Smartphones are become increasingly "smarter" and complex gadgets. They're almost everywhere, available in almost everyone's pockets. While they can do practically many things, their single irreplaceable duty is its role as a "phone". Facebook that is increasing its mobile presence wants to make use of that smartphone's straightforward role by introducing Hello, a way to reinvent phone calls.
As helpful as it can be, a smartphone's caller ID doesn't really tell you everything about who's calling, or why are they calling. Unknown numbers that kept calling can be a nuisance to some people that they tend to avoid them no matter what. Here, Hello is Facebook's way to make a smartphone's caller ID a better one.
"More than 1 billion phone calls are made in the U.S. everyday," said Hello's Product Manager Andrea Vaccari. But "the experience of the phone call hasn’t evolved in a long time."
With the massive amount of users, almost everyone on the planet that is connected to the internet, has a Facebook account. With that huge amount of people's information, Hello is able to show you who's calling based on its stored data.
So whether it's a friend that the number isn't saved yet on your smartphone, a robocaller, or someone's friend who's calling you for the first time, Facebook could show you who they are before you answer the phone. What it essentially do is running an immediate Facebook Graph search on any number you call or that calls you.
In short, the free app augments phone calls with all the information the social network has to provide.
With Hello, users can get access to all of their Facebook's friends while calling. While this is its main function, the app has other users: if a friend has their listed phone number on their Facebook profile, Hello will display that information whenever they call, along with his/her job, mutual friends and even birthdays. These are the things that makes Hello a much more robust caller ID.
You can also find how many times a number has been blocked, and automatically block certain numbers, like for example from offenders. You can also do the usual things you usually do on Facebook, like searching for people or places.
While Facebook's Hello isn't offering any new great features, it does bring Facebook people already knew closer and more useful.
As a start, Facebook is only offering Hello in the U.S., Brazil and Nigeria. The app is first launched for Android only.
Facebook Said Hi
Facebook's Hello is essentially a skin replacement for an Android's existing phone dialer. The app that is built by a team led by Andrea Vaccari who came with Facebook's acquisition of Glancee, filters incoming calls by presenting the user a well-known Facebook's blue shade.
While people can actually search for virtually anything on the web with just a few taps and scrolls. Facebook itself already has Paper to help users. And with Hello, both apps are meant to show things they could look up for themselves. But Hello's approach is rather different: it is meant to contextualize Facebook's knowledge about someone, or something, and put that information forward for better convenience, whenever the user wants.
This could be a feature that is handy to many travelers out there.
For example, when you're looking for place to eat or stay, you can seek for directions and information straight from the internet. A few taps and a few minutes scrolling and there you have it. But if a business/hotel/restaurant is listed on Facebook, Hello can read reviews, call for reservations, and launch Google Maps right within the app.
The streamline process actually makes the clunky and online process a lot easier. Furthermore, Facebook is almost having the whole world's (internet) population in its database, what more can you say?
Furthermore, Hello users can text their friends instead of calling them, as long as they have Facebook Messenger installed. Messenger's free voice and video call updates make storing phone numbers inside your phone even less necessary.
"Calling is really big. It's core to how people connect with each other, including family and close friends, but also businesses and colleagues," explained Vaccari.
A "Facebook Phone"
Hello does things similar to Facebook Home that offered skin app and wanted to take over an entire phone when installed. But it's receptions are mixed. Some said that Hello is nothing more than Facebook strategy to get even more user data so it can get more advertisers. But to others, it's a focused feature that is indeed useful.
So Hello is not just like most other apps on the wild out there. It's not that big nor it's a breakthrough: it's just making a smartphone to have a "smarter" dialer and caller ID by putting everything you need when you want them.
Once downloaded, Hello users must sign in with Facebook, and give it permissions to sync contacts with Facebook and interact with calls. Then users can decide whether they want to actively use Hello, or let it just passively surface information about incoming calls.
Hello features include: Synced Phone Book, Caller ID, Free VOIP Calls, Business Search and Call Blocking.
Hello and Goodbye
Hello is just a small feature introduced by the social giant. But opposed to other big and sophisticated apps that have bloated size and can do pretty much everything, Hello is a straightforward app that puts your phone inline with its heritage: a way to call and receive call from someone.
While this could be a big deal, or not, Facebook's Hello also goes well along the company's strategy to keep everyone on board the social network. The more people are using Facebook and any other apps it owns, the less time they have to spend on competitors.
The downsides of the app: you can't add a number to a contact without one already listed. And the app also has no SMS integration so you cannot block incoming messages.
