The annual conference of Facebook, the F8, made some important announcements, especially about its design. According to the CEO Mark Zuckerberg, we can say bye to the traditional blue in all the versions of this social network; from the app to the website, it will present a brand new look with a predominant color: white!
FB5 version
This new era has a name, FB5, and Mark promises that it will be cleaner and faster than ever. Besides that, this update will give more importance to the groups: they will appear front and center in the feed. About the new design, if the user is familiar with the Messenger app, this version won’t be so strange, and it is taking some attributes from its sister Instagram.
The improved theme is been testing right now in some countries like Canada, and the company is waiting to launch the update very soon in the USA and the rest of the world. For some countries, it will be a slow process, and in others you may wake up in the morning, check the app and there you have a brand new appearance.
New features
Besides the new look, they are installing a new feature called “Meet New Friends,” that with all the privacy problems that the company has been dealing with, sounds a little strange. But Zuckerberg explained that this feature is an opt-in tool, which translates to “it is your choice to activate this option or not.”
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Today at F8, I talked about how we’re starting to build out a privacy-focused social platform. For the last 15 years, we’ve built Facebook and Instagram into digital equivalents of the town square, where you can interact with lots of people at once. Now we’re focused on building the digital equivalent of the living room, where you can interact in all the ways you’d want privately — from messaging and stories to secure payments and more. To bring this vision to life, we’re building Messenger and WhatsApp into platforms for all kinds of private interactions and working on making end-to-end encryption the default for both. We’ve redesigned Facebook to make communities as central as friends. We’ve added new ways to buy things securely on Instagram. Augmented and virtual reality also create more personal and intimate experiences — so we’re bringing WhatsApp to Portal, adding end-to-end encryption for all calls, and launching Portal internationally. And I’m very excited that this year we’re shipping Oculus Rift S and Oculus Quest, the headset that gives you full freedom of movement with no cables. As we build more of our services around this privacy vision, we’re also changing how we run our company. We’re committed to consulting with experts on the major tradeoffs and social issues to find the best path forward, taking a more active role in making sure developers use our tools in good ways, and building out the technical infrastructure to support this vision. This is going to take time and we don’t have all the answers yet, but we’re focused on getting this right and doing it openly. I’m looking forward to sharing more with you as we continue on this journey to build a private social platform.
Meet New Friends was created to help users to engage in new friendships according to their circles; for example: the city you are living right now or the previous one; the school you went to; the company you are working, especially if they have different brand across the country or world; the tool will show users in those communities but they also must have the tool on.
On the conference they explain that Meet New Friends will integrate with the groups tab, to get users from these communities. But right now the interaction is being tested in some places that the company is not revealing, and they hope to include it very soon on the new updates of the app and website.
Groups
This feature has been gaining importance for the firm from some time now, but at the conference they explained that the groups would be everywhere on the app. Of course, they will keep the tab, where the news and all the activities will be shown. But they can be spotted on the Marketplace, Gaming, and even Watch, to recommend new groups according to your likes.
In the website, that will be updated in the following months, they will appear as in the app, with a tab bar above the feed, but they can also be displayed on the right side of the screen, to provide easy access to the ones you belong and new ones to discover.
As you can see, Facebook is planning some new surprises for all its users. Apart from the new improvements, they are focusing on the privacy aspects due to all the problems they have. But in general, this new update can improve many aspects of the well-known platform, hoping to face a new era of the company.
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