Far From "Home," iPhone Gets Facebook Chat Heads

Facebook FB may not be able to bring its new app launcher to iOS, but iPhone users can soon gain access to one of Home's most popular features. Chat Heads, the messaging feature that delivers pictures of your Facebook friends instead of the traditional (imageless) notifications, is being added to the Facebook app for iOS. "Now you can keep chatting even when you're doing other stuff on Facebook, like checking your News Feed," Facebook's Kumar Iyer and Michael Sharon wrote in the official announcement. "Tap Chat Heads to reply, drag them around, or flick them down to close." This is an interesting development given the rumor that Apple AAPL and Microsoft MSFT are in talks with Facebook to bring Home to their respective operating systems. Unlike the Android edition of Chat Heads, which is built into Home, the iOS version will only provide Chat Heads to those who are using the Facebook App. This may somewhat diminish the functionality of Chat Heads, which will not be visible when users are running other programs. AllThingsD speculated that this may have been what Adam Mosseri, Facebook's product director, meant when he told Bloomberg that the social networking giant is having an "ongoing conversation" with Apple and Microsoft. "It may or may not be Home [on iOS]," he told the publication. "We could also just bring some of the design values to the iOS app. That might be how it ends up. Or we could build just the lock screen. Maybe then it's not called Home, it's called something else." Indeed, Facebook has officially brought "some of the design values" to iOS. It will be up to Apple to decide if it goes any further than that. Louis Bedigian is the Senior Tech Analyst and Features Writer of Benzinga. You can reach him at 248-636-1322 or louis(at)benzingapro(dot)com. Follow him @LouisBedigianBZ