Facebook on revamp mode; to introduce Dating App, more immersive AR/VR

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook, announced new features on the social media platform at the annual F8 Conference on May 1, 2018. The F8 Conference is where Facebook developers come together to explore the future of technology.

Among the new features in the pipeline is a dating app. Also launched at the event was Facebook’s VR headset, Oculus Go. Day 2 of the Conference was all about the long-term technology investments that Facebook is making in connectivity, AI, and AR/VR.

The main takeaways for marketers from the two-day Conference held in San Jose, California, are: 

Facebook Messenger to be revamped. Brands will have the ability to integrate AR camera effects into their Messenger experience. This feature will be launching in closed beta form. It will help brands get instant feedback about purchases, and more. The platform will enable people to virtually customize or try on merchandise, walk through new products, etc.

With this new feature, buyers and sellers in the Marketplace will be able to communicate across languages. When people who connect through Marketplace receive a message in a language that is different from their default language in Messenger, M will ask if they want to translate the message. Facebook plans to expand this feature and gradually roll out M suggestions for translations to people using Messenger in the US in the coming weeks and eventually globally. The feature will be able to translate between English and Spanish to begin with. 

Facebook-owned Instagram will introduce a slew of new features and updates. Instagram will come equipped with Video chat facility soon globally. The photo sharing platform’s new AR Studio will allow creators to design interactive camera experiences. Users can also share content from apps like Spotify, GoPro directly to Instagram Stories and Facebook Messenger. 

Clear History feature will enable users to see the websites and apps that send Facebook information when people use them. Soon users can delete this information, and turn off Facebook’s ability to store the information associated with the account.

Finally Facebook is building a feature for dating and relationships within the Facebook app. People will be able to create a dating profile that is separate from their Facebook profile – and potential matches will be recommended based on dating preferences, things in common, and mutual friends. Testing for this feature will begin later this year.

Facebook is making progress AI technology that can understand images. It has trained an image recognition system on a data set of 3.5 billion publicly available photos, using the hashtags on those photos in place of human annotations. This new technology is helping Facebook improve its ability to identify content that violates the platform’s policies.  

In the field of AR/VR, Facebook research scientists have created a system that can generate 3D reconstructions of physical spaces. Facebook wants to make more immersive AR/VR experiences and photorealistic avatars.