Developers from around the world watched the Facebook F8 Developer Conference, which took place in San Francisco. This conference, which last took place in 2011, gives developers new insights into what they can do with Facebook, and gives the general public a sneak peek into what we can expect to see in the future of Facebook. There were quite a few announcements, few of them very surprising, but overall it seems that Facebook has a clear path for retaining their dominance in the social media industry, and increasing their profits at the same time.
One of the biggest announcements, though it was widely expected, was about the Facebook Mobile Ad network, which will be called “Audience Network,” was discussed. This is something all marketers will want to be aware of, as it will let people run ads through Facebook on thousands of different apps. This is a great way to get in front of potential customers, using the power of Facebook’s big data, but not being constrained to just advertising within the Facebook app.
Another important feature that Facebook is launching is the Anonymous login option. As more and more apps and websites are offering the ‘login with Facebook’ feature, users have become concerned with the fact that they have to share personal information with those apps. As a solution, Facebook is allowing apps to offer an anonymous login. Facebook would have the user’s information, but it wouldn’t be shared with the app or website.
Third party app makers and website owners don’t have to offer this feature, but it will undoubtedly allow them to get a lot more traffic, as users will be more likely to login and access their site. This feature will also provide more flexibility to the app developers on what types of information they would like to collect from Facebook about the users (when not accessing anonymously).
In addition to these and other new features of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, announced that they are changing their corporate mantra. He said in his address to the developers, “We used to have this famous mantra, ‘move fast and break things’” He continued on saying that while the mantra has helped them to become the company they are today, it has gotten outdated. Moving fast and breaking things has caused service interruptions, and allowed features to be rolled out without proper testing and understanding if users actually wanted them.
The new mantra is “Move fast with stable infra” (meaning infrastructure). Essentially Zuckerberg is explaining to the developers that while staying on the cutting edge of technology is essential, it is more important to put the user experience first.
Overall, the F8 conference went largely as expected, with great new features coming from the social giant.
