On Tuesday in San Jose, California, F8 began, the annual series of conferences and meetings organized by Facebook to show the latest news and meet the developers, who produce apps and services for use through the social network. As per tradition, F8 started with a special event hosted by Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, who illustrated the main innovations that will be introduced in the coming months, including a sort of alternative to Tinder directly within his social network. The presentation came a few weeks after Zuckerberg's hearings before the Congress for the Cambridge Analytica case: the topic was not directly addressed on stage by Zuckerberg, who preferred to dedicate himself to explaining the news Facebook has been working on in recent months.
Meet on Facebook
Facebook is working on a “dating” system to get to know each other online and, if things work out, facilitate the start of a romantic relationship. While introducing the new feature, Zuckerberg joked about existing dating apps like Tinder, saying his idea is to: “Create real, long-term relationships, not for casual dating.” To use the new system it will not be necessary to download a separate application: it will be integrated directly into the classic Facebook app.
An app to meet strangers online might seem like a risky idea in a time like this, given the many criticisms that Facebook has drawn on how it manages and guarantees the privacy of its subscribers, but Zuckerberg tried to use reassuring tones, saying that the dating system will be optional and must be explicitly activated by each user if he wishes to use it. Furthermore, your friends will not be able to see if the option has been activated or not, and the dating profile will be separate, visible only to Facebook subscribers who are not their friends. In this, the system seems to be the same as that of Tinder, which gives the possibility to exclude one's friends on Facebook from the people proposed to organize the meetings.
Even in the graphics, the new option recalls that of Tinder with its large profile photos. Facebook will, however, highlight interests and groups to which you belong, in order to encourage the start of conversations between people who at least theoretically have more things in common. Profile owners will also be able to decide to make themselves visible in the groups they participate in, with a system that indicates that they are interested in meeting new people. In the event of a match, the two people will be able to send messages to each other in a separate system from the classic Facebook Messenger.
The new meeting option is still being finalized and will be explained more extensively in the coming months, when it will be made available to all. The news has greatly worried the investors of Match Group, one of the largest companies in the world active in the dating sector and with the ownership of some well-known themed apps such as Tinder and OkCupid. The company's shares lost more than 17 percent of their stock market value after the news from San Jose. According to many analysts, a dating function within Facebook could have important consequences for apps that already offer such services, and which also rely on the information uploaded by their users to Facebook. Tinder has so far allowed a greater degree of anonymity than Facebook, where one's profiles are visible with name and surname. From the presentation on Tuesday, it seems that the new system gives the possibility to show one's name and not the last name in the profiles, making it more complicated to trace everyone's complete Facebook profile.
Clear History
Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is working to create a new tool that will be called “Clear History”, designed to offer more control over their data. The system will be used to see what information is shared and stored by sites that use Facebook tools, with the possibility of deactivating the sharing of your information. Such a function has long been sought after by organizations and privacy activists. The theme emerged during Zuckerberg's congressional hearings, during which the CEO showed that he himself did not have very clear ideas about how the sharing of information between sites, apps and Facebook works.
New Messenger
Facebook has announced a new version of Messenger, more orderly and with less chaotic graphics, which will soon take the place of the current one. In recent years, in fact, the app to communicate with your friends on Facebook has gradually been enriched with functions that have accumulated making Messenger difficult to use for the purpose with which it was created: chat. The recent success of Messenger Lite, a lighter version of the classic Messenger originally designed for less powerful smartphones and slower connections, must have made Facebook people understand that the main app deserved to be redesigned and simplified.
The main changes concern the Messenger start screen, from which some icons have been removed and moved. At the bottom of the screen there are icons for starting and managing conversations, while those for accessing the camera have been moved to the top right. Even within the individual chats a bit of order has been done and a function has been added to use Messenger in night mode, therefore with the black background and the text in white.
WhatsApp
During the presentation in San Jose some changes were also shown for WhatsApp, another important Facebook app for exchanging messages. The news in this case are not many: users will be able to exchange virtual stickers, as already happens on many similar apps, and will have the possibility to make group video calls, involving more people. WhatsApp is used every day by around 450 million people, who collectively make over 2 billion minutes of audio and video calls every day.
Instagram
Facebook continues to invest heavily in Instagram and its transformation from a simple app to share photos on social networks, where you can publish and see Stories with their ephemeral contents, which disappear by themselves a few hours after publication. The app now gives you the ability to share content from other applications directly within your Story: for example, if you are listening to a song on Spotify, you can share the content on Instagram by adding lyrics and other customizations. GoPro has incorporated a similar function within its application, to publish images and videos directly into a Story. More apps will be added with similar functionality in the coming months.
The Instagram folks have also been working on improving their augmented reality system, the feature for adding virtual effects to the shot of a real object. The new effects are made by application partners, including publishers and influencers, and should be disseminated faster and more frequently than previously.
Oculus Go
Despite not having great successes yet, Facebook continues to invest heavily in virtual reality through its subsidiary Oculus, acquired in 2014 for 2.3 billions of dollars. On Tuesday, Oculus Go was presented, the first Oculus virtual reality viewer that works alone, without the need to be connected to a computer or having to insert your smartphone inside it to take advantage of the screen, as happens for example with Samsung's Gear VR. The new Oculus Go is a compromise between the need to make the headset portable and at the same time lower the price, compared to other expensive Oculus viewers. The image quality and the virtual rendering are therefore good, but far from what you get with more elaborate viewers.
Oculus Go can be used to watch 360-degree videos, interact in a virtual version of Facebook, or to spend some time with video games. The focus cannot be adjusted, but an accessory is provided for eyeglass wearers (lenses with optical correction can also be ordered to use the headset without the glasses). The base model of Oculus Go costs 219 euros and has 32 GB of internal memory, while the 64 GB model costs 269 euros. The viewer can already be ordered from the official Oculus website, with delivery in Italy.
