Their developer conference is taking place right now.
As of the fourth quarter of 2015, Facebook has 1.59 billion monthly active users so the latest news from their F8 developer conference is bound to be of interest to many. Rumours have been circulating about what Mark Zuckerberg has in store for us and here’s what we definitely know so far.
Virtual Reality.
Oculus Rift’s long-delayed controllers will be released this year and here’s an indication of what Facebook think VR headsets will look like in a decade. Very cool.
Improvements on Messenger.
Over 60 billion messages are being sent through Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp every day, let that number sink in, and there are changes coming to this service. Facebook is releasing a Messenger Platform that will allow developers to build smart chatbots for businesses.
This means that any customer service questions that you might have regarding a product/service/company can be answered directly via Facebook and not the business’ website.
“We think you should be able to message a business in the same way you message a friend.” Zuckerberg says.
One of the other cool updates on Messnenger will be the inclusion of ‘Dropbox’ which will allow you to share files with your friends.
Improvements for the visually impaired.
Facebook has been working on an AI engine that looks at photos and describes them to the vision-impaired. #F8 pic.twitter.com/0rhkcrpwS2
— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) April 12, 2016
Internet for all.
Facebook have announced plans to build a solar-powered plane that can beam down internet to remote areas. They plan on building a fleet of these ‘internet providing’ planes to provide access for areas that are currently devoid of internet.
Facebook’s Roadmap.
Here’s what their future looks like with lasers, bots and virtual reality being prominent.