Today marked the first day of F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference, and the company announced a ton of stuff!
Some of it is bigger than others, though — so we’ve wrapped up all the most important stuff from today in one easy-to-digest list. Enjoy!
Click any image for our full article on the topic…
Messenger As A Platform:
As we absolutely scooped so hard last week,
Facebook is opening up Messenger as a platform for developers. That
means developers will be able to add in new functionality to Messenger —
things like Giphy for on-the-fly GIF searching, goofy voice changers
for voice messages, a drawing pad for doodling things up for your
friends, etc. Think of it like a mini-app store within Messenger.
New Realtime Comments System:
Facebook’s Comment system (like the one you see in use at the bottom
of this post) is pretty solid, but it’s been a while since it got much
love.Today, it’s seeing a bit of an overhaul. New comments will show up in real time, comments will sync between the story page (this one) and the shared story item on our Facebook Page,
FB Embeddable Videos:
Facebook is making a move on YouTube’s turf, now allowing users to
embed their Facebook videos on other sites. Will this mean less
personal, home-video style content on YouTube? Maybe. Will Facebook
start tapping these embedded video streams as yet another place for them
to stick an ad? Almost certainly.
Spherical Video:
In a curious move, Facebook will now support 3D, spherical video in
the newsfeed. You can pan around the video with your mouse cursor. While
spherical video looks a bit strange on a flat screen, the key here is
Facebook’s purchase of the Oculus Rift. Strap on a VR headset and open
up a 360° spherical video, and it’s almost like you’re there. VR in the
newsfeed!
Parse For Internet Of Things:
We’re rushing headfirst into this era of “Internet of Things” — a
time of connected coffee makers, connected fridges, connected
lightswitches. There’s been very little done, however, in the way of
standardizing how these things work (and work with each other) behind
the scenes.Today FB launched Parse for Internet Of Things — a set of SDKs that act as the backend brains for IoT projects. It’s compatible with Arduino first, with other platforms on the way.
LiveRail:
Last year, Facebook bought LiveRail — an ad exchange that fills ad
space within apps and sites to the highest bidder. Today, they made two
changes: they’ll support mobile display ads in addition to video, and
will be able to tap into a pool of anonymized Facebook data to determine
which ad to show.
Analytics For Apps:
Facebook knows a lot about the users of their apps. Now they want to help developers figure out who is using their
apps. Are most of the people playing your game female? Are they
teenagers? Are those teenagers spending money in game, or are most
buyers in their early 20s? Facebook’s new analytics platform helps you
figure that out.Stay tuned for more news at Day 2 of F8 tomorrow.