Facebook Gives Developers More Tools, APIs To Monetise Apps

Facebook is making significant updates to its developer platform, adding new features and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that the company claims will allow businesses to build, grow and monetise their applications.

The company detailed the upgrades at its annual Facebook F8 conference in California, which was attended by more than 2,600 developers.

“Our community is more global than ever. Hundreds of thousands of developers are building with Facebook products, with more than 70 percent of them located outside the US,” said Deborah Liu, head of Facebook’s developer and commerce business.

“This year for F8, we’ve worked with over 70 developers from more than 15 countries to help us test and build the things we announced. It’s energising to see what everyone in our community has built and how they’re changing people’s lives all around the world.”

Facebook F8 developers

Messenger, which now has 900 million users, has new APIs that lets developers build bots that can be used for automated responses, customer service or to order goods and services, while a new Account Kit lets people log in with a phone number or email address.

This, Facebook claims, will make people more likely to use a service because they won’t need to use a password.

Sharing options have been enhanced with new quote and hashtag features, the ability to share more kinds of content, redesigned embedded posts, and sharing insights so developers can see if they’re successfully driving engagement via sharing.

New APIs will let companies see the reach of their content, the ability to add share options to smart TVs, IoT units and other devices, offer recommendations for advertisers and build for the Facebook Live video platform.

Updated Java, Python and PHP SDKs will be offered for advertisers and an upgrade tool will show what version of an API an app is using and how it would have behaved differently with an alternative version.

Facebook is also updating its analytics tools to provide “deeper” audience insights, an improved app dashboard and a rate limiting tool that lets developers see when a particular app is calling an API too much and could be throttled.

Earlier this week, Facebook said it would be displaying a reminder to users to register to vote for the London mayoral elections on May 6.

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