soon followed by a U.S. rollout.

A Facebook spokeswoman said: “From today, VOIP calling for Facebook Messenger on iOS will go live in the UK. This means that you can call friends in Facebook Messenger for free by tapping the ‘I’ button in an individual conversation and then tapping ‘Free Call’.”

Some messaging apps — including Viber and Line – offer free messaging and VoIP capabilities in all the markets where they operate, so Facebook is having to do some catching up here.

The VoIP feature does not appear to have been added to Facebook Messenger’s U.K. app quite yet. The app store description flags up its free texting capability but does not yet mention free calls (see right). The app was last updated on March 7 to add updates to group conversations, among other unspecified updates and bug fixes.

The lines between messaging and social networking are arguably blurring as messaging apps add capabilities that enable users to share multimedia content with groups of friends, as well as letting them call and text individuals — thereby treading directly on traditional social networking territory. Both use cases (social sharing and pure messaging) make these apps a nascent threat to Facebook’s dominance since social networking is at its core all about messaging and sharing content with chosen friends.

Little wonder then that rumours swirling around late last year suggested Facebook wanted to buy Whatsapp – which in August 2012 was serving 10 billion messages per day to its users. In the event, there has been no acquisition. Instead, Facebook added VoIP calling to its Messenger app at the start of the year — something Whatsapp doesn’t (yet) offer — setting the stage for an epic messaging app face off.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Six months after its initial launch, the preview of Outlook.com, Microsoft’s free webmail service that is meant to replace the aging Hotmail brand and design, now has over 60 million active users according to the company’s own data. Today, Microsoft is officially taking Outlook.com out of preview and will start prompting its 360 million Hotmail users to switch to the new service (while keeping their old email addresses). Microsoft expects to switch all Hotmail users to the new interface and platform by the summer.

Now that Outlook.com is out of preview, Microsoft is also launching a massive new marketing campaign for the service in the U.S. and the company tells me this will be the “largest ever” for a free webmail service. This campaign, which will include TV ads and a number of digital-only videos, will have a very upbeat tone and will not be based upon the recent Scroogled campaign. Instead, the new ads focus on Outlook.com’s features and how it plays well with the rest of Microsoft’s suite of online tools, including, for example, SkyDrive.

As Microsoft’s senior director of product management, Dharmesh Mehta told me earlier this week, his team spent the last six month working on scaling the service and preparing it for this transition. Similar to what Microsoft is doing with its migration from Windows Live Messenger to Skype, the transition will be optional at first and become mandatory later on. Unlike the Messenger/Skype switch, Microsoft isn’t staggering the upgrade by geographic location, though. Hotmail users can switch at any time over the next few months. At some point in the future, this switch will become mandatory, but the timing for this remains up in the air.

Microsoft, it is worth noting, always gave Hotmail users the option to move to the new Outlook.com, but it will now actively prompt users to do so and also email them to remind them that they can switch.

Mehta acknowledged that email is “historically a very slow-moving category.” People don’t generally switch between email services very often and are even less likely to abandon their addresses in favor of a new service. Outlook.com, he stressed, lets you keep your Gmail address if you want to switch (over one-third of Outlook.com’s 60 million active users, Microsoft says, switched from Gmail) and current Hotmail users will obviously be able to keep their old @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com addresses.

According to Mehta, Microsoft believes that it now has a very competitive webmail client with features that are on par with Gmail, the service that stole Hotmail’s crown as the most popular free email service. Now that Gmail is becoming more and more complicated, he told me, is a “good opportunity to push people out of their complacency” and get them to try something new.

Microsoft is clearly not shying away from the Gmail comparison. In its press materials for today’s announcement, for example, the company argues that it’s been nine years since Gmail disrupted the email space “and did something basic and offered 1 GB mailboxes. “Things are different today than they were in 2004,” Microsoft writes. “We use new communication services, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and we have a much greater appreciation for well-designed and well-connected systems.”

Hotmail was obviously a pioneer in the webmail businesses, but over time, @hotmail.com addresses lost their luster as it was eclipsed by its competitors like Gmail. Outlook.com, on the other hand, is a very modern webmail client with numerous smart features like sweep (to quickly clean up your inbox) and active views (to track packages etc.). Some Hotmail users will obviously dislike the change to the modern, flat interface. Overall, however, this is clearly a major upgrade to Hotmail and may just allow Microsoft to once again compete in this space.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Good news for those of you still clinging to Windows Live Messenger in its current form — it looks like you’ll able to keep using it for just a little bit longer. It’s no secret that Microsoft would retire its 13 year old messaging service in favor of the one it paid $8.5 billion for, but Skype announced in a post on its blog that the timeline for the official transition process has been pushed back by a hair.

