This is what Mark Zuckerberg has planned for Facebook in next 10 yearsBots-The Virtual FriendsLive Videos will be enhancedThe Genius AlgorithmTaking VR to Another LevelInternet will be recreated
The primary objective is to keep the billion users involved and attract new users. Here is the most important ways by which the social networking company is going to do this:
Bots-The Virtual Friends
Facebook is allowing companies to build automated “bots” on its Facebook Messenger mobile app that users can interact with to do things like get the weather or news or buy things like flowers or burgers (see “Facebook Wants You to Chat with Business Bots”). So far, companies including flower seller 1-800-Flowers.com, Burger King, and Dutch airline KLM have signed on. Chatting with a bot via Facebook Messenger is similar to having a chat with a friend—albeit a friend who only wants to talk about one topic and serves up limited responses to your text-based missives. For instance, the 1-800-Flowers bot gives you options to order flowers or speak with customer support; if you tap “Order flowers,” it wants to know the shipping address and delivery date, and lets you scroll through a handful of options. No small talk here, as far as we could tell. If businesses can figure out ways to make this engaging and easy, Facebook could generate a lot of revenue from such bots; for now, though, it’s hard to tell why you’d want to get information or buy things this way rather than via a smartphone app or a website.
Live Videos will be enhanced
So that more people can use them. It has been noted by the company that users watch live videos longer than other videos and comment on them ten times more often than on usual videos. Facebook, will promote the use of live video feature and extend the facility to non verified accounts too. Facebook has also released software that will enable developers to stream live videos from any device including drones.
The Genius Algorithm
Facebook’s website will now know and recognize the content of your photos and videos. You will be able to search images for specific content using text. For example, by typing “mountains” you can see all your pics of your recent hiking trip. It is not clear till now whether the technology will be available soon or we’ll have to wait for one or two years. The technology is based on the same deep learning technique used by Google photos.
Taking VR to Another Level
Virtual Reality has made a debut in last year. But the capabilities of VR headsets and the number of movies and games that can be enjoyed on it are limited. Facebook is working on VR to enhance it on a level where people can use it to interact with other people who are distant. Researchers have made an arrangement to study human body language as they interact with each other. Researcher Yaser Sheikh, in the conference, talked about using a dome studded with over 500 cameras called the Panoptic Studio to study people’s body language in 3-D as they interact. He said Facebook wants to make getting together in virtual space, to catch up with a friend in another city or for a job interview, close to real life. “It would be by far the most compelling electronic social experience yet,” said Sheikh. “The distance between you and the people you care about would melt away.”
Internet will be recreated
You may have heard about free basics and other such services which offered free or subsidized access to the Internet( actually a part of it). Now Facebook is developing a drone named Aquila( Eagle in Latin), which will beam the internet connectivity to the rural areas where setting up Internet is costly. Facebook is also working on two new technologies to connect remote areas to internet in order to make the world more connected(or to get more people use their services). The social networking company will give away the design of these two technologies for free, so that these can be adopted easily by telecom companies. These were the important highlights of Facebook’s action plan for forthcoming decade. You can share your views in the comments and let us know which thing out of these you liked the most.
