Remember how I said Facebook Home had to be downloaded and used to be successful?
1. Facebook Home downloaded 500,000 times since launch
It looks like people care.
The Android skin was downloaded more than 500,000 times in nine days on the market, according to TechCrunch. And while that’s a fraction of Facebook’s billion-person user base, remember, Home is only available on six devices worldwide.
That’s an impressive number when taking all the factors into account. But it isn’t anywhere close to the crazy 1 million downloads Instagram — acquired by Facebook for a cool $1 billion — saw on its first day on the Google Play store.
2. Twitter launches #Music
In an odd announcement on Good Morning America, Twitter revealed its new music discovery service.
Twitter #Music looks at Twitter as a whole in addition to your personal news feed to find popular, emerging, or recommended artists. The interface is simple: up to 140 tiles appear on screen, each containing an iTunes preview of a song. If you want to hear the full version, just connect with your Rdio or Spotify account.
Unforunately, you need Spotify Premium or a paid Rdio account to listen to full length songs. While I understand why that’s necessary on mobile, I was disappointed to discover I needed it when using the desktop version of #music. I have Spotify open already, why can’t it just open the song there?
The app is available with iOS and desktop flavors for now, making it the second Twitter-developed app to launch without an accompanying Android version after Vine launched in January.
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That’s all the news for Monday, April 22! Check back Thursday for the latest and greatest in tech.
