Facebook Home is an operating system. It is a social app. It is the mobile web. It is all of those things. It is none of those things. It is, simply, mobile done right.

Here’s why.

While the spending in mobile is on apps, video, mobile Internet and a dizzying array of mostly ineffectual advertising platforms, companies like Facebook are throwing away everything we thought we knew about how to do mobile.

First off, Facebook sought an experience that echoed the original intent of the phone as it was first imagined – to connect people. “Traditionally, phones and operating systems were designed with apps and tasks in mind. With this, we wanted to recreate the most social device you have around people,” said Justin Stahl, a product designer at Facebook.

More tellingly, Facebook product director Adam Mosseri added, “People and content should be first, and we thought that needed to happen at a really deep level. Apps get in the way. Having something meaningful show up the second I turn on my phone is by far my favorite part of the experience.”

The social app (yes, it is software you download) immerses you in a world free of menus, widgets and rows and rows of… other apps. Acting as a sort of wallpaper for your phone, Facebook Home’s cover flow is an engaging presentation of the latest photos and posts from friends. It is gesture based and even more natural and intuitive than conventional touch screen UX design. Facebook describes it as “organic.” Chat Heads, Home’s innovative attempt at recreating the mobile chat paradigm, is a great example. You can touch a head or anywhere else on the screen to dismiss the chat, and then have fun flinging your friends’ heads around the screen at will. Meanwhile, Blues Clues helps Facebook Home users navigate around the app.

While the reviews for Home are decidedly mixed (there are nearly four times as many one-star reviews as five-star reviews), as a first pass I think this is a really strong effort from Facebook. For Facebook users more inclined to use phones as a way to connect with friends and family, rather than, say, play with apps or tinker with widgets, it is a solid choice. That Facebook took this route, rather than designing an entire operating system, or, worse, getting into the hardware game, is evidence the social giant is serious about addressing one of its most vexing challenges to date – how to monetize the mobile channel. Based on the amount of behavioral data Home can collect, the future looks pretty bright in Menlo Park.

Mark Emery is account director and mobile subject matter expert at Definition 6, a unified marketing agency.

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