Facebook has grown from a simple social network to, for lack of a better definition, an Internet company. At its annual developers conference F8 in Los Angeles, US, today, it announced the launch of as many as 25 products & tools.
With over 2,500 developers in attendance, (& at least 70% of developers working with Facebook are today from outside the US), Mark Zuckerberg, or Mark Z, as we at What’s New On The Net like to affectionately call him, highlighted 3 themes of F8 this year in his keynote address – putting people 1st, giving people more options to connect through the Facebook family of apps, & previewing the future of sharing. Addressing its developers’ community is something that FB has got right – after all, FB does provide connections between every mobile platform, & has a potential audience of 1.39 billion people, so innovation is something that FB yearns from its developers.
Here are some of the 25 products:
- Messenger Platform — A new way for apps to integrate with Messenger so people can “better express themselves” with GIFs, photos, videos, audio clips & more. For developers, this means more opportunities for growth and engagement.
- Businesses on Messenger — Previewing the first steps FB’s taking to reinvent the way people communicate & interact with businesses.
- New Share Sheet — A “simple, consistent” experience for sharing from apps to Facebook.
- Facebook Analytics for Apps — Facebook Analytics for Apps helps developers build better apps & experiences for people. Developers now have a single place where they can understand their audience, measure how people use their app across devices & improve their marketing campaigns.
- LiveRail— Mobile app publishers can now use LiveRail’s monetization platform to manage their video & display ads business. Additionally, LiveRail is enabling publishers to use Facebook’s approach for delivering the right ad to the right audience.
- Internet of Things — Developers can now easily use Parse to build a whole new category of apps for connected devices, from garage door openers to smoke detectors to wearable wristbands.
- Social Plugins — Refreshed Social Plugins with updated designs & “better mobile experiences” that will help people engage with Content off Facebook. The embedded video player is an entirely new social plugin that lets publishers embed native Facebook videos in a full-bleed video player. People can now watch & interact with Facebook videos from anywhere on the Web.
- Spherical Video Coming to News Feed — Previewing an immersive, 360-degree video experience in News Feed that lets you choose the viewing angle to explore your surroundings.
On the 1st day of F8, Messenger introduced a platform for developers to create apps that integrate with Messenger. Called Messenger Platform, it will bring “even more ways” for the 600 million people who use Messenger every month to express themselves, claimed FB top honchos. With more than 40 new apps, people can enhance their conversations with GIFs, photos, videos, audio clips, among other such stuff.
Businesses on Messenger also previewed on the 1st day. With this new tool, users will be able to engage in “rich & personal conversations” with businesses. For example, after purchasing something from a Website, people can choose to receive updates in Messenger & continue their conversation with the business in the app.
Once there, people will be able to receive relevant messages from the business such as order confirmations & shipping status updates. Users will also be to take basic actions like modifying, tracking or returning an order. This whole set of interactions and features are unified in a single, ongoing thread between the person and the business, said FB. For more details, you may go to the FB Developers blog.
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