4 Things Introduced by Facebook Yesterday at F8 You Should Know About

Every year Facebook host their annual Developer conference: F8. It’s an opportunity to discuss, explore and launch new features, products and services across the network. It takes place over two days and was hosted this year in San Jose, California. We’ve picked out a few things that we thought might change the game over the next 12 months within social and tech.

Facebook dating app

• Facebook are trying to drive even more meaningful connections and will be releasing a product that does exactly that. It will match you based on all of the data the platform has collected since you began using it. It will have a large history to go back from and deep learning insights into what and who it will choose to match you with. Leading to the conclusion that it will probably bemore insight driven than swipe driven. Match Group’s share price fell by over 20% off the back of this news.

Although it also kind of seems a little bit Black Mirror

“Clear History”

• In the wake of everything Cambridge Analytica, Facebook appears to be reactive in launching a new feature that allows you to delete all your datathat it’s collected from sites, apps and analytics tools. It’s a bit like a massive reset button on everything you’ve ever done on your iPhone/ Android device.

Video chat on Instagram

• DM’ing on Instagram is a big deal, but with video chat becoming more and more prevalent across the other suite of Facebook apps such as Messenger and WhatsApp it seems like the next step in the evolution of the platform.

Share to Stories from Spotify, GoPro and other apps.

• Facebook seems to be relentlessly trying to put Snapchat out of business and it’s succeeding. Yesterday, Snap dropped to it’s slowest user growth rate in it’s history. This could be due to the range of 3rd party apps like Spotify, SoundCloud & GoPro that have all allowed sharing directly to Stories across Facebook and Instagram. This will make the content appearing within your stories far more diverse than just people wearing filters and sharing pictures of their cats.

(or dogs, sorry Ben).