Once again, the Facebook F8 conference was full of exciting information and announcements that are soon to be effective.If you missed out the FB, F8 conference here are the top announcements that were made.
Augmented reality was the main theme of this year’s conference. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have smoothened the way for a better communication through AR. Augmented reality could change the way consumers research, shop, and interact with businesses.
We’re making the camera the first augmented reality platform.
— Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook F8 conference 2017
Second is the camera effect. Facebook has launched the ‘Facebook Camera Effects’ Platform that allows developers to create frames, masks, and special effects (or filters and lenses as we might be used to now) for the Facebook camera.
The next big announcement is the launch of ‘Facebook Spaces’ which is a VR app where you hang out with your friends and have an interactive virtual environment as if you were in the same room. The app is available in the Oculus Store.
Giphy recently launched three of its new products for sharing Gifs easier. The product that caught everyone’s attention was ‘Giphy for Facebook Live’. This feature will enable sharing Gifs on a Live video. Both the sender and the viewer can now add GIFs to their live videos. This can be a fun way of engaging with the audience in real-time.
Messenger app has been updated periodically. One of the updates is the ‘Chat Extensions’, which allows multiple people to chat with the same business chatbot at the same time. Another significant update is ‘AI M’, Messenger’s AI assistant, that will listen to your conversations and make relevant suggestions. For example, if you and your friends are talking about getting food, M would suggest playing an order through one of the food delivery bots.
The goal is to connect the entire world — every single human being
Facebook is also trying to help people discover businesses in the physical world and enrich their experiences. By scanning the new parametric QR codes with the Messenger camera, people can find out more information about an event or business through a Messenger bot.
Facebook’s ‘Smart Replies’ help small businesses automate some of the customer support processes. Using AI, Smart Replies helps Page owners to respond to the most frequently asked questions that they receive, such as business hours, directions, and contact details. The AI would grab information from the Pages, detect the questions asked, and reply with the appropriate information.
Facebook’s analytics platform that was only for apps, will now be providing analytics for Facebook Pages and offline conversions, too. This omnichannel analytics will allow businesses to measure and understand their customers’ full journey from interactions on their Facebook Pages to purchasing on their website.
In all, Facebook seems to have every base covered. As one of the biggest tech companies around, Facebook has a huge impact on the way we live our lives and, consequently, the way we interact with our audience and market our products. It’s amazing how much work Facebook has done to make social media marketing more effective (and fun).
