Say what you like about Facebook, but Mark Zuckerber's social media monopoliser has (for better or worse) become an integral part of our shared cultural heritage in recent years. Who amongst you, the media-savvy Creativepool reader, could honestly say you don't check up on Facebook at least once a day? It's a frustratingly addictive, vastly overrated but undeniably convenient way to keep in touch with our friends, family members and colleagues, and (for the foreseeable future at least) it's very much here to stay. So when an event such as F8 takes place, and a legion of proposed improvements are announced, it's a pretty big deal for all of us, whether or not we want to admit as much.
F8 is a developer conference as much for the public as it is for investors and developers
The F8 Facebook Developer Conference is Facebook's answer to the mega-hyped Apple conferences; a developer conference as much for the public as it is for investors and developers. From Fort Mason in San Francisco, Zuckerberg himself, alongside various assorted cronies, has spent the last few days stacking announcement on top of announcement, in an effort to double down on Facebook's social media monopoly. Here are a few of the most interesting ones:-
Messenger
Though it's been known for a while now that Facebook's Messenger would be opened up as a platform for developers, Zuckerberg and company expanded upon exactly what that will mean on Wednesday. Primarily, it means that developers will be able to add new functionality to Messenger, with content tools and apps expected from initial partners including ESPN, JibJab and Giphy. Opening up the platform to third-parties is a bold move, but a smart one. The way it will work is almost like a small app store inside the Messenger app, that will allow users to create content such as animated GIFS and videos, and then share it through messenger. These companion apps, however, will operate as their own entities, otherwise it would slow the program down considerably.
Developers will be able to add exciting new functionality to Facebook Messenger
Facebook will also be using Messenger to change the way people communicate with businesses, which will be a real boon for people (like myself) who are sick of those seemingly endless touch-tone phone trees and email threads. Facebook is working with an initial set of partners to test this system, with Everlane being one of them. For an example of how it will work; if you buy something through Everlane, but want to modify, track, or return your order, you’ll be able to contact the business through Messenger and track the progress of your order quickly and conveniently from one place.
Comments
Facebook are going to begin implementing real-time comment updates, which means you will no longer need to refresh a page in order to check comments and likes. This will work not only on Facebook, but on websites using Facebook's comment system. Comments will sync automatically between the webpage page and the shared story item on the site's Facebook Page, bringing greater cohesion to many comments sections.
Videos
Whilst YouTube pretty much own the embeddable video market, Facebook are making a move into their territory with an update that will let users embed native Facebook videos on other sites. It's unlikely that Facebook will overtake YouTube at this late stage, but it is something I'm genuinely surprised the site didn't implement sooner, and it's a move that could draw a lot of the more personal, home-video style clips away from YouTube, which would only be a good thing.
An update is incoming that will let users embed native Facebook videos on other sites
Facebook will also be supporting 3D, spherical video in its newsfeed. In other words, videos that users are able to pan around with their cursors. On a flat screen it looks frankly terrible, but the idea here is for the technology to work with the Oculus Rift (which Facebook just so happened to purchase recently) VR headset. A 360 degree video is far more exciting if you can actually watch it in 360 degrees, otherwise it almost looks like a distorted fisheye lens. Not pretty.
Parse
Parse for Internet of Things is a set of software development kits that Facebook has built to tap into the growing Internet of Things fascination. Parse will act as the backend brains for IoT projects, and hopes to create a standard behind how everything from our toasters to our light switches will eventually be connected to each other by the internet. It’s currently only compatible with Arduino products, but other platforms are reportedly on the way.
Apps
A new analytics platform was unveiled that will help developers figure out exactly who is using their apps, helping them more effectively target their demographics and spend their time/money. For those of you who are hesitant about using Facebook because of how information the company can get on you, this will not be a positive announcement. On a similar note, Facebook also announced some changes made to LiveRail, the ad exchange service (that sells as space in apps to the highest bidder) they bought last year. It will now support mobile display ads in addition to video, and will be able to tap into a pool of anonymous Facebook data to determine which ad to show.
Open Source
Three new open source tools were released by Facebook today for Android developers. Year Class lets developers figure out what kind of device a user is running, allowing them to then tweak the app to run smoother on older phones and more effectively on modern phones. Network Connection Class does something quite similar, only for network connections, which will be particularly handy in the UK where connection speeds vary so dramatically from region to region. Fresco, meanwhile, is a new image library that aims to ensure that apps don’t run out of memory when they load multiple images by being smarter about memory management and streaming larger, more memory intensive images when possible. Facebook is also open-sourcing its React Native JavaScript framework for building native mobile apps.
Drones
Taking a leaf out of Google's book, Facebook announced at F8 yesterday that it plans to launch its own drones to beam internet to billions of people around the world. Codenamed Aquila, the drone has a wingspan comparable to a Boeing 767, but weighs less than a small car, and could potentially push internet access down to people 60,000-90,000 feet below using lasers, as well as maintaining communications between drones to maintain coverage across wider regions. The drone will be powered using solar power, and will be kept aloft for as long as three months at a time. Facebook says it’ll begin test flights this summer, with a broader rollout over the next several years.
AI
Finally, Facebook's CTO Mike Schroepfer announced a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, with AIs developed that can read sentences and make determinations over who, what or where an object is, and that can accurately identify up to 487 different types of sport .Facebook has been pouring money into artificial intelligence and language technology for a while. In fact, last year it hired one of the top deep learning researchers Yann LeCun, to start a whole AI lab at NYU. Why are Facebook interested in AI though? Effectively because if Facebook itself can understand it's audience, it's better equipped to deliver content to that audience. Though the idea of a social networking site developing self-awareness is a concept so terrifying I'm surprised Charlie Brooker hasn't developed it into an episode of Black Mirror yet!
Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer and hopeless Facebook user (in fact he's jonesing for a fix right now) from Kidderminster in the UK.
