With the rising popularity of other social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Vine, Facebook‘s overall growth has slowed in the past year. It was kind of the old-cool-dad but its recent ‘makeover’ showcases how the site is still riding high as the king of the social media space. Meaning- Daddy’s back.Facebook is still by far the most popular social media site. In fact, if you don’t have a Facebook account, you’re actually in the minority at this point. Some 71 percent of Internet users are now on Facebook, including – for the first time ever – more than half (56 percent) of those ages 65 and older, the research firm said Friday.
- Now you can leave a video as a Facebook comment
2. It is about to become the best place to stream video games
It’s easy to imagine just such a future on everything from your iPhone to that PlayStation 4 in the living room.100 million people use the Amazon-owned Twitch service each month, while 650 million play Facebook-connected games, showing huge potential for this new feature (Sorry Twitch). Video games have become a spectator sport, and Facebook is angling to become ESPN.Facebook’s director of games partnerships said, “Gamers are everywhere. They’re on every different device, they’re playing anytime, and we want to be where gamers are.”
3. Facebook added invite tool to Safety Check
4. Little updates that matter much- Facebook’s New Font
5. Facebook is employing smart and powerful people
Adobe executive Umang Bedi as its new India head:
Facebook has appointed former Adobe head Umang Bedi as its new managing director in India, its second-largest market in the world. Bedi, who was the managing director of south Asia at Adobe, takes over from Kirthiga Reddy, who will join the global accounts team at the company’s headquarters at Menlo Park, California.As the world’s fastest growing smartphone market, India is important for Facebook. The company, which currently has 150 million users in India, recently opened its fourth office in the country, in the financial and entertainment hub of Mumbai.After taking charge in July, Bedi will be responsible for building and maintaining strategic relationships with top clients and agencies in India. Prior to Facebook, the Harvard Business School alumni worked on expanding Adobe’s business in India.And CollegeHumor co-founder to work with the media:
Facebook is getting serious about media by bringing in one of the co-founders of CollegeHumor. Ricky Van Veen will join Facebook as “head of global creative strategy,” a position that will look to persuade media organisations and other notable users to make more things to put on Facebook.“This essentially means that I’ll be working with all types of creators and organisations to figure out how best to use the biggest network in the world to better connect people with engaging and meaningful content,” Van Veen wrote in a Facebook post about the move.6. Became a much better place to share 360 photos
7. New diverse Emoji for Messenger
Facebook updated Messenger by adding more than 100 new emoji characters “to better reflect gender and skin tones,” Facebook also updated its existing emoji so that all its emoji will appear exactly the same across Messenger, regardless of device or platform.The update is meant to bring more diversity to Messenger’s emoji set. There are now more female emoji characters, including a female police officer, runner and swimmer; as well as gender-agnostic options and multi-colored emojis.Red-headed emoji characters will also be included in Messenger for the first time and Facebook says it will continue to make more diverse emoji available over time.8. You can now stream Facebook Live videos from DJI drones!
Private citizens – normal people like you, me, and Chewbacca Mom – only got access in January 2016. Even then, it was still limited to “Point your phone at something and make a video. Live!”A month after its announcement at Facebook’s F8 developer conference last month, DJI has now updated its DJI Go app to allow several of its drones to stream live video directly from their cameras to Facebook.The newly updated DJI Go app is available for iOS and Android. The drones that will support Facebook Live include the company’s high-end Inspire drones and Phantom 3 and new Phantom 4.The addition of Facebook Live support furthers DJI’s drone live streaming platforms. DJI drones can also live stream to Periscope and YouTube.
9. The Rise of the Chatbots
This development truly has the potential to become the ‘next big thing’ when businesses invest sufficiently in this technology and when more chat platforms like Whatsapp join the party.In India, we have already seen a few bots like Niki and MagicX trying to make their presence felt in the travel and grocery categories in India. There are certainly more developments expected out of them and a few other players like Times Internet funded Haptik, which are trying to solve more ‘use cases’ for assisting users on chat platforms through human-supported bots.
One can foresee two sets of chatbots emerging in the next few months: (1) stand-alone bots that solve for conversations and (2) bots that are platform extensions of businesses like Flipkart and Amazon.With all that being said, watch out for the upcoming even-more-amazing facebook updates because the old big thing is again the next big thing.
Courtesy by www.businesswire.com