Facebook’s annual developer conference F8 that kicked off on Tuesday with the keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg has brought to us a lot of exciting reveals on the company’s future developments. Facebook F8 2018 was expected to unleash a lot about the Facebook’s family of development platforms. Let us see how the event went down with some of its biggest announcements.
Facebook F8 2018 unleashes new Messenger features
A store for bots on Facebook Messenger
The biggest highlight of Facebook’s 2016 Developer Conference was Chatbots. So as we expected, at this year’s event, Facebook didn’t sideline bots.
A special ‘Discovery’ tab appears on the Messenger home screen. On clicking the tab one can explore the store for bots. The store will cover featured and trending bots and also a search bar to check out the new bots. This inclusion seems a move to make you use the Facebook bots more likely as you can browse it.
Facebook’s integration with Apple
Facebook’s Messenger platform will be integrating with a lot of new apps, and Apple Music is the limelight integration. The head of Facebook Messenger David Marcus made the announcement at F8 2018 that the Apple Music will be soon on the Messenger platform.
This huge integration of Facebook and Apple is not so surprising for both the companies have worked together even before. The previous integration has allowed the embedding of songs from Apple Music on the Facebook News Feed.
The partnership will allow you to browse Apple Music from inside the Messenger. You will then be able to find a song, share it on the Messenger chat and would be able to listen to the songs while using Messenger. We may have to wait to enjoy this amazing add-on for it may take a while before it appears anytime soon.
The other new features
Automated suggestions from M:
Facebook rolls out automated suggestions service. The experience building tool M will pop-out suggestion in your chats. Suppose you are talking about going to the dinner or watching a movie, then you may use this feature to look for suggestions of online ordering apps, movie tickets, booking apps or online payment platforms.
M will constantly keep nagging the probable suggestion. This is a move to divert the users towards the Facebook’s products and other integrated apps.
QR codes scan:
The Facebook Messenger camera will now scan the available special Messenger codes that will connect you to the branded bots.
The new Games tab:
You will find a Games tab on the Messenger home screen that will support turn-based play of the games available on Messenger.
Chat Extensions through apps:
The app developers can now insert themselves into Messenger chat like the iMessage App store. Some of its partners include Spotify and OpenTable which will let you listen to songs and reserve table right from the chat.
This is all about the upgrades in the Facebook’s very own Messenger app that we got to know from Facebook F8 2018. Stay with us to know more about the announcements as they roll out.
