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The cornerstone of all the big technology companies is their developers, which is why the likes of Google, Apple and Facebook all hold annual developer conferences.
These are playgrounds, where over the course of several days, all the latest software innovations are handed out early to developers to play with for the first time.
Many use them to link their own app, service or company into the host tech giant in question, while for others it’s a chance to get a glimpse into the future.
This week it is Facebook’s turn to give a peek into what’s coming, when they host F8 in San Francisco. Mark Zuckerberg will take to the stage to deliver the keynote address on Tuesday evening.
This is what to look out for.
First things first – what is a chatbot? These are best described as software tools that enable massive companies to have one-on-one conversations with individual customers. Imagine you have an Amazon order you need to return, you could use a chatbot to converse and message Amazon to tell them you wish to return it and get your refund.
Ok? So Facebook wants to put these into Messenger. This means that you could start to discuss delivery options, make complaints or do anything you need to do that involves directly interacting with a company all through a Facebook Messenger conversation, sitting right alongside that chat with your cousin in Australia, and just as casual.
At F8, Facebook is said to be planning to offer up an SDK (software development kit) that’s open to all that would enable any company to put a chatbot into Messenger. So that means conversational updates from your Uber on its arrival time, or from your airline on the status of your flight’s departure. It’s everything that normally requires a separate app, inside Facebook.
Announced as rolling out globally just last week, Facebook Live – the ability for anyone to live-stream to the world from their timeline – is likely to feature heavily.
It’s unclear what sort of tools Facebook could offer up to developers for Live, but this is an area of the app that Mark Zuckerberg is keen to build on.
Facebook is already working on several ideas around AI – there’s a tool that “reads” photos to the visually impaired and M, the firm’s experimental virtual assistant.
So at this year’s F8 there are likely to be a few mentions of other products in the pipeline.
This will be the first F8 since the Oculus Rift VR headset went on sale – a product Facebook has quite a large say in having bought Oculus back in 2014. There’s likely to be some talk on how to make the most of virtual reality on Facebook, perhaps focusing on 360-video, a feature Facebook introduced last year.
You can watch the F8 keynote with Mark Zuckerberg from 6pm on Tuesday here.
