Facebook is expected to make many exciting new updates at their mostly annual developer conference, F8 in San Francisco – some of which were apparently leaked late last night. With community of developers rapidly growing, Facebook is focusing on the themes of putting people first, giving people more options to connect through the Facebook family of apps, and previewing the future of sharing.
Out of the many exciting product launches and announcements from Zuckerberg’s opening address, there were three in particular which I found quite notable:
1. FbStart.com Member Portal
Launched at last year’s F8, FbStart.com is an initiative to service mobile start-ups and help them succeed. Today they announced a new online portal for program members to manage their benefits as well as a host of other features.
In a release on their developer’s blog, Facebook said:
Signing into the member portion of the site will allow our members to see in one place all of their personalized benefits — the free tools and services from Facebook and its partners that are provided as part of FbStart.
2. Businesses on Messenger
A must-implement update for many businesses will be Facebook’s new messenger feature, allowing businesses to have more direct and meaningful interactions with customers. In an effort to completely reinvent how businesses handle customer service, Facebook is working with how users contact a business.
For instance,trough a partnership with Zendesk, if you buy a product through a companies website and want to make any updates to your order you can content a representative directly through Messenger. Additionally, order updates that usually come through email can be seamlessly delivered through the platform – giving customers real-time, meaningful updates on their orders.
3. Refreshed Social Plugins
A key component to any app, social plugins are what allow you to share your mobile experiences with your network. Facebook’s latest updates are aimed at providing a better user experience outside of Facebook – an important aspect of further growing their digital footprint. Continuing their emphasis on video, a major addition is the embedded video player for websites – much like their familiar YouTube and Vimeo cousins.
A retooled comments plugin also allows for better mirroring between Facebook and your website so conversations are streamlined and of higher quality.
Stay tuned for more updates and Facebook’s latest annoucement and let us know your thoughts on Facebook or tweet at us with @IMA_network.
About the Author: Erik Leist
