Facebook recently held its annual F8 developer conference, where the social network announced a string of new initiatives and changes to its products. Some of these have been more headline grabbing than others, such as the announcement of laser-equipped internet providing drones.
One of the key announcements made at Facebook's F8 conference was the expansion of the Facebook Messenger platform. Facebook will start allowing third party developers to create apps specifically based on the Facebook Messenger platform.
For marketers, this will mean more rich media content will be available within Messenger and opens up the opportunity for more engaging competitions hosted on social media.
One of the main critiques of the Facebook Timeline has been its non-support of the GIF format. This has resulted in third party services like Giphy growing in popularity - a slice of the pie that Facebook is now setting its sights on. The new service upgrade will allow brands to push out animated content to their followers directly within Messenger. This will likely also be a move to mute the critics of Facebook Ads, as these will go directly into the inboxes of Facebook users rather than on the News Feed.
Facebook will also be implementing a change to let advertisers enable app install buttons directly within Facebook. Facebook claim to be responsible for more than 3.5 billion app installs and have launched Facebook Analytics, to help marketers better understand user interaction with their products.
Many have wondered what Facebook plan to do with their acquisition of virtual reality company Oculus Rift. Facebook have enabled the option to post 360-degree video content, and is initially focusing on brands that post a substantial amount of video content on their Facebook Pages. The closest thing to compare this to would be a moving image version of Google Streetview.
Facebook also launched an embeddable video player. There were some rumblings earlier in the year that Facebook would be looking to compete with YouTube and secure exclusive deals with content creators and personalities. This move will likely see more content posted directly to Facebook and help the social network expand into more rich media content.
If you would like to discuss how your brand is represented on social media, Dock9 will be able to work with you to develop an engaging social media strategy. Send us an email on hello@dock9.com or give us a call on 0207 977 9230.
