Facebook has long wanted to be a major part of how you use your smartphone. Now, it looks as if the company has all but abandoned one of its major strategies to do so.  The company has disbanded the team of engineers originally assigned to work on Facebook Home, its custom-made mobile software for Android devices, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.  Released with much fanfare last year, Home was the result of the social giant’s multi-year effort to more deeply integrate Facebook features into an Android smartphone. After downloading and installing the software, for example, Home made it faster to view Facebook photos and send messages to friends directly from the home screen of the phone without needing to rely on Facebook’s popular mobile app to do so.  In effect, the Home software transformed a smartphone into a Facebook phone.  Shortly after it was released, Home ran into snags. Early adopters rated the software mediocre at best. And six months after the introduction, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said the software was hardly the hit he wanted it to be.  “I definitely think Home is slower in rolling out than I would have hoped,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in an interview at a tech conference last year.  The Facebook Home software, which is still available for download in the Google Play app marketplace, has not been updated since January. Facebook declined to comment.  While the company has not formally retired the software, Home’s failure to catch on is an embarrassing misstep for Facebook, which spent years trying to create a home-grown version of a Facebook phone as consumers moved en masse from desktop computers to Internet-connected mobile devices.  “It wasn’t the right product at the right time for their customers,” said Brian Blau, a research director and analyst for the Gartner Group. “Facebook always thought they could turn things around, but they haven’t for whatever reason.”  Recently, Facebook has shifted to a multi-app strategy, emphasizing other mobile offerings like Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger as popular stand-alone additions to accompany its main app.  It has also shifted resources. For instance, Joey Flynn, who was the lead designer for Facebook Home, left the project to design and launch Slingshot, an app similar to disappearing photo sharing service Snapchat. Other former Home team members, like product director Adam Mosseri, have gone on to focus more on other mobile projects.  The company has also incorporated some of Home’s more popular features, like “Chat Heads,” into the Facebook for Android app.  Facebook typically isn’t afraid to kill under-performing apps — as it recently did with its Poke and Camera offerings — and Home isn’t dead quite yet.  But don’t hold your breath waiting for an update.
It is a rare product misstep for Facebook. Its Home software was supposed to turn an Android smartphone into a Facebook phone. But it never caught on with users.