[Ep 29] New this week! Facebook announced some incredible technological experiments and features during its annual event F8 2017. There were announcements about Messenger, VR, Facebook Analytics, Facebook Live and even AR. Make your mark in the digital world around you in just 2 minutes with these bytes. Every Tuesday at 2:22.

Hangout With Your Friends VIRTUALLY

Apr. 18, 2017 – Facebook introduces a new VR app where you can hang out with friends in a fun, interactive virtual environment as if you were in the same room.

The app lets you:

• Create an identity that represents the real you
• Invite your Facebook friends to join you
• Draw in the air with a virtual marker
• Phone a friend in the real world

You can download ‘Facebook Spaces’ from Oculus Store.

After they get all the kinks and bugs worked out of this, I can see this as a possible new channel for having business connections and meetings!

More Fun with Facebook Messenger

Apr. 18, 2017 – Messenger has received a ton of attention lately, with new features coming out almost every week. To top that, Facebook has announced more features that soon will make Messenger more fun including:

• Discovery Tab – for people to discover (or search) the businesses they like
• Parametric QR codes – for users to find out more information about the events, games, celebrities etc.
• Chat Extensions – enabling multiple people to chat with the same business at the same time
• ‘M’ virtual assistant – makes suggestions in your conversations, offering up ways to make your life simple

Analytics Support for Facebook Pages

Apr. 18, 2017 – Facebook is leveraging artificial intelligence to automatically surface insights, and making the analytics tool more customizable.

• Omni-channel analytics – measure and understand the interactions people have with your Page alongside their other activity on your website, app, and bot.
• Automated insights – see insights such as changes in purchases for a new version of your app, or variations in engagement across people in different cities
• Custom dashboards – pin the data on your dashboard according to your business needs and team requirements.

Create Locations With ‘Places Graph’

Apr. 18, 2017 – Places Graph brings free access to data on more than 140 million places around the world. The data includes place names, addresses, photos, Facebook consumer ratings and more.

The feature lets you

• Search for places enabling place discovery, location sharing and geo-tagging
• Understand people’s current place and access information about the place including photos and reviews

A great step towards learning more about where people are, so businesses can design more customized experiences.

Get Creative With Your Camera

Mar. 28, 2017 – Facebook brings out new and more fun camera effects. Packed with dozens of effects like masks, frames and interactive filters you can now be as creative as you like with your photos and videos.

What is most amazing is that you can

• Create masks for upcoming movies Alien: Covenant, Despicable Me 3, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Power Rangers, Smurfs: The Lost Village, and Wonder Woman.
• Use guest art from visual artists like Douglas Coupland, and Hattie Stewart.
• Create your own (free!) branded frames, filters, lenses, masks and effects!

Until next Tuesday…

Hopefully, these news bytes to take your digital marketing to the next level! Subscribe to our free monthly newsletter.