Biggest Announcements From Facebook’s F8 Conference

Above is a recap uploaded by Facebook themselves.

1. Instagram is going to focus less on likes

In case you didn’t know, Instagram is owned by Facebook. While this list is not necessarily ranked, we pushed this to the top because there is still a lot of room for individuals and businesses to grow on Instagram unlike on Facebook where things are a little crowded. So the Instagram news is rather important and only increases our focus on the platform.

Getting into it – Facebook announced that moving forward there will be less of a focus on things such as the like count and the follower count on Instagram. We haven’t seen it rolled out yet but when it does, it fundamentally changes how you measure your success on Instagram.

2. Facebook is redesigning the site to focus more on groups and events

Facebook seems to have a renewed focus on making the platform more lifestyle friendly. Users seem to be moving away from posting publicly and using Facebook Messenger more and more, along with using Facebook to organise events, discuss common interests and more or less do more in niche groups.

This push is very evident when you see that the Canberra Notice Board Group, for example, has over 50,000 members, and this Buy Swap Sell page has over 30,000 members.

Facebook is redesigning the whole browsing experience on the desktop, which will no doubt be slowly reflected on their mobile apps as well. If you’ve been considering starting a group related to your core business, this could be the perfect time to do so as Facebook will start pushing groups even more in the future and this will increase the potential reach of your own group.

3. Facebook is introducing more social and dating features

This is a little weird, and perhaps even creepy, but Facebook is launching a feature called ‘Secret Crush’ where Facebook will send you a notification if a person has added you as one of their secret crushes. However, you only find out that you’re on the list when/if you add them to your list as well. At that point, Facebook matches you together and reveals your crushed to one another.

Again, this seems to be an effort on Facebook’s part to become more lifestyle oriented.

4. Facebook Messenger is getting reworked and coming to desktop

Facebook is making Messenger faster than ever before and also adding a desktop app that you can download. This increased push cements Facebook Messenger as a great way to provide customer support and on-site chat, so if you’ve been thinking about adding Facebook Messenger chat functionality to your site – now is probably a great time!

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