Facebook Has Its Big F8 Plans Leaked Early

Facebook is holding its big F8 conference this week in San Francisco, but it seems the big news it wanted to announce has been revealed early.

The social network is set to reveal big changes to its business, including the expansion of its Messenger app and a new Internet of Things (IoT) initiative, marking yet more expansion into further technology sectors.

This was the news inadvertently leaked by the F8 conference companion app, which sent out notifications to users revealing exactly this apparently a day ahead of schedule.

Coming soon

Overall, there are two new initiatives seemingly being launched at F8 later, Facebook’s annual event to show its latest announcements and products – Messenger as a Platform and Parse for IoT.

The name of Messenger as a Platform would suggest that Facebook wants to push out its app to other sites outside of its own. This could be linked to reports earlier this week that the site was looking to partner with news organisations to host native content on Facebook, therefore cutting down on the amount of time users have to wait to access stories.

Such a move would mark the latest in a series of moves to broaden the reach of Messenger. Most recently, Facebook announced last week that users would now be able to send money to each other using the app, simply by registering their card details.

Purchased in 2013, Parse is Facebook’s mobile app building suite. Today’s leak would indicate that the company is now looking to release an edition for connected IoT devices, which could mean that we’ll soon see household items that can send notifications directly to your phone.

Facebook previously said that all its major products would see announcements at F8, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus, so we’ll be interested to see what else is coming up.

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