Augmented Reality Camera
Mark Zuckerberg says copying Snapchat was just Facebook laying the groundwork for its new augmented reality developer platform. Devs can build AR selfie masks, overlay info on real world objects like putting reviews on a restaurant’s storefront, create interactive games, and add virtual objects to your reality like a chess board or TV. Experiences can be triggered by objects detected in your camera, your exact location, movement, or data pulled from other apps.
Why: Facebook can’t build every single AR experience you could want by itself. Thanks to 10 years of building its platform, it’s enlisting an army of outside developers to help it one-up Snapchat’s few dozen AR filters with an endless array of AR content. The real world would be too big to fill with AR without the assistance of a distributed crowd of creators.
Frame Studio
Now you can make your own still 2D filters for Facebook’s camera. Frame Studio lets you upload a design for an overlaid graphic with no coding required, and friends or your Page’s fans can then use them in their photos or videos.
Why: Facebook wants people to do more personal sharing of exclusive content, since that sharing declined in 2015 and 2016. By letting people make image filters for their home town, best friend, or their unique art style, they’ll have new reasons to share.
Facebook Workplace Bots
Facebook’s collaboration tool for enterprise businesses called Workplace today added chat bots, integrations with file sharing services like Box and Salesforce, and integrations with IT compliance tools like Netskope, Smarsh and Skyhigh.
Why: Facebook must shed its reputation as a purely consumer app and look professional if its going to convince CIOs to pay for Workplace. Bots bring Workplace closer to feature parity with Slack. Meanwhile, the file sharing and compliance integrations instantly make Workplace more convenient and secure without Facebook having to do all the work of building these complex systems by itself
Messenger Group Bots
Messneger can now be added to group chat conversations. There they can provide a news ticker about an ongoing sports game, let your friends collaboratively build a Spotify playlist, or find a consensus about group travel options and book flights together on Kayak.
Messenger discovery Bot
Facebook Messenger will now have a discovery tab where you can find your recently used bots, browse bot categories, see trending experiences, or search for bots. Users can see a preview of a bot’s functionality before they jump into a conversation with it. Meanwhile, Smart Replies let an AI learn answers to commonly asked questions for a business and automatically reply through their Messenger bot when someone else asks the same question.
Messneger Parametric Codes
Facebook has revamped its Messenger QR codes so now instead of just leading to a Page, person, or bot, they can open specific experiences within bots. Plus they can be easily scanned with Messenger’s camera. For example, the Golden State Warriors basketball team can print out different codes and put them around their arena. One code could trigger a food delivery to your seat and another could show you a merchandise catalog.
Messenger Tab Games
Facebook Messenger’s Instant Games now have their own tab where you can find new ones to play. Plus now you can challenge friend to turn-by-turn games rather than just going for high scores.
React Viber React Fiber
Facebook’s popular open-source user interface JavaScript framework React got two big updates today. The official launch of React VR will make it quick for developers to create virtual reality content. React Fiber is a complete re-write of the React framework designed to power the imagery-heavy experiences of the future.
Litho Android Framework
Facebook is open sourcing the tool it internally uses to
build its Android app. Litho allows for the efficient creation of Android user interfaces that run at 60 frames per second.
Delegated account recovery
If you lose your password to another website that uses Delegated Account Recovery, you’ll be able to go to Facebook to verify your identity and regain access to the other site. Now any app or site can integrate Facebook’s Delegated Account Recovery SDK to add the functionality.
AI- Powered Analytics
Facebook Insights will now do some of the work for Page and business owners. Artificial intelligence can now scan your analytics and highlight important changes or your best performing content. And new Omni-Channel Insights let you track everything going on with all your properties in one dashboard.
Facebook Spaces aka Facebook VR
Now you can make your own still 2D filters for Facebook’s camera. Frame Studio lets you upload a design for an overlaid graphic with no coding required, and friends or your Page’s fans can then use them in their photos or videos.
source: techcrunch.com
