F8 announcements

Facebook introduced some pretty swanky new features at its ninth F8 conference last week. Watch Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote below, or torture yourself with hours of other official event footage here.

Or just Google ‘Facebook F8 announcements’ to see what media outlets are saying, because we all know brevity is not one of Facebook’s strengths.

Here are some random thoughts about just a handful of this year’s announcements.

Facebook Messenger translations

This is actually pretty incredible. Facebook is rolling out chat translations in its messenger app. We can literally chat to anyone in the world (who has Facebook Messenger, a charged phone, an internet connection, thumbs to write something inane etc. etc.).

I’m actually surprised this is the first time a big tech company has done this. I also wonder if Zuckerberg has heard about the Tower of Babel.

Smarter bots

Facebook has also promised to improve its messenger bots by integrating its NLP (natural language processing) into the app to help bots understand what us mere humans are trying to ask.

Should have seen me try to unsuccessfully schedule in reminders on Blink the Bee a few weeks ago. For the love of god, JUST REMIND ME TO CALL MY GRANDMOTHER ON WEEKENDS.

Instagram video chats

Right now you can actually send a short video message via Instagram Stories directly to someone. But it’s kind of weird. Do this to me and you will only ever get a text reply back.

Anyway, Instagram is encroaching on Snapchat’s territory even further by rolling out vid chats on their platform too.  Sliding into someone’s DMs just got a hell of a lot riskier. ?

3D photos

Not sure how this will actually play out, but this feature will mash up 2D photos with Facebook’s VR and 3D photo technology to integrate your old photos into real life. I think.

Facebook’s take on people superimposing or photographing iconic album covers with their original locations?

Sharing new content

This one has me pretty excited. You can share content from Spotify (read: all the hot songs I’m enjoying rn), GoPro and Soundcloud straight into Instagram stories.

Clear history

Facebook also announced a ‘clear history‘ feature, its equivalent of deleting your history on a web browser. This was definitely a proactive step in light of its data woes, and it’ll be interesting to see the average consumer’s take on this. Better content and advertising on your news feed vs. privacy. You pick.

Facebook dating

And finally, can we talk about Facebook’s dating feature? It’ll let you be ‘open’ to connecting friends of friends. My friends have attractive friends who are not yet my friends. Keen.