Ben Derham @ Facebook F8: 5 things from Day 1

| | No Comments

Derham_F8_BLOG_1.jpg

Marketforce technical lead Ben Derham reports from Facebook’s F8 conference in California, the social media giant’s annual showcase of new tools, innovations and work by developers from around the world.

Mark Zuckerberg and his team had a lot to drop on us today, here are a few of the things announced today that I’m most excited about.

AR Everywhere!

Augmented Reality in Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram. The novelty of trying on different facial hair has worn off, we should see some huge growth in the clever use of AR in Facebook products in the next year.

On top of the announcements and deep dives into various products, I was also able to sit down and talk to one of the developers behind Messenger’s Natural Language Processing service, wit.ai. Using this service combined with some other clever tech Facebook have cooked up, we can develop seamless conversation bots on the Facebook Messenger platform.

Messenger is definitely a big focus for Facebook right now, and there are some great use cases being demoed here.

M Translations in Messenger

Soon you’ll be able to talk to anyone in the world, in whatever language you want. M, Facebook’s virtual assistant, will be able to translate any conversation you have in Messenger in real time. That’s got the potential to make the world an even smaller place.

Upvotes (and Downvotes) in Facebook Comments

Ok, it’s not the ‘thumbs down’ we wanted, but finally there is a way of pushing those comments that don’t offer up anything insightful to the discussion.

Bully Filter in Instagram

Using machine learning, the Instagram team hopes to filter out inappropriate or threatening comments. I’m interested in watching this one evolve, and seeing how it may positively impact the sometimes toxic environment social media can be.

Customer Chat Plugin for Messenger

Embedding Facebook Messenger directly into your own website, genius. Live chat has worked well for years, but now we have the opportunity to keep the conversation running in Messenger.

It’s been a long, exhausting but massively inspiring day, I’m itching to sink my teeth into these incredible new tools and products that Facebook have announced today. First though a hard earned cold beverage at the after party.

Derham_F8_BLOG_2.jpgDerham_F8_BLOG_3.jpgDerham_F8_BLOG_4.jpgDerham_F8_BLOG_5.jpgDerham_F8_BLOG_6.jpgDerham_F8_BLOG_7.jpgDerham_F8_BLOG_8.jpg