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Technology

Facebook F8: Dating feature for FB users, Oculus Go, WhatsApp group video calls and other key announcements

indiatoday.in

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Facebook opened its F8 conference for 2018 on Tuesday night. This is the company’s annual event for developers and as it has been the tradition, Zuckerberg opened it with a keynote. This was an very important F8 for the company given the how privacy and data security questions, particularly in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, are dogging it. At this F8, Zuckerberg not only had to show that Facebook cares about developers but also about its users.

He started by talking some of things that he has already spoken about in the last few weeks -Facebook cares about privacy, Facebook has responsibility and so on and so forth – but soon changed the gears and announced a number of cool new products. Basically, the idea was that Facebook will continue to build.

“This is how we’re thinking about our responsibility — to keep people safe and also to keep building. If you believe like I do that relationships, community and bringing the world together is important – we will keep building,” Zuckerberg said.

So what all Facebook is building? Here are the key announcements from the latest F8:

— The biggest announcement was that Facebook is getting into the dating app territory. By the end of this year it will add a dating feature on the website and the app, which will compete with Tinder and others.

— Facebook says it will roll out a new privacy feature called Clear History that will allow users to clean their browsing history from Facebook servers.

— The Oculus Go, a standalone VR headset, is now available. It goes on sale at a price of $199 in the US.

— The Oculus TV service, which will offer people VR content, is coming soon.

— Facebook is improving blood donation feature on the site. “In a few weeks, people in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan will be able to view nearby blood donation camps, requests for blood donations and blood banks from one place on Facebook,” said the company.

— WhatsApp users will be soon able to make group video calls. They will also be able to share stickers, something similar to what Google Allo or WeChat offer.

— Video calling feature is now coming to Instagram. Who says it is just a photo sharing app, although talking of photo sharing, Instagram is also getting an Explore that will help people discover fresh content.

— AR stickers are also coming to Instagram. These will help users create some cool looking images – like some with googly eyes — or fun and short video clips.

There were a few other announcements related to groups, crisis messaging, business features on Facebook Messenger, but overall they were kind of minor updates. The major ones were basically the Facebook dating feature and the Clear History option.

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