Facebook’s F8 conference is currently underway in San Jose, California and it’s the 10th edition of the social media giant’s developer gathering. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today took the stage to defend the numerous privacy implications which surfaced in the past year and how privacy is now the company’s central focus.
1. Messenger Takes Center Stage
Since Messenger will be leading Facebook’s privacy-focused plan, the company seems to have gone back to the drawing board and built its messaging app to be lighter and faster than before. Codenamed LightSpeed, the new messenger app (coming later this year) is under 30MB in size and loads in about 1.2 seconds from a cold start.
Another major addition comes in the form of Messenger coming to the desktop. Yes, we today saw Facebook announce the official Messenger desktop app for both Mac & Windows users. It has been one of the most user-requested features, stated Zuckerberg during the keynote and will start rolling out in fall later this year.
WhatsApp has always been big on privacy, so Facebook didn’t really have much to talk about here, except for the introduction of product catalogs in WhatsApp Business. The business will now be able to show you all the products available with them privately & operate without even a website in place.
Zuckerberg also briefly talked about WhatsApp Payments, which is based on India’s UPI payments system, is being tested with 1 million users in India. Facebook plans to launch the payments feature to newer locations in the coming months.
Facebook is placing more importance on groups, putting them first, and Zuckerberg on stage said that the platform is getting a major facelift to reflect the same.
With the new Groups tab, Facebook is making it simpler for users to discover new groups and communities based on their interests and they’ll see content from relevant groups in other sections of the platform such as marketplace and gaming tabs. Facebook also wants to make it possible for users to ‘meet new friends’ from shared communities like a school, workplace or city. Meet New Friends is currently under testing in selected locations and is going to rollout later this year.
Instagram’s camera is getting a much-needed upgrade, where you will no longer need to start with a photo or video while posting stories. You’ll soon see a new ‘Create’ tab inside the camera interface and you can choose from the question, polling, text, or other sticker options.
Instagram Shopping has been on the rise and the F8 2019 conference reinforces the same with the introduction of a dedicated Shop section in the Explore tab and the ability to shop directly from your favorite creator’s page. Instead of screengrabbing goods and searching them online, you’ll soon be able to tap a creator’s picture to see the product and checkout from within the app.
Facebook has today announced its much-awaited standalone ‘Oculus Quest’ VR headset at its F8 2019 developer conference. It’s the company’s first all-in-one VR gaming system, as they’re calling it, and you can now truly move about in the virtual space after putting on a Quest headset.
