Thread by @kentbye

1/ THREAD covering Facebook's #F8 Refresh and the specific VR & AR announcements for developers.
We'll see if we get any new information on Project Aria AR project, new VR news, or other spatial toolkits or XR products.
They're refocusing on developers.
facebook.com/FacebookforDev…

2/ Super short intro from Zuckerberg. Brief mention of Spark AR as a "foundational tech for building the metaverse."
PyTorch for rapid prototyping.

3/ @papamiltiadisk Platform Partnerships talking about business messaging, business tools, creator tools, & AI Platforms. Lots of remote work stuff so far.

4/ Deprecated some APIs
Social sharing of Netflix via Facebook.
New Facebook Business Partners Announced with more info in late June.
Not much XR specific stuff yet.

5/ Researcher API announced at Facebook #F8 Refresh: "Without academics having access to quality data, we have no way to understand our influence on society."

6/ Emile Litvak VP Business Messaging talking on their goal to "Make business messaging the primary way people & businesses communicate." #F8refresh
Rather than email or phone, then you'd chat via Business Messenger (and I assume consumers use regular Messenger)[

7/ Showing some examples of companies who used Business Messenger.

8/ Ankur Prasad, Director of Product Marketing, Business Messaging about to talk about new Messenger APIs.
500M messenger messages & bot that helped increase sales by 5x for crew.
3M+ Click to Message ads.
Webchat plug-in updated.

9/ New Customer Feedback Template announced.
Certainly very dev focused so far...

10/ [Me: Facebook has been integrating Messenger across their different services, and starting to see that larger strategy. Also more in XR as we move forward.]

11/ 90% of Instagram users follow at least one company.
Now talking customer service on Instagram with Business Tools, and announced that the Messenger API for Instagram is now available for all developers. #F8refresh

12/ New Automation Tools on Instagram.
Hand off from bot to live agent
[ME sounds like they could have some Turing test experiments here]
[ME @Heaney555 suspects FB is now saving all VR & AR announcements for Facebook Connect. So far that's 100% spot on.]

13/ Some customer conversation rates from Instagram Messenger.

14/ Ajit Varma, Head of Business Products WhatsApp talking about pretty much the exact same things as other Business messaging apps. #F8refresh
[Me: Haven't used any of these to know the difference between Messenger for Business, Instagram Business, or WhatsApp Business.]

15/ More WhatsApp Business API new feature updates, and then talking new messenger types, & onboarding solutions.
[Me: They're certainly living up to the promise of #F8refresh being focused on updates for developers so far... everyone but @FBRealityLabs developers that is.]

16/ Kelly Stonelake, Director of Product Marketing, Platform, a tool to connect with people, establish value, connection, & delight.
"Privacy-centric with transparency & control"
[Me: Yeah, given 1973 FIPPs definition of privacy.]
Announcement of Login Connect with Messenger #F8

17/ List of benefits of new Login Connect, & customer stats.
Able to "deploy chatbots as a part of their customer support strategy."
It's still in Closed Beta, but developers can sign up on the interest form here:
developers.facebook.com/products/faceb…

18/ Danielle Lepe, Director of Product Marketing, Business Suite.
Announcing Business Apps in Facebook Business Suite (FBS).
Announcing New set of Creative Business Apps.
Facebook Business Extension (FBE) to showcase apps, set up customers for success, & empowering customers. [?]

19/ Now getting to AR Creator Tools! Chris Barbour, Director of Partnerships for Spark AR talking AR glasses ideas. #F8refresh
They're still "years away" from shipping AR glasses.
Going over timeline & history of Spark AR platform launches & updates. Unified camera stack in 2020.

20/ Two steps for Spark AR
1.) Nurture creator & developer community.
2.) Fill world with diverse AR content.
Claims to be biggest network of AR creators with 600,000+ creators with 2M+ effects.
[Me: Is that bigger than Snap?]

21/ Announcing Body Tracking for Spark AR.
[Me: Could definitely be an interesting cross-over for body tracking in VR]
Announcing Multi-peer API for real-time, synchronous AR apps for spatial games. Currently taking beta applicants, more info at 2:30p session.
#F8refresh

22/ Lin Qiao, Engineering Director, AI talking about new AI developer tools.
PyTorch making framework for all AI & ML applications at Facebook for large-scale models.

23/ Lots of AI applications for VR & AR applications for real-time effects & computer vision.
Pretty slick video worth tracking down later.

24/ Building a PyTorch ecosystem with a vast ecosystem of tools with over 70k PyTorch apps on GitHub.
Announced they're going all in on PyTorch since Facebook adopts PyTorch as it's default AI framework.
[Seems like a pretty significant shift actually]

25/ PyTorch used on Instagram recommendation enging, on AR for segmentation AI models, & leaning heavily on AI on content moderation on stopping hate speech & privacy-protecting features, bullying. 97% of hate speech that was taken down was first spotted by automated systems. #f8

26/ Mission to be more open & connected by enabling devs by being creative.
Celebrating everyone who has a passion for growth.
Agenda and sessions at: developers.facebook.com/f8/agenda

1 AR session & 1 gaming session:
2:30p PDT: Enabling AR Video Calling
3:10p PDT: Facebook Cloud Gaming

27/ Zuckerberg said SparkAR is "the most popular AR platform out there, & it's one of the foundational technologies for building the metaverse."🤔
Let's see WebXR export + @open_metaverse Interoperability Group collab before using "metaverse" as buzzword.