From the very inception of F8 Developers Conference in 2007, Facebook has continued to give its users and the world a reason to be curious posing a ‘what’s new this time’ in all the minds. This year the Annual F8 Developers Conference was held at Fort Mason in San Francisco on the 12th and 13th of April.
“Our 10 year roadmap is focused on building the technology to give everyone in the world the power to share anything they want with anyone”
said Zuckerberg emphasizing on the main areas of focus for the coming years. Facebook aims to launch some new projects to make this dream into reality.
Let’s take a peek into what this year’s F8 Developers Conference was all about and what new Facebook has to offer with its new ideal to become much more than just a ‘Social Network’. Here is a list of some of the major projects which Facebook has announced to undertake for the coming years.
-
Messenger Bots
This is an area which Facebook has been keenly trying to improve every time. Bot is a piece of software to which people can send messages and get a response back automatically through Artificial Intelligence. These bots had been launched previously but could handle basic functions only. Now Facebook aims at expanding these functions. It plans on moving from basic coding functions to Bot Engine.
This will simplify even complex conversations through artificial intelligence, thus making dealings and business much easier with just a simple drop in message. Thus, this new up gradation will surely boost up the process of communication between companies and customers through Facebook.
-
360° Camera
17 cameras put together to cover the 360° virtual reality in a high definition video is another project undertaken by the Facebook team. With the ever growing viewership of Facebook videos this step will undoubtedly boost up this process.
Interestingly, Facebook has plans to sell the codes and details of this camera thus, the technologists and manufacturers have got something to wait for and make profits. Allowing and promoting these 360° virtual reality videos will surely get a lot more engagement to this social media platform.
-
Live Videos
Live video was a recent feature added by Facebook wherein you needed a smartphone to live stream the video. This was a feature which has attracted many as you could put any random spontaneous videos maybe enjoying a concert or travel.
Now there is another feature added to this; now smartphones are not a necessity for this live video streaming like you could even use a drone for this purpose. It can also combine audio and video and also monitor comments and shares.
-
Save Articles and Quotes
And this is what many of us would say a big thanks to Facebook for. There have been times when you wanted to read something or keep it for future reference like some places to visit but it eventually would just get lost in the news feed. Facebook had already got a remedy for this, a ‘Save button’ for saving articles, stories, videos, etc., to your Facebook ‘Saved folder’.
But what it has new is a ‘Save to Facebook’ button for the web. This means that publishers can add the button to their articles and people can automatically save it to their Facebook queue. Apart from this it has also plans on adding a ‘quote sharing tool’ which will help in easily highlighting quotes from stories and web pages.
-
Internet reach
Facebook not only plans on improving and updating its tools but also plans to make available these facilities to a lot more people. With this intension it plans on undertaking two projects namely Terragraph and ARIES. Terragraph is a 60 GHz multi-node wireless system to bring wireless internet connection to the dense urban areas. It has a design for fast, attractive and affordable for distribution in the cities.
With a base station with 96 antennas ARIES is a transmission technology which aims at spectral and energy efficient system for extended coverage range. Both these projects as told by Facebook would like to solve broader connectivity challenges of the future.
-
Account Kit
Besides these, it also told about its plans to launch a new ‘Account Kit’, as remembering passwords is not a very easy task, Facebook has made provisions to make ‘log in’ easy with just email or phone number. People can now use this kit without sharing any profile information; they don’t even need a Facebook profile for its usage thus aiding in increasing sign ups and expand audience.
-
Profile Expression
With over 50 million profile picture updates everyday an up gradation in the profile from photo to video has surely worked in its favor and so with this now they have moved one more step ahead by providing this Profile Expression kit which allows the user to upload the video from third party software as well. They are planning to expand it to more developers.
Thus, we can conclude that Facebook is leaving no stone un-turned to make it ‘The Best’ social media platform. Not only is it constantly upgrading its existing tools but also developing new systems to make its move into a world of Virtual Reality.
Images Courtesy: Facebook
