Facebook’s New Home on Android ⇥ blogs.wsj.com

Josh Constine, TechCrunch:

Facebook just invited press to an event at its headquarters on April 4th to “Come See Our New Home On Android”. Sources tell us it will be a modified version of the Android operating system with deep native Facebook functionality on the homescreen that may live on an HTC handset.

Evelyn M. Rusli and Amir Efrati of the Wall Street Journal have more details, and less speculation:

The social network has been developing new software for mobile devices powered by Google’s Android operating system that displays content from users’ Facebook accounts on a smartphone’s home screen–the first screen visible when they turn on the device, people familiar with the situation said. Facebook will initially demonstrate the capability on smartphones from HTC, these people said, but has been working to reach similar arrangements with other device makers.

I’m going to take a guess that this is similar to HTC’s “BlinkFeed” feature from their One phone: live, streaming Facebook content on the home screen, just a tap away. And, knowing Facebook’s monetization and mobile strategy, ads on your home screen. Yippee.