Facebook announced a number of changes to its social network and apps at the first day of its F8 developers conference, in line with its recently announced increased focus on messaging and privacy.
Facebook itself will be redesigned to take a greater focus on social aspects like groups over the news feed, while Messenger is getting a new, lighter app as well as a desktop version. While no major hardware was announced, Facebook did announce the start of pre-orders for the Oculus Quest and Rift S and plans for an enterprise VR offering.
The new ‘FB5’ design for the social network is “simpler, faster, more immersive and puts your communities at the center”, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced. “Overall, we’ve made it easier to find what you’re looking for and get to your most-used features.” This will include a new Events tab launching this summer. The basic update is already rolling out to the Facebook app and will reach the desktop site in the next few months.
The redesigned Groups tab is expected to made discovery easier, showing a personalized feed of activity across all the user’s groups and improved recommendations to find new groups, which will also appear in other parts of the app, such as the Gaming tab and and Facebook Watch. More content from groups will appear in the News Feed, and users will be able to share content directly to groups from News Feed. The new opt-in feature ‘New Friends’ will help people connect with others in their groups and communities who are interested in making new friends.
In addition, Facebook Dating is expanding to another 14 countries: Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guyana, and Suriname. It also gets the new feature Secret Crush, to help friends who like each other connect on the social network.
Lighter Messenger
For Messenger, Facebook has slimmed down the app to help it run faster, also on more basic smartphones. The new update rolling out later this year will come with a feature to watch videos together with contacts in real time, while in a chat. In addition, a dedicated space will be added to post and share content and stories over Messenger with close friends and family. A desktop version of the Messenger is also in testing and will roll out worldwide later in 2019.
Little new was announced for WhatsApp, apart from the addition of business catalogues. As a result, users chatting with a business will be able to see a showcase of that business’ products at the same time. For Instagram, Facebook confirmed the launch of in-app shopping as well as the addition of a donations sticker to raise money for charities and campaigns. The Instangram camera will also get an update in the coming weeks with a ‘Create Mode’, to share designs without a photo or video.
More Portal features
Facebook also announced new features for its Portal communications device as well as the start of sales in Canada and plans to bring Portal to Europe this autumn. WhatsApp is now available on Portal, including end-to-end encryption for all calls, adding another option to Messenger. Later this summer, users will be able to get reminders from the device by saying ‘Hey Portal, Good Morning’ and also send private video messages from Portal to contacts.
Amazon is also gaining a bigger presence on Portal, with new Alexa skills, Flash Briefings, smart home control and the Amazon Prime Video app later this year. Support for Facebook Live will also be added to Portal.
Finally, the new virtual reality headsets Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S are available to order from USD 399 and will ship from 21 May. Facebook also announced plans for an enterprise version of Oculus. Expected available later this year, Oculus for Business will include a suite of tools designed to help companies reshape the way they do business through VR, the company said.
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Telecompaper
