Fast Forward: Everything Brands Should Know From Facebook’s 2018 F8 Conference
Facebook continues to expand its mobile empire, but it’s what it didn’t announce that spoke loudest
Editor’s Note: This is an abridged edition of our Fast Forward newsletter featuring major trends we spotted this week at CES 2018. For the full version, please contact our VP of Client Services, Josh Mallalieu (josh@ipglab.com) o send a request.
All eyes were on Facebook on Tuesday as the social network kicked off its annual F8 developer conference amidst a much-debated data security scandal. This means that, unlike in previous years where Facebook usually kept the spotlight on cutting-edge technology offerings like augmented reality or machine learning, this year the company had to reconcile its developer announcements with some hard conversations on privacy and accountability. Here is a look at the new products, features, and changes announced by Facebook and how they impact brands looking to leverage Facebook’s unparalleled global reach to find their audiences.
What Facebook Announced
New Privacy Features To Rebuild Brand Trust
CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off his keynote address by sharing the company’s plan to course-correct its user data and privacy practices. Zuckerberg shared two detailed timelines on the many projects and features that the social network has in the pipeline to better combat fake news and protect user privacy on its platform.
Among the two dozen projects, one key feature that Facebook announced was Clear History, which allows users to erase things like ‘what you’ve clicked on’ and ‘websites you’ve visited’ and disassociate their browsing history from their account. “What I’ve learned this year is that we need to take a broader view of our responsibility. It’s not enough to just build powerful tools. We need to make sure that they are used for good, and we will,” Zuckerberg reflected as he introduced the new data control tool.
Throughout the event, Zuckerberg kept hammering home the message that Facebook is committed to taking its problems seriously and improving its user experience. It plans to do so by focusing on building communities and fostering interpersonal relationships, downplaying Facebook’s role as a media platform.
One big initiative in this regard is the new “Dating on Facebook” feature that will allow single Facebook users to opt in to connect with other like-minded people in a new section of its flagship app that is mostly separate from its social and messaging platforms. Smartly, the new dating feature plays to Facebook’s strengths with local events and groups, as it incorporates them as potential date ideas and for finding common interests. The shares for Match Group, owner of OKCupid and Tinder, dropped as much as 10% after Zuckerberg announced the new dating feature.
Oculus Go To Address VR Headset Adoption Hurdles
Facebook also surprised the crowd by announcing that every attendee would get an Oculus Go, its latest standalone VR headset that also starts shipping today. Priced at an affordable $199, Oculus Go represents the VR industry’s best attempt at addressing some of the major adoption hurdles, including accessibility, affordability, and content. In China, Oculus Go will be distributed by Xiaomi, one of the top smartphone makers, for the first time giving Facebook a presence in the Chinese market since it was blocked nearly a decade ago.
This launch marks an interesting transition in Facebook’s VR strategy. Instead of trying to build a developer platform as it was aiming for last year, it seems like Facebook is looking to create a VR content ecosystem through partnerships. For example, Oculus is teaming up with Hasbro to port its board games into its virtual Rooms to create a more interactive social VR experience. Oculus also created a dedicated “Oculus TV” app, which works as a virtual home theater and a hub for non-VR video apps from content partners like Hulu, Netflix, and ESPN.
Moreover, Facebook is making a concerted effort to push for 3D content in the News Feed so as to familiarize users with AR and VR content and encourage user adoption. Facebook introduced 3D posts in February and it says users will soon be able to transfer 3D objects from News Feed into Facebook AR experiences or VR Rooms with just one tap.
Then there is Oculus Venues, an existing VR content portal for live social events like concerts, sports, comedy, and movies. Thousands of simultaneous viewers can enjoy content supplied by partners such as Lionsgate, NBA, MLB, NextVR, and AEG, and interact with each other through their virtual avatars.
The company also briefly demoed an odd “VR memories” feature that aims to take users back to their childhood by reconstructing a VR room from old photos, using the same tech that puts 3D photos in News Feed. Together, these new features are set to bring immersive content to a wider audience.
