Facebook has stirred up some interest once again following its invitation to “come and see our new home on Android” this Thursday, April 4. Rumor has it that the social media giant is finally set to unveil its much-vaunted ‘Facebook phone’, most likely in collaboration with HTC, but just what can we expect from such a socially-orientated smartphone? And more to the point, will anybody want to own one?

As reported last week on SiliconANGLE, the phone in question will almost certainly be something called the HTC Myst, and will incorporate tighter integration with the social media network to differentiate it from a ‘regular’ smartphone. These features will likely include a dedicated Facebook button that brings one-touch access to the social network, and some have speculated that the phone may even have a different UI – essentially a ‘forked’ version of Android, much like Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

Facebook Finds a Home (Page)

The strongest evidence of this revamped, Facebook-centric UI comes from the team at Android Police, which managed to get its hands on an early developer’s version of the Facebook Phone software. The blog cautions that the version it saw is likely to be an earlier work in progress, and what’s more it couldn’t access everything as this particular version is only setup for Facebook employee’s accounts.

But despite this handicap, the pre-release version does tell us a fair bit about what we can expect to see from the HTC Phone, and to no one’s surprise none of the features are particularly ground-breaking.

Essentially, the software is really just a blown up version of Facebook that’s able to function as the phone’s home screen, allowing users to do away with the typical Android widgets and apps on their front page. The biggest clue to this is that there’s no mention of the HTC home screen app, which suggests that Facebook will adopt that role instead. Further evidence comes from an expanded list of permissions that Facebook now requires, including control of the phone’s Wi-Fi settings and the lock screen function, neither of which are needed by the standard Facebook app.

What’s even more curious is the fact that the software is also able to read Samsung’s Touchwiz launcher, something that Android Police says is a “dead giveaway that Facebook plans on releasing Facebook Home not just on this phone, but as a standalone app in the Play Store.” This suggests that everyone will soon have the option to transform their phones into ‘Facebook phones’ if they want to.

A Facebook OS In All But Name

So in effect all that we seem to have here is a Facebook operating system slapped onto a middle-of-the-road HTC phone. This automatically begs the question – who on earth wants to use a Facebook OS?

We can rule out business people with certainty. Facebook is one of the biggest time wasters around in the eyes of most CIOs and CEOs, and even those companies that do use Facebook as a means of reaching out to customers don’t need a phone to do it. They’ll be doing it from a desktop, or from a regular phone, much as they have done up until now.

We can discount teenagers too – the evidence suggests that growing numbers of kids are moving away from Facebook to alternatives, either because it’s no longer cool (what with their parents friending them an everything) or simply because they’re bored with it. Another reason is that teenagers are not exactly the ideal target demographic for advertisers, and as we know, advertising is the Holy Grail for Facebook on mobile.

So that leaves us with the older demographic, basically consumers aged 25 and above, but even for this crowd the Facebook phone is going to be a very hard sell. The thing is, Facebook as a mobile operating system lacks anything that sets it apart from competing platforms. iOS stands out due to the quality of its hardware, while Android is, well… its Android.

Annoying Ads, Less Focus On Apps – Is This What Anyone Wants?

Facebook will try to follow in Android’s footsteps, especially where advertising is concerned. It already knows a lot about its users, and having a Facebook phone will allow it to learn even more. Facebook Phone will try to push its users to play with upcoming features like Graph Search where it can serve them with better, more targeted ads. But this could well blow up in its face. Fact is, Google is far better at advertising than Facebook has ever been, and understands the need to balance visibility with intrusiveness (and does this very well). On the other hand, Facebook ads seem to be growing more intrusive by the day, and if people see greater numbers of them popping up in their search results or news feeds they will quickly grow very weary of it.

There’s also the question of apps. With Facebook being the primary focus of this device, apps are relegated into the background. Facebook has always been about Facebook first, with apps (most of which are games) being very much an added extra. But the fact is that most people, and certainly those in the ‘older’ demographic, want more from their phones – they wants apps for news, sports, weather, productivity and so on, just as much as they want Facebook. What they don’t want is stupid Mafia Wars and Farmville games…

Unless Facebook can offers us something new, both by way of usability and the way it delivers its ads, its new phones are almost certainly destined to fail.