Roger Fingas
Facebook on Wednesday made a series of announcements at its F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco, revealing plans to make Messenger a platform, and improve other aspects of its social network with functions like Share Sheets, spherical videos, and an embeddable video player.
Third-party developers are being given access to the Messenger API, which will let mobile apps push content directly to Messenger instead of asking users to pick an app to share with first. Most of Facebook's launch partners — such as ESPN, Bitmoji, Giphy, and JibJab — are focused around emoji, GIFs, and other simple content.
The company is also introducing Messenger Business. The technology will let merchants not only send receipts and shipment tracking data through Messenger, but provide live support, and even process purchases through chat. No launch date was mentioned at the conference.
The new Share Sheet will let Facebook-connected apps more accurately preview messages and feed posts before they're submitted, and target posts at specific people.
Spherical videos hosted in the News Feed will be interactive, letting users pan around them, much like Google Street View or YouTube. Significantly Facebook is also making spheres viewable through the Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset the company acquired in its 2014 takeover of Oculus VR. Another video-related change is the ability to embed videos on third-party websites.
Facebook's mobile development platform, Parse, will soon be available for the "Internet of things," referring to normally unconnected devices such as kitchen appliances and home automation gear. The company was mum on details, but Parse head Ilya Sukhar explained that the platform now has a set of tools for interactions with IoT devices.
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7 Comments
$54 dollars for a long sleeve tee? This idea will fail.
$54 dollars for a long sleeve tee?
This idea will fail.
It's insane was companies can get away with charging for merchandise these days. Every step along the distribution path doubles the price. The shirt was probably made for $5.00.
Spherical video - Anyone seen any of these ? Sounds like wobblecam on steroids. Trots out old mantra - Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
[quote name="RobM" url="/t/185412/facebook-announces-messenger-api-spherical-videos-more-at-f8-conference#post_2697988"]Spherical video - Anyone seen any of these ? Sounds like wobblecam on steroids. Trots out old mantra - Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.[/quote] There are a few old videos on the following site: http://www.cornflex.org/?p=1 If you switch the dropdown, you get different videos. It should be quite immersive for a mainstream movie shot in 360 3D and viewed in VR. On Facebook, they'll want to connect people at events so they could have someone on one side of the world wearing Oculus and a group at a meal or something and with a certain camera, they'd be able to stream 3D 360 and to the person on the other side of the world, it would be close to being there. Family reunion, funeral etc. William Shatner couldn't make it to Leonard Nimoy's funeral, this kind of tech could have allowed him to beam in.
What's Facebook?