Along with the upcoming updates of the Google Daydream headsets, the major VR players are clearly hoping to make VR headsets a more appealing purchase for consumers beyond early adopters. WIth a little holiday discount, these cheaper, user-friendly VR headsets might just become the hot gifts of the season like smart speakers were last year. With all the premium content Oculus is bringing to the table, this is really shaping up to be a make-or-break year for consumer VR.
AR Platform Expanding To Instagram and Messenger
Facebook introduced its AR Camera Effects platform at last year’s F8 event but had limited it to its flagship app. Now, Facebook is ready to expand the AR platform to Instagram and Messenger, making it possible for AR developers to deploy their creations across all three massively popular apps, including Facebook Lite, their special Android app for developing regions. Facebook says 1.5 billion people now have access to mobile AR experiences across its three properties, making it a valuable platform for brands looking to engage consumers with mobile AR.
On Instagram, user-generated AR lenses will only show up for existing followers, thus preventing a potential flooding of AR lenses. However, users will get a chance to try out the lenses their friends use in their stories as well, ensuring the viral potential of the AR lenses. Facebook demoed an NBA-branded AR lens that allows users to “slam dunk” over their friends, offering brands a new way to reach Instagram users. Facebook says Instagram AR will be in closed beta this spring, with plans to expand throughout 2018.
Remarkably, all of this can be done with little coding required. Sketchfab, a popular platform for publishing and sharing 3D assets, is now integrating its content library with Facebook’s AR Studio along with a sound library and support for third-party library plugins. This integration essentially makes AR Studio the GarageBand for AR as it significantly lowers the entry barrier for content creators to develop AR content on Facebook properties.
Plus, Facebook is also working on further improvements of its AR Studio tools as it plans to roll out new capabilities including a high-fidelity face tracker and location-specific experiences. In a follow-up demo session, Facebook also teased some upcoming features to its AR developer platform, including the capability for recognizing and digitally augmenting logos, packages, and out-of-home ads. No launch timeline has been specified for these features for now, but they are certainly things to look forward to.
Doubling Down On Stories And Video Chat Across Platforms
There’s no denying that Stories are on the rise. Facebook even says they are predicted to surpass New Feed in usage sometime next year. Seeing the new “story” format taking off first on Instagram and now picking up steam on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (which Facebook says now has 450 million daily users), Facebook is doubling down on the short-term, full-screen content format it borrowed from Snapchat by adding third-party developer access for importing stories from other apps. GoPro and Spotify are cited as two launch partners that will allow users to create Stories from their respective apps and easily share it to any of the Facebook-owned platforms. Notably, sharing to Stories does not require (or even encourage) an app to implement Facebook Login.
Besides stories, Facebook is also adding group video chat support to WhatsApp and Instagram, bringing functional parity across its platforms. A new Watch Party feature is also launching on Facebook proper to encourage social viewing so as to boost video consumption on its platform. WhatsApp will also be getting third-party stickers, giving brands a way in to connect with its 1.5 billion users worldwide.
New Business-Friendly Features To Propel Social Commerce
Facebook also announced a couple of initiatives aimed at helping businesses — especially small and mid-sized local businesses — to connect with consumers on its platforms. For example, Facebook shared that a third of U.S. Facebook users have used Marketplace, its ecommerce platform launched as a separate tab in 2016. To that end, Facebook launched a new Analytics app to help businesses track key metrics like revenue, retention, and demographics across their Facebook properties on the go.
Messenger already has a robust social commerce presence since Facebook added support for Shopify to allow business to sell directly in Messenger in 2016, and now the popular messaging platform is ready to take it to the next level. During the keynote, the company demoed an AR-enabled in-app ecommerce experience on Messenger with Nike sneakers, where users unlock the AR experience by messaging the brand account with a special emoji code and purchase the exclusive shoes right within Messenger.
Judging by monthly active users, Instagram is now larger than Twitter and Snapchat combined. Even better, despite sharing the same backend infrastructure for advertising, Instagram has been largely unaffected following the Cambridge Analytica scandal because it’s mostly perceived as a standalone operation that captures comparatively much less user data. So, it makes sense that Facebook is looking to boost its engagement with a newly designed Explore page to categorize posts by topics to aid content, and perhaps, product discovery.
