Facebook Wants To Merge Reality With Virtuality: Everything That's Been Announced At Its F8 Conference!

Facebook is arguably the most influential company in all of social media - they own Instagram, Whatsapp, and of course the traditional Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps.

Every year, Facebook holds a big developer conference called F8 where they announce new plans and features - this year's conference was being held this week, tuesday and wednesday, in San Jose, California.
If one company controls so many social media platforms that billions of people use everyday, it's safe to say that the changes will impact our lives quite a bit, and that they will give us an insight into the social media trends of the rest of the year.

#1 Center of Attention: The Camera

Taking photos and videos on your phone and sharing them is already the biggest trend of the last decade - but it doesn't slow down, it continues to grow! Visual content is much more popular than text-based content, which is already shown by the huge success of photo- and video-based apps like Instagram and Snapchat.
But Facebook plans to take the camera one step further, and add more filters and augmented reality features to it.
The latest version of the Facebook App has already implemented Snapchat-Like Filters like masks and visual effects that you can add to your pictures and videos!

#2 Social Hangouts in Virtual Reality

Facebook also owns Oculus Rift, one of the world's biggest VR companies, and now they've come up with a new App for Oculus Rift, called Facebook Spaces.
It lets you create a virtual character, customize it with your own content and pictures from your facebook profile, and then hang out with your friends' characters in a virtual reality surrounding.
Sounds pretty vague? Yes it is - I'm not sure yet what exactly you'll do once you're in that VR world, but it seems like an innovate idea and we'll see how its potential will be used.

#3 Augmented Reality

"Pokemon Go" paved the way to a huge trend of augmented reality - a mixture between virtual elements and real-world surroundings.
Facebook plans to use AR in many different ways. Mark Zuckerberg said “This is going to be a thing in the future—people standing around looking at blank walls.” - as you leave virtual notes on the kitchen table or other virtual elements which can only be seen if you look at them through your camera.

#4 Improved Messenger Features

Who really still uses Facebook Messenger nowadays? I guess that's the same question that Facebook has come to ask themselves.
Whatsapp is still the world's most popular messaging app, and after iMessage have added tons of new features with their own specific iMessage apps, Facebook Messenger will get a lot more versatile now as well.
Facebook Messenger can now be synced with Spotify and soon with Apple Music, and in-app games will soon be added too.

#5 Offline-Modus for Instagram

80% of Instagram users are outside of the US, and not everyone has access to a highspeed internet connection on the go. That's why instagram is now introducing an offline mode (but only available on Android for now), giving users the opportunity to scroll through their feed that's been loaded previously, and leave likes or comments pictures, which will go live as soon as the user is reconnected to the internet.

#6 Messenger Bots

Facebook is envisioning a future where Bots (automated programs) can help make our life easier - for example when you're in a group chat and talk about what to order for dinner, the bot will help you suggest restaurants, take everyone's orders, handle the payment and more.

#7 Typing... With your thoughts ?

Apparently, Facebook is working on a way to type faster than on a physical keyboard, by establishing a direct connection to your brain.
The first goal seems to be a "brain mouse for AR", giving the user the ability to make mouse clicks with their thoughts.
The company stressed that it's not about reading or invading your thoughts - they just want to execute thoughts that you've already decided to share by sending them to the speech center of the brain.

Which one of these features are you most excited about, and what other changes would you like to see in social media apps? Comment below!

Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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