Mark Zuckerberg talks VR’s role in Facebook’s future

“VR [virtual reality] is the next platform, where anyone can create and experience anything they want,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at Samsung’s event at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Spain. VR has always been something Zuckerberg has been interested in and it’s helping guide him as he thinks about the future of his social media platform. He believes the future for Facebook will be immersive and it’ll bring people even closer together. And that this idea isn’t that far off. Facebook as we know is invested in virtual reality. They do own Oculus and they started working with Samsung to develop their own Gear VR headset, which uses technology from Oculus.

“Pretty soon, we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re just right there in person,” Zuckerberg said. And with the new 360-degree cameras from the likes of Samsung and LG, it truly can happen sooner. Facebook already supports 360-degree videos on its platform. According to Facebook’s CEO, there are already 20,000 videos of that kind on his platform but work still has to be done. “One day soon, all of us will have the power to broadcast live. To do that, we’re going to have to solve a lot of really complex engineering problems.” But he reiterates that Facebook and Oculus are committed to VR “for the long term” and new VR games are expected to come out this year.

Source: PCWorld

Facebook Messenger app can now handle multiple accounts

Addressing the needs of some users who share devices, Facebook is now allowing multiple accounts on its Messenger app. The feature is initially available for Android users. If you worry about privacy, the new feature doesn’t allow users to get into each other’s accounts. It can be set with all accounts locked down and needing a password. Or if you have kids that you want to supervise, you can opt to not lock those but keep yours locked so your kids won’t see your messages. The only thing you’ll be able to see is notification count when a message comes in.

Source: Tech Crunch

Facebook introduces new 3D Touch features

Soon enough, it’ll be easier to navigate through the Facebook app. Facebook’s currently releasing to a small number of users new 3D Touch features to make previewing things like profiles, photos, and web links. This new feature will let you peek and pop into profiles, take a closer look at photos, and preview everything from web links, groups, pages, and events. Facebook’s icon is also getting a new shortcut that will let you head directly to your timeline. The widespread rollout of these features are expected to come over the next few months.

Source: Engadget

Nielsen adds Facebook to measure popularity of TV shows online

Nielsen used to only use Twitter chatter to measure how popular a television show is online. Now, Facebook will be included in rating the popularity of shows on the web. Nielsen will be calling it Social Content Ratings, which replaces the existing Twitter TV Ratings, and it’ll track live activity during awards shows, original series premieres, and sporting events.

The information it gets from Facebook will be the stuff you share publicly or those you share with friends and followers. These will be included in the ratings Nielsen will release for the first half of 2016. They won’t get the specifics on the content, though. Instead, Facebook will be offering aggregate data. We won’t be surprised if Instagram is the next to be added and your memes might be put to use.

Source: Engadget