Highlights of Facebook Developer Conference F8 2016

One of the most highly anticipated conferences of the year, Facebook’s F8, is almost here!

Taking place on April 12 and 13 in Fort Mason, San Francisco, F8 is sure to deliver excitement for marketers, publishers, and developers alike. And if this year’s conference is anything like the 2015 version, we’re certainly in for a treat.

It was only one year ago that Facebook announced a few awesome features which many of us could not imagine life without today. Here’s a quick recap of F8 2015:

New Messenger Platform for Developers
Allowing Users to Connect Directly with Businesses on Messenger
Support of 360 Degree Videos
New Mobile Analytics Tool
Embeddable Videos
How Facebook Paid Out More than $8B to Developers
More Than 30M Apps Have Been Made Using Facebook’s Platform

The F8 conference is a great opportunity for developers, publishers, marketers, and entrepreneurs to get a sense for where the biggest name in social media is heading in 2016 and beyond. Many of the announcements they make will have an immediate and direct impact on social media and so it’s certainly beneficial to keep an ear to the ground.

This year’s event features more than 40 sessions along with product announcements, interactive demos and the opportunity to get one-on-one help from the Facebook team.

On top of that, Facebook owns a whole host of rising and established stars such as: Instagram, Oculus, LiveRail, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Internet.org and so it’s a chance for us all to get a sneak peak in to those technologies as well.

Highlights of Facebook Developer Conference Day 1

Facebook launches Messenger platform with chatbots

In what may be the biggest announcement of the day, Facebook revealed that it will now allow businesses to deliver automated customer support, e-commerce guidance, content and interactive experiences through Messenger chatbots. These bots could even replace 1-800 numbers and call centers.

Facebook unveils the “Surround 360” open source VR camera

We already knew that Facebook is diving into 360-degree video and VR content with Oculus. But now the company has created its own VR camera from scratch, open sourcing it so people can build their own. Unlike most rigs, the 17-lens 3D VR camera looks like a UFO on a stick and barely requires post-production work due to lens gen locking. It’s designed to be portable, durable with aluminium casing and can produce 4K, 6K and even 8K footage.

Account Kit, push and quote sharing

Facebook is releasing new developer tools to help people build, grow and monetize their apps. Account Kit is a new plug-in for apps that lets users sign up with their phone number or email address. Facebook also introduced a plug-in for web and mobile sites that creates a special type of News Feed story highlighting quotes, and new customizable push/in-app notifications will let developers run push campaigns.

Facebook Live opens to developers

Facebook is releasing an API for developers who want to plug into Facebook Live, and it also announced the first partners — including Livestream (maker of the Mevo camera), BuzzFeed, Vidpresso and drone-maker DJI. Facebook Live could really take live video to a new level of popularity.

Instant Articles is now open to all publishers

Until now, Instant Articles were only available to a few publishers. Starting today, all publishers can take advantage of the fast-loading and mostly distraction-free view that Instant Articles offer.

Facebook releases Bot Engine to create much smarter bots

Messenger is all about bots now. The Send and Receive API lets you create bots for Messenger to search for things and interact with businesses. But what if you want to use machine learning and create more complex scenarios? Bot Engine is Facebook’s more powerful bot framework, based on Wit.ai’s work. So, if developers embrace the framework, Messenger users are going to get a variety of small specialized bots.

Tags: everything marketers should know about facebook, f8, Facebook, facebook developer conference, instagram, mark zuckerberg, new changes introduced to facebook, whatsapp

About the Author

Saurabh Pandey

Highlights of Facebook Developer Conference F8 2016