This week Facebook held its annual F8 conference in San Francisco where the company discussed new features and the future of the social network. While some of the announcements detailed things that won’t come to fruition for several years, some new features are already available to both developers and users.
The company had a lot to talk about in two days, with some of it a bit too technical for anyone without a background in programming, but here’s a few of the announcements we found exciting that could very well redirect the future of Facebook.
1. Chatbots
Sure, the term “chatbot” bring up memories of the AOL Instant Messenger days for people of a certain age, but the term is back now that we have AI that can help us interact with brands. At F8 Facebook announced a new platform for chatbots in Messenger and the availability of several bots. You can now use the Facebook Messenger app on your phone to do things like check the weather with Poncho, read the news from CNN or The Wall Street Journal, or order flowers from 1-800-FLOWERS. As Mark Zuckerberg put it during his presentation, “We think you should be able to message a business like you message a friend.”
The chatbots that are available now are relatively slow, as Gizmodo pointed out, but Facebook seems to think very highly of the tech. There are definitely faster ways to find out about breaking news or check the weather, but there’s room to grow still. With Microsoft’s recent chatbot framework announcement it looks like the tech is here to stay for at least a little while.
2. Surround 360 camera
As the parent company of Oculus, it’s obvious that Facebook would have an interested in virtual reality and 360 video. On stage at F8 the company unveiled its new Facebook Surround 360 system, which it claims makes it easy to shoot and share the 3D-360 video. The system uses 17 cameras to capture the video at 4K, 6K, or 8K, and renders it all without the need for the hand-stitching that many similar systems require. The videos can then be viewed in VR headsets, or in 360 videos through Facebook.
To help make 360 video easier for everyone, Facebook will open source the design of the Facebook Surround 360 and put it all on Github sometime this summer. The components will cost about $30,000, according to The Verge, much less than competing devices such as the upcoming Nokia Ovo.
3. Live stream from any camera
