April 14, 2016
Chances are your social timeline is featuring a lot of commentary around new Facebook features. Some being available immediately others with defined development roadmap. But why the sudden flurry of comms. Well, for the unaware, Facebook has just closed their annual developer conference – F8. The annual gathering in San Francisco is the platform Zuckerberg chooses to evidence how he’s going to (continue) to live up to his aim of connecting the world.
Stating the obvious, Facebook has evolved significantly over the years. Most are familiar with its early collegiate focus and subsequent rapid acquisition of global users well beyond student demographics.
So how does Facebook ensure it stays relevant? Well a lot of that drive comes from Zuckerberg, who in his opening address told just how ambitious he has become in 14 years. He goes on to say Facebook’s mission now, is to bring the world online pioneering artificial intelligence and perfect virtual reality.
Also within the development roadmap are “bots” that will be robotics customer service reps serving news, weather and retail information – we’ll see those working within Messenger. Fatherhood has clearly played a role in Zuckerberg’s thinking with the announcements of how he wants to use VR to put grandparents into baby videos and he even shared information about the pilotless plane they have in development.
When you look at Facebook’s 10-year development roadmap, you see that they’ve achieved a lot of their goals. Based on this it’s easy to assume the likes of Facebook Live, their new video function and the aforementioned ‘bots’ et al will feature in everyday use of Facebook.
But exactly how will these function influence how we use Facebook?