F8 2019 Teases New Ways to Start the Conversation on Facebook

Facebook hosted its annual F8 conference this week, announcing several new features on the horizon both big and small. With a focus on more responsible uses of tech and a rejuvenated focus on fostering communication between friends and loved ones, this year’s event felt a bit like the start of a new era—helped by the surprise release of an entirely new mobile app design.

Facebook’s vision has always been to bring people together, and at this year’s F8 conference the company placed its focus away from the News Feed and toward more genuine forms of communication, like Groups, Messenger and Stories. These features not only help friends and loved ones connect in new and more engaging ways, but can help brands engage more directly as well.

Offering More Direct Forms of Communication

Let’s start with Groups: Facebook killed its standalone Groups app nearly two years ago, but this week unveiled a new core app design that places Groups at the forefront, promoting them in different areas of the platform. This means users might find buy and sell groups promoted when exploring the Marketplace section of the app, for example. In addition to providing better visibility, Facebook is also enabling features specific to group types, like a template for employers to easily list job openings in groups for job seekers.

Facebook has also showed off more one-to-one types of interaction designed for smoother socializing and forming new relationships. Its Meet New Friends feature introduces users within shared communities, while its Dating feature offers a Tinder-like system that brings together people who share romantic interest in one another. Over on Messenger, meanwhile, friends can hang out virtually by watching videos together or even work together with a desktop app that allows for multitasking.

What’s interesting with these announcements is that the role of the News Feed—or at least broadcasting updates to it—becomes downplayed as Facebook explores other ways to bring people together through more direct forms of communication.

Chatbots are Invading Instagram

Chatbots aren’t new—Facebook popularized the medium at its 2016 F8 conference—but they’re about to get a lot better on Messenger. The most notable new feature is integration into Instagram ad units. Brands can include CTA’s in their Instagram ads that encourage users to swipe up to chat with an associate. A bot can handle the earlier stages of the conversation to qualify leads, then pass those leads along to a live agent. “It’s the perfect balance of scaling conversations for more basic interactions, while ensuring that qualified leads and complex customer service interactions are handled by real people,” says Nick Fuller, SVP of Growth at MediaMonks.

Another interesting thing about this functionality is how it brings different platforms in the Facebook family together: users may initiate a chat on Instagram, but the conversation happens within Messenger. “What’s important here is that Facebook is discovering more and more integration points of customer data and experience across their platforms,” says Fuller. “This means brands have the opportunity to target on one platform but easily retarget on another.”

The integration with Instagram ads highlights the success that brands have been having with its Stories format. “Stories is a really high-performing ad space for Facebook,” says Fuller. “With this chatbot integration into Instagram ads, brands can take users through the funnel with targeting, lead qualifying and conversion happening in one seamless flow—which is incredible,” said Fuller.

Bring Offline Spaces to Life

Facebook Camera Effects are cool and all—we wrote the book on it—but Facebook is looking beyond photo sharing to explore other opportunities where AR provides value. For example, users could scan a poster that transforms it into a three-dimensional scene or model, whether it be a portal that looks inward or an object that spills out of the surface, beyond physical constraint.

Fuller sees endless creative possibilities for brands that want to digitally engage with their customers within a physical environment. “This will be a killer feature for brands to reach users in retail or event spaces, for example” he says. This can range from fun moments (digital scavenger hunts that encourage you to explore an amusement park) to practical (a tutorial, viewed from multiple angles, showing how to put furniture together).

“From a product education standpoint, having the ability to aim your camera at a sign to achieve this is going to be a really helpful next-level AR capability.” We’ve seen how harnessing emerging technology can have huge benefits to getting customers to explore brick and mortar retail, so we’re excited to see how new leaps in accessible, scalable AR will further transform the physical shopping experience.

In addition to the features mentioned above, Facebook reiterated a couple key themes of the F8 conference: responsible use of technology (by combating fake news, making AI more inclusive and more) and a shift away from being a “social network” to a “social platform.” The new era for Facebook looks perfectly structured for enabling direct communication between brands and their fans, and we can’t wait to see how the platform further shapes up in the next year.

Can’t wait to dazzle Facebook users with SparkAR?