Facebook F8 Conference Day 1 highlights: Privacy to be the main focus across all products

Facebook F8: Oculus Rift S and Quest to go on pre-order from 21 may at $399

The Oculus Quest is Facebook’s first all-in-one VR gaming system which lets you play anywhere without the need for an external computer.

While WhatsApp saw minor updates, Instagram saw plenty of new features and Messenger almost got an overhaul

Learn all about the new and upcoming features on these social media platform here:

Facebook’s new FB5 update will be coming to your desktop and mobile soon

Here’s what’s new in the upcoming update:

Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S go on sale at $399

Casting is coming to Oculus Quest that let’s you stream on your home TV

Vader Immortal is available for Oculus Quest and coming Rift.

Oculus for Business comes with enterprise software for large scale deployment

Oculus Quest comes with no cables

Oculus Quest comes with Oculus Insight, all data is stored inside the headset

Announcing oculus fir business #f8 #occulus #Facebookdevelooer pic.twitter.com/vwkFQvymWn

— Ali Arsanjani (@AliArsanjani) April 30, 2019

More than a billion users of AR

Portal is available in the US and is coming to Canada and the UK

WhatsApp and Messenger calls are coming to Portal

Games are coming to Portal

You can add favourites from Instagram as well

A new Portal Mobile app is coming in the next few weeks

“Hey Portal” is coming to well… Portal

Facebook Live is also coming to Portal

Portal will soon also let you send private messages

New Portal mobile app announced

Nothing like a good F8 conference to bring out the full range of ignorance of what social media is, how it works, and what its role in society is.

— Bryan Reynolds says Fuck You Elon (@BReynoldsMN) April 30, 2019

Instagram gets a Create Mode and private

You can share quizzes, stickers countdowns and more

Follower counts will soon become less prominent

Private Like counts 

Comment nudges and Away mode could be coming to Instagram

Also introduces ‘Shopping from Creators’

Shopping from creators introduced

Removing the like counter on Instagram

Instagram ‘Create’ Mode

Secret Crush from Facebook Dating is a disaster waiting to happen. #F8

— Paul Armstrong (@paul__armstrong) April 30, 2019

Facebook Dating comes to more countries

To come to the US by the end of the year

Better luck next time India!

Secret Crush will actually match in case you are on someone’s list!

Secret Crush?? Tinder rip-off

Facebook Dating to take on Tinder

Facebook gets a big update and it’s called FB5

Will be available in the US and Canada today on Mobile and Desktop

Also gets a new dark mode

The same fresh new look also comes to the enterprise version of Facebook

A re-designed Groups tab

Groups show up everywhere in the new app

Groups also comes to composer to post directly to groups

Health Support Communities lets users post privately

Gaming groups get a chat feature

Shopping Communities gets native support for shipping

Local Communities gets events tab lets you discover new local places

So, if I'm understanding this, Facebook's app becomes a community center with lots of rooms for closed groups and Messenger becomes like your home, where you meet up with only your family or friends. #f8 pic.twitter.com/sgHJ99InyA

— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) April 30, 2019

New groups tab on Facebook

New Facebook app will let you bookmark your place in the Newsfeed to let you pick up where you left off. Yay! #f8 pic.twitter.com/MElnSpwyAz

— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) April 30, 2019

WhatsApp for Business gets Business Catalogues

WhatsApp for Business gets Business Catalog that shows up right within WhatsApp when chatting with a business.

A lot India connections with WhatsApp

Messenger updates for developers:

Appointment booking coming to messenger for developers

Regeneration templates coming to Facebook ads

20 billion messages each day!?

Messenger will soon let you message and call friends on WhatsApp and Instagram

Focus: Fast, Private and Interoperable

Lightspeed will use less battery and storage

Messenger will always be end-to-end encrypted by default

Messenger users will be able to call and text friends on Instagram and WhatsApp

Users will soon be able to watch videos together across mobile and desktops

This is what Messenger will be focused on

Want a free Oculus Quest? Just be at F8

I am soooo jealous!! I want a free @oculus #quest too!! Everyone gets one at F8 #Facebook #VirtualReality

— Susan Li (@SusanLiTV) April 30, 2019

Oculus Rift S and Quest announced!

Opening pre-orders today in the US. Starts shipping in a month on May 21.

Priced at $399

Oculus Quest announced 

Portal updates at F8:

More than a billion people have used AR features

Bringing SparkAR studio to Windows and Mac

Portal will now be available internationally.

WhatsApp and Messenger calls will be available on Portal with end-to-end encryption

WhatsApp coming to Portal

Spark AR coming to Windows and Mac

Instagram updates at F8:

Launching a new Shopping channel in Explore

You can now buy from creators as well.

Adding a new create mode

Can use a sticker or text

Also new donation stickers

Shopping feature on Instagram 

First OneUI, now #FB5, 2019 truly is the year of UI becoming 'good' as opposed to 'tolerable'. #F8

— J.C. Kuang (@sauceofducks) April 30, 2019

New UI for mobile app coming today

Facebook updates at F8:

A redesigned Facebook (FB 5) coming later this year

A new Facebook icon

Easier to connect to groups

Better browse and discover tools

New Groups tab

Groups are now at the heart of the Facebook experience

Focus is on safety

“We are working hard to remove groups that violate our policies”

New ways to interact with groups

New FB5 available in the US today and the rest of the world in the coming weeks.

New UI for Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg probably said the words “privacy” and “private” a million times in today’s keynote and we are not even half-way through.