In addition, Facebook says over 300 million users have interacted with a business on WhatsApp, and it is planning to add more business-friendly features to the app. WhatsApp’s strong presence in emerging markets such as those in Latin America and Africa offers Facebook something to fall back on even if its main app and Instagram stumbles. While Asia’s major messaging platforms such as WeChat have been leading the way in social commerce with a model that blends seamless payment with commerce and social content, it looks like Facebook is looking to making a similar push on its platforms as well.
What Facebook Didn’t Announce
If all the announcements above sound rather pedestrian, you are not alone. Reports indicate that Facebook originally planned to unveil its own smart speaker products at the event and officially enter the smart home market, only to scrap the plan at the eleventh hour due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the following backlash against its data privacy practices.
So, instead of a splashy new product launch, what we got was Facebook trying its best to keep developers motivated to build on its platform despite restricting the kind of user data they can collect. The company did an amicable job laying out its plan to combat disinformation and data privacy issues, bring functional parity across its properties, and generally keeping things upbeat and forward-looking, but it undoubtedly lacked the spark of true innovations.
The latest reports say the company has postponed the domestic release of its smart speakers powered by its proprietary M assistant to fall, but may also be exploring its options to launch the product in select international markets first to circumvent the bad publicity at home. Either way, Facebook continues to miss out on the platform battle for the connected home, which, as we observed at this year’s CES, has started in earnest.
What Brands Need To Do
Ironically, the biggest takeaway for brands from this F8 lies in what Facebook didn’t get to announce. The Cambridge Analytica scandal and the ensuing backlash clearly demonstrated the severe consequences of losing brand trust. Yes, Facebook is still one of the biggest digital entity in the world, and that is unlikely to change any time soon, which means that its platforms are still incredibly valuable for brands. But the opportunity cost that Facebook suffered from not being able to enter the home market as planned serves as a warning for brands to treat customer data with utmost care and respect.
In lieu of the smart speaker launch, the majority of what Facebook announced at this F8 was about spreading features that already exist on its flagship app to Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Whether it’s stories, video chats, or AR support, it is clear that Facebook intends to bring every single one of its platforms up to date and equally appeal to users and businesses. Facebook may have settled on this as the focus of the event out of pure necessity, but directing developer and press attention off its main site and onto its other social and messaging platforms is also not a bad strategic move for the company at the moment.
As U.S. user growth slows and time spent on Facebook’s main site decreases, it is time that brands follow Facebook’s lead and expand their digital marketing efforts to Instagram and Messenger. Even on Facebook proper, the focus has started to shift away from the News Feed to stories and Groups. This means brands will need to take far more proactive measures to build fan communities on Facebook and engage your audience.
Embracing the rise of stories and AR features is the key to keeping up on these Facebook properties. No longer will simple sponsored posts and videos be enough in an age where audiences crave authenticity from brands, and the Stories format, which prioritizes the spontaneity and transient value of the “here and now,” is what social media users are increasingly gravitating towards. AR features, on the other hand, still benefits from its novelty sheen at the moment and can add a little interactive sparkle to mobile campaigns.
While most brands should still wait and see how this year will turn out for consumer VR, the strong push that Facebook is making for 3D content across its properties is no doubt an opportunity that brands should not let pass. Brands would be smart to get their 3D branded assets ready today to get ahead of the AR adoption curve and have them handy in case your products need to be incorporated into VR or AR content, be it organic or owned. The aforementioned AR sneaker drop by Nike offer a good example illustrating how this would benefit brands looking to explore mobile AR.
Another important takeaway for brands is that Facebook is ramping up its social commerce capabilities, and that means it is time to expand your mobile sales channel. At a time when mobile purchases are increasingly driving the overall ecommerce growth, the old division of using social apps for building brand awareness and messaging apps for customer support no longer applies. As all social and messaging platforms become a potential direct sales channel, it is time for brands to ditch that siloed perception and embrace an omnichannel strategy.
This means brands should expand their ecommerce experiences not only on Facebook, but to Messenger and Instagram as well. Even if your brands don’t sell physical products, they can still serve as important channels for allowing customers to book services and experiences in advance.
Want To Know More?
If you’d like to have a customized deep-dive into how your brand can make use of Facebook’s new offerings, please reach out to our VP of Client Services, Josh Mallalieu (josh@ipglab.com) to start a conversation.
