f8 Recap: Messenger, Video, Web, oh my!

Over the past two days, developers from all over the world converged in San Francisco, California to see what Facebook will be rolling out over the coming year. Typically, the event has little fanfare –the content is a bit different than Apple’s iconic keynotes, the information is more technically savvy. This year, however, was much different. Here’s a breakdown of the more exciting announcements from the event:

Messenger as a Platform and Businesses on Messenger

Messenger is now being touted as a platform. With tweaks to the architecture, developers can build their apps for Messenger to add a new dimension to how the 600 million users interact with each other: GIFs, videos, photos edited on the fly, etc. Certain compatible apps can now be downloaded from within Messenger, though they appear on homescreens as standalone apps. Other applications that are built flush for integration with the Messenger platform will allow users to share information from within their apps, with a link to download said app. Essentially, Facebook is trying to reward those who build for their platform by returning a higher level of engagement from Messenger users.

In addition to adding new ways to chat with friends, Facebook subtly made a stride toward disrupting the customer service industry with Businesses on Messenger. They want to cut out the awful automated, touch-tone triggered systems and offer the following feature set: “during the checkout flow on a business's site, a person can choose to start a conversation with a business, receive updates from that business on things like order confirmations and shipping status updates, and ask the business free-form questions about the order, receiving quick responses.”

Embedded Video, New Features for Creators and “Spherical Video”

Large tech companies are known for rolling out features that allow them to topple over or jump ahead of competitors and the “smaller guys” who are often more agile and sometimes more innovative. Facebook chose to target a few, YouTube (or Google) being one of them. At f8, Facebook announced they will now allow anyone on the web to embed videos that have been uploaded to Facebook. They expanded their Media Solutions Program, which allows more developers to work on CMS platforms, clipping tools, channel management and more. In addition, over the coming months they are redesigning their upload funnel for videos with new customization options and control features.

See spherical video in action.

If you didn’t catch it, YouTube unveiled the ability to stream 360-degree video two weeks ago. The feature was limited to Android but in short, it was mind blowing to play with. Mark Zuckerberg and Co. just announced “spherical video” that will find its way to News Feeds shortly and ultimately the virtual reality experience on Oculus for Facebook when that rolls out to the masses. They, along with Samsung, are also experimenting with streaming 360-degree video. With the live streaming space becoming white hot recently, this could really make things interesting.

Web: Comment Mirroring and Share/Send on Mobile

Like YouTube, Disqus was in Facebook’s crosshairs for the event. Their team rolled out “Comment Mirroring” which allows for comment threads to be uniform on both the publisher’s site and the Facebook platform. It’s a really cool piece of tech that allows Facebook and each news site to reap the reward. Essentially, Facebook users can comment on stories as they browse the web and if the content provider posted that article to their Page as well – the comment thread will continuously sync to appear as one conversation. This may sound similar, and it should. Disqus is a “blog comment hosting service for web sites and online communities that uses a networked platform.” Facebook is taking the idea, injecting their 1.4B users and doing it better.

The other announcement regarding Facebook across the Web involved the widespread adaptability of Share and Send (for Messenger) buttons on mobile websites.

Notable Mentions

There were a few other items that Facebook introduced that are certainly interesting, but don’t quite fit into the previous categories.

1. Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s vice president of engineering previewed a spaceship game on stage at f8, afterwards stating: “You’re going to be able to do this this year in VR. This is going to be incredible. And you’re going to be doing it in something shipped by Oculus.” However, afterwards he backpedaled and Facebook released a statement contradicting what Schroepfer said. They noted that he meant the technology exists, to make Virtual Reality happen in the future. It was the first time a Facebook executive had made a comment regarding a commercial release of the product Rift, which Facebook bought from the 22 year-old founder last year for $2B. We’ll see what happens as 2015 unfolds.
2. An “On this Day” feature was introduced that, again, will seem familiar. Users of the Timehop app will see it’s “on this day” feature as a cross onto their turf, but with most of Timehop’s content coming from Facebook itself? The competition is nil. This part of the release is particularly interesting: “Facebook will avoid showing you posts with that person in them if you changed your relationship status with them later. It'll also try to avoid showing you posts tagged with people who may have died in the past year, as well.”

All in all, lots of things are happening out at Facebook HQ. Funny enough, the piece of news that graced the least amount of headlines involved a drone larger than a Boeing 737 that beams Internet down to third-world countries.

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About Author: Brandon is the social media coordinator and community manager at Oklahoma-based integrated marketing communications agency Saxum, as well as the co-founder and product manager for Campstake, the social guide to the American outdoors.