Given that they are the biggest players in the field, Apple, Google, and Amazon tend to be the most in the eye of the public in regard to technological innovations.
Apple has made great strides in personal assistant technology, while Google and Amazon have been improving algorithms and delivery drones. However, there’s another tech company that has been successfully pushing the limits of technology and making customers expect more with each year: Facebook.
With so many things changing in the field this year, the tech company is ready to invest even more in the year to come, so get ready to read about some of the major changes Facebook has in store for 2016.
Virtual Reality
Earlier this year, Facebook purchased Oculus – the main rival in the resurgence of virtual reality (VR) technology, so it’s no wonder customers, enthusiasts and engineers alike are eagerly expecting the 2016 launch of Oculus Rift.
With Facebook backing up the gadget, we should expect to see more VR-enabled content and interactions on the network’s platform as well, including 360 panoramas.
Instant Articles
Even though Instant Articles have already made an apparition earlier this year, it was only to a limited selection of partnering publishers. In theory, the new service was designed to keep wandering users within the app for as long as possible, while maximizing exposure for publishers at the same time.
But for a service that seemed like a mutual win for publishers and readers alike, Instant Articles didn’t catch on as easily as Facebook would’ve liked to. But no fear, Facebook will most likely be revamping and modifying the current model in 2016.
Facebook M
With Siri and Cortana – two digital assistants already popular in the mainstream – Facebook hopes to get a slice of the money that comes from this business so it has developed Facebook M, a Messenger-based digital assistant.
Facebook has taken M one step further by making it a digital/human hybrid – while it uses an algorithm similar to Siri’s, M also heavily relies on a team of human assistants for the more complex or ambiguous tasks.
The giant social network also shows promise in customer service, e-commerce and video content for the year to come. Some of these updates might be hits, and some failures – it’s the way life works.
But more important is the pace Facebook chooses for all of these services, because it has become clear by now that its app is no longer just a social media platform.
Image Source: Jerry Banfield