Zuckerberg: "Payments and private commerce is one of the areas I'm really excited about." #f8 pic.twitter.com/BnKtM3TJVz

— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) April 30, 2019

WhatsApp updates at F8:

WhatsApp is already a private experience

Working on ways to do more ranking on the content on the client’s side

WhatsApp Business will get “Product Catalogues”

Payments is coming to WhatsApp​ on a global scale (already available in India)

New product catalogue in  Business app

Share location is going to be encrypted

We are talking about WhatsApp now

Messenger updates:

Rewriting everything from scratch

Started off with a new design last year

Project Lightspeed makes Messenger 2X faster and 7X smaller

A new desktop app coming to messenger for macOS and Windows 10!

Again “Privacy”

Conversations in Stories are happening in private chat than in public threads

A new friends tab on Messenger

All this from Facebook and Zuckerberg is great, but as with Google Chrome's crack security team, it's all still at odds with a company that has a powerful financial interest in having your private information. #F8 https://t.co/tMd78GIvEl

— Stephen Shankland (@stshank) April 30, 2019

A new desktop app for Messenger

We are starting with changes to Messenger

“We are re-plumbing the entire company’s structure to go with our privacy vision”

Zuckerberg confirms that it’s not going to happen overnight

And he’s not sure when it’s going to happen either. Strange!

The privacy vision for Facebook.

Working openly…….

“We don’t have the strongest reputation in privacy” says Zuckerberg

“But we are working towards it.”

We started with messaging with end -to-end encyrption on WhatsApp.

The focus points for services is on:

Private Transactions

Encryption

Reduced Permanence

Safety

Interoperability

Secure Data Storage

Privacy is the word of the day

Watching the Facebook F8 Developer Conference Keynote right now. So far, the word "Private" has been mentioned 8 times. https://t.co/JRNBaSISy8

— Greg Nibler (@GregNibler) April 30, 2019

“The future is private”

“Privacy gives us the freedom to be ourselves”

A private social platform is more important than digital town squares"

We communicate online in private groups, Messenger and Stories, says Zuckerberg.

via MikeIsaac: mark zuckerberg coming out onstage to f8, Facebook's tech conference

his first line, "today we're going to talk about building a privacy-focused social network" was met with muted hooting from maybe two guys in the audience $fb

— FinTweet $FB Tweets (@FinTwitFB) April 30, 2019

We have begun and Zuch is here!

Facebook CEO and Co-Founder, Mark Zuckerberg takes to the stage and sets the agenda straight

PRIVACY!

So, what can we expect from today’s announcements?

360 camera on a stick. Yep, it's f8. #F82019 pic.twitter.com/g7F52ORr2J

— James Martin 📷 (@Jamesco) April 30, 2019

Facebook’s still doing pretty well right now

With about 2.7 billion people using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger every month there’s no way Facebook is shutting down anytime soon .

Facebook is expecting more trouble, sets aside $3 billion for fines

Facebook Inc on Wednesday blew past Wall Street profit estimates in the first quarter and set aside $3 billion to cover a settlement with U.S. regulators, calming investors who had worried about the outcome of a months-long federal probe.

Read all about it here:

Things did not look good when it came to the Lok Sabha Polls either

While the social network did introduce plenty of new features to weed out fake news both on Facebook and WhatsApp. There’s plenty of scope for improvement. You can read all about it in the link below:

And how could we not forget the Christchurch livestream!

It’s hard to tell if Zuckerberg will smile or crack jokes on stage at all this year.

Last we heard, Facebook’s AI system couldn’t identify Christchurch first-person livestream .

Facebook Messenger Announcements at #F8 2019
- NEW Faster, lighter Messenger app
- End-to-end encrypted as default
- 'Watch Parties' feature for watching videos with friends
- Messenger desktop app for Win+MacOS
- New space to find content from friendshttps://t.co/RjW4h8sHRv

— Matt Navarra - Exiting X… Follow me on Threads (@MattNavarra) April 30, 2019

Facebook is also being investigated for unauthorised storage of email IDs

Back then Facebook said that it may have “unintentionally uploaded” email contacts of up to 1.5 million new users since May 2016, adding that the “contacts were not shared with anyone and we are deleting them.

“Facebook said in an emailed statement that it was “in touch with the New York State attorney general’s office and are responding to their questions on this matter.”

Read all about it here:

Mark Zuckerberg has a lot of explaining to do

The most recent fumble by Facebook was to do with its recent security lapse where millions of user passwords were exposed. The social network had reportedly stored passwords in plain text .

Facebook’s F8 has always been about the future of Facebook and its products, but this year could be a bit different

Without even glancing through the social network’s report card in 2018, the current year itself saw Facebook being put through the scanner one too many times.

Zuckerberg is expected to use his keynote to show users and lawmakers how he could possibly make his social network a safer place.

Facebook F8: Day 2

Day 2 also starts off with a keynote and is then followed by sessions on visual recognition from Facebook AI, a chance to meet Spark AR product team, a session on how apply AI to keep its platform safe, a deep dive of Facebook’s Disaster Maps and Facebook explaining its approach to build reduced app sizes. Lastly, there’s also a session on how to monetize mobile games.

Facebook F8: Day 1

As per the schedule, day 1 starts off with the opening keynote followed by sessions and demos on VR for enterprise, using messenger to drive business results, an introduction to machine learning, a session on key features of Facebook camera, a deep dive on how Messenger is transforming customer care, a Spark AR creators roundtable and plenty more. There will also be sessions with Instagram’s camera team as well, for the use of AR.

And as well all know plenty has happened with Facebook since the last F8 conference.

But first let’s take a broader look at what Zuckerberg and his team have in store for us over the next two days.

Hello and welcome to our live blog of Facebook’s annual F8 Developer Conference

While the conference is ideally meant for Facebook’s developer community, with live demos and sessions. Everyone’s attention is on the opening keynote on Day 1, which Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg uses to talk about the future of the social network.