HTC could be planning to infuse Blinkfeed with advertisements and sponsored apps
While HTC Blinkfeed is one of the better home-screen newsfeeds on an Android device, it could be getting an update that would stand to annoy the heck out of many-a user. Upleaks has reason to believe HTC is readying a Blinkfeed update that will look to monetize the social feed.
It’ll do so by placing advertisements in the form of sponsored apps and deals on HTC or HTC-related products. It’s not unlike what you might see on Twitter or Facebook when leisurely scrolling through your friends’ latest musings.
If the mockup Upleaks posted is accurate it may not be too much of a hindrance as you can simply scroll right past any advertisement you don’t fancy, though we’d be sad to see nearly half of the display dominated by cash grabs before seeing our first piece of news, social content or weather and appointments.
This type of advertisement would be fine if HTC Blinkfeed were a standalone app that could be installed on non-HTC devices, but we’re not sure those who paid $600+ for an HTC phone would appreciate ads being shoved in their face. Sure, it’s just as easy to disable Blinkfeed as it is to disable anything on a typical Android phone, but if you have to sacrifice a useful feature to dodge this sort of annoyance then there’s a definite problem.
It’s worth noting that HTC is still only in the “planning” stages (if this is even true), so there’s a chance they may not even go through with it. We’re not sure if community uproar could be enough to get them to reconsider, but you’d better start yelling now if you want to make sure this sort of thing never sees the light of day.