Justin Pot
Facebook is bringing group video chat to Snapchat and Whatsapp, and is also bringing Snapchat-style video filters to Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
The upcoming features were announced by Mark Zuckerberg at the F8 developer conference. Here’s a quick rundown of these features and more.
Facebook announced a new privacy feature called Clear History, which should give users more transparency about data that’s collected while also giving you a degree of control. Here’s Facebook VP Erin Egan, writing in a Facebook blog post:
This feature will enable you to see the websites and apps that send us information when you use them, delete this information from your account, and turn off our ability to store it associated with your account going forward.
Facebook is also adding a Watch Party feature, which means you can watch and comment on videos in realtime with your friends. Zuckerberg used his own congressional testimony as an example, which is fun I guess.
Facebook is also launching a dating service on the platform. This will be specifically for meeting new potential romantic partners: you’ll be able to set up a separate dating profile that won’t be visible to your friends, and your friends won’t be recommended to you for dates.
Instagram is getting group video calls for the first time, and you’ll also have access to AR camera effects for both photos and videos.
Whatsapp is also getting group video calls. Large businesses will also get access to new tools.
Messenger is getting a clean new design.
Zuckerberg ended the presentation with a pseudo-political speech, complete with the presidential thumb fist, about the company’s mission. Here’s that, make of it what you will:
If you believe like I do that giving people a voice is important, that building relationships is important, that creating extensive community is important, that doing the hard work of bringing the world together is important, then I say this: we will keep building.
F8 continues this week, we’ll let you know about anything else interesting that we learn, and we’ll also try to let you know when these features go live.
