Facebook recently held its F8 conference in San Jose, California revealing all of the new tools that it will be adding to its platform over the coming months.
The past twelve months have been the social media giant’s most troubling yet facing a number of backlashes from surveys and updated functionality. But Facebook will be hoping that the introduction of virtual reality, augmented reality, dating and new privacy controls will turn the tide back in its favour.
Several announcements were made by the tech giant in relation to its parent company Facebook but also Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus. Here are five key takeaways from the event:
- Sharing to Stories – users will soon be able to share stories to Facebook and Instagram direct from external platforms. Facebook used the example of Spotify saying that if users wish to share their activity to Stories, they are able to do so without leaving the Spotify app.
- Oculus Go – When Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014, they had one goal in mind and that was to integrate virtual reality into their social networks. With Oculus Events, users will now be able to attend virtual concerts, sports, comedy and cinema.
- Augmented reality Camera effects – with users soon being able to capture 3D image via their smartphone, Facebook is facilitating a way to transform this into an augmented reality experience. Users will be able ti import these 3D images and interact with them in an augmented reality. Soon enough brands will be able to take advantage engaging customers online through these augmented reality experiences.
- Policy Updates – in light of backlash Facebook received from data targeting, the social media platform shut down this function and also released its content review guidelines for the first time. This has been followed up by further transparency allowing users to review and delete information from external apps posted on Facebook.
- Dating – facebook is looking to put its hat into the online dating ring as platforms like Tinder begin to fade. Users will be able to create a separate ‘Dating’ profile that will be separate to your original profile but still have access to things like mutual friends, likes etc.