Microsoft announced to some users of the Live Messenger service last month that it would make its transition to Skype on March 15, but The Verge’s Tom Warren reports that only a “small number” of people will actually make the move on that date. A bigger test group was supposed to transition on the 15th, but apparently early tests were promising enough that the size of the first group was scaled down.

Skype notes that the process for all the others will start on April 8 — not much of a reprieve for longstanding Live Messenger users, but enough time for them to get their affairs in order. Users of the English language version of WLM will be the first to be transitioned (Skype seems to prefer the word “upgrade”) to Skype in April, and the process is set to continue for a few weeks until the Brazilian Portuguese version gets its makeover. That last update is slated to take place no earlier than April 30, but after that there’s no option to fight the change. For what it’s worth, Skype is working to make this whole rigmarole as pain-free as possible — they’ll be pre-streaming the client data to the user, so the upgrade will be already on the machine when the notification arrives.

There are some caveats here, for better or worse. Should you be reading this from China, you can rest easy (or not, as the case may be) knowing that the news doesn’t apply to you, and perhaps more importantly, this move only applies to desktop-based Windows Live Messenger users. Neither Microsoft nor Skype has discussed when they plan to cut off mobile support, and that lack of communication extends to third-party app developers too — that said, Skype Marketing Integration Director Parri Munsell confirmed to ZDNet that each the APIs that allow access to Windows Live Messenger will “eventually be shut down” and that the timing of changes was largely up to those third-party developers to announce.

Additional reporting by Frederic Lardinois

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook yesterday updated its iOS app to version 5.4, giving users a few new features in what could be one of the world’s most complex and layered mobile apps.

The update brings with it the ability to share voice messages, much like iOS’s Voice Memos, letting users record a cute little message and send it through the app to friends. The update also lets users record and share video from right within the app.

Facebook users have long had the ability to send 60-second voice messages within Facebook’s Messenger app, but the functionality has been brought over to the main app.

Users can send a voice message by tapping the plus button under the Messages tab. From there, click Record and simply hold the button to record your message. When you release, your message will be automatically sent unless you slide your finger off the button, in which case the message will be canceled.

Along with video and voice functionality, Facebook has also improved Places support on the app’s Nearby tab, letting users check in with a bit more accuracy.

Facebook has struggled on mobile, but there have been clear improvements in the past year. The company has introduced various mobile apps like Poke, Messenger, and Camera, while still making clear progress on the main Facebook app. In fact, Zuckerberg believes that mobile is where the money is.

The update is available for free in the App Store.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook today released an update to its main Android application, which gives users more control over how they share items from mobile News Feed, as well as the option to send voice messages to their friends.

When users tap the share button from the feed, they’ll now have the option to set the location for where they want to share the story. Previously on mobile, users could only post items to their own Timeline, but now they can select a friend’s Timeline, a group or a page. Unlike with the desktop share button, users cannot use the mobile share button to send something to another user via private message.

Android users can now send their friends voice messages from the main app. This feature was recently added to the standalone Messenger application, and because Facebook uses the same code base, it functions the same way now within the main app. Voice calls, which are available for some iOS users, are not yet an option for Android.

Facebook also says photo viewing has gotten faster in this latest update.

Images via AllFacebook

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Facebook originally started testing a new free (minus and data usage fees you incur from your carrier) calling feature for users of its Facebook Messenger app for iPhone in Canada early this year, and now the service is available to U.S. users as well. The free call button app now shows up in the app for U.S. users, in any conversation where both parties are using the Facebook Messenger app.

This is a pretty handy feature for users of the social network, especially since unlike with Skype, Viber or other VoIP calling apps, you already likely have a wide network of contacts you’d actually want to have live voice conversations with built-in and ready to go on Facebook. And while it isn’t entirely free on cellular connections, since it uses your data connection, it is completely free at home on Wi-Fi, which means it can likely replace a home phone for a lot of users if they’re still hanging on to one, or at least for-pay at-home VoIP services.

As Josh noted in his post on the pilot launch in Canada, this isn’t built on the Skype network, which one might guess based on the partnership between the two companies for voice and video chat. Instead, it’s Facebook’s own attempt to own every channel of communication for its users. It looks like the Canadian trial went well, but we’ll be watching to see how this works with the much larger U.S. user base.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch