How F8 Illustrated Facebook’s Continuous Evolution
ANALYSIS: Facebook uses F8 conference to show that it continues to move far beyond just being the “Blue App” on a smartphone or laptop
This would be a big step up over Google Glass, which was introduced in 2012 and fell flat on its lenses only a year or so later. This was largely because the wearers of Glass seemed super-entitled (to the annoyance of non-wearers) and because regular people didn’t trust that Glass wearers weren’t invading their privacy by shooting video of them when not notified.
Versions of this, however, are being used in the real world. For example, Amazon is using Google Glass-like instruments in some of its warehouses to help workers identify products inside stacks of crates without having to keep referring to a clipboard or spreadsheet.
Where Facebook Will Be Taking AR
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks experiencing augmented reality through glasses is still a few years away, but that’s not stopping his company from exploring it.
Rather than glasses though, Facebook will focus on a camera platform. “In the last few years we’ve seen primitive use cases on phones and cameras. Today we start together and make the camera the first augmented reality platform,” Zuckerberg said onstage.
Facebook’s Camera Effects Platform software for developers includes advanced computer vision technology that recognizes objects in the real world and provides the means for developers to augment them with overlays.
Facebook Continues Its Evolution to an Application Platform
Facebook first announced this strategy in 2015. Since then, the company has demonstrated that the company has grown beyond building a social network and moved into creating a social application platform, such as Box, Dropbox, SharePoint and Slack.
Besides augmented reality and virtual reality applications, it introduced Facebook Spaces to enable users to interact with their friends and contacts in virtual environment.
In addition, Facebook Workplace, the company’s alternative to the Slack workgroup collaboration platform that so far has gotten off to a slow start, received a much-needed boost at the show. Ultimately, Facebook is developing new ways to encourage users to maintain and deepen their engagement with the world’s largest social network.
Surprisingly, Facebook talked very little about social networking at F8. Rather, it focused on technologies that use the social network as a springboard for new experiences, such as Spaces and Messenger. The market has moved beyond focusing solely on social networking.
Facebook continues to develop its Messenger app, as more and more people switch over to instant messaging in place of email. Companies now have tools to expand their presence on Messenger. A new Smart Replies function speeds response to frequently asked customer questions on their company pages. Facebook has developed a new hand-over protocol so companies can work with multiple developers to create different Messenger experiences.
Originally published on eWeek
