Facebook’s top four innovations for the next decade

Facebook’s top four innovations for the next decade

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg won't be sending Donald Trump a friend request any time soon.

At today's F8 developer conference in San Francisco he criticised the Republican Presidential candidate and his supporters for fostering a culture of fear.

"As I look around, as I travel around the world, I am starting to see people and nations turning inward against this idea of a connected world and a global community," said Mr Zuckerberg.

Then without actually naming Trump during the keynote, he called him a coward.

"I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as 'others', for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, reducing trade and, in some cases around the world, even cutting access to the internet.

It takes courage to choose hope over fear, to say we can build something and make it better than it's ever been before."

The Facebook CEO has long lobbied for more visas for foreign workers.

"Instead of building walls we can help build bridges." he said. "Instead of dividing people we can help bring them together."

Then it was on with Facebook's plans to connect the world.

FACEBOOK'S TOP FOUR

Facebook's 10-year plan includes improvements in artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality.

Bots are beautiful

Developers will be allowed to build chatbots inside its Messenger app so people can chat to businesses directly.

"Between Facebook messenger and WhatsApp, people are sending 60 billion messages a day," said Mr Zuckerberg.

"Now we are exploring how you can communicate with businesses. You should be able to message a business like you message a friend."

The Bot platform is out in beta form and lets people do things like book tickets or get customer services by talking to an artificially intelligent robot, rather than calling a helpline or visiting a website.

Solar-powered plane

Facebook has revealed more about the giant, unmanned, solar-powered plane it's building, which will beam the internet down to developing countries.

"This is a killer. It's a solar-powered plane that we've designed to beam down internet from the sky," Mr Zuckerberg said.

"If you told me 12 years ago that one day Facebook was going to build a plane I would have told you you were crazy. But here we are. It has a wingspan wider than a 737 but it weighs less than a small car."

The Facebook CEO also announced the firm's first satellite, bringing internet services to sub-Saharan Africa.

Live Video

Facebook Live will be opened to developers to create new features to encourage people to share more original content on the site, which has 1.6 billion users.

Soon filmmakers will be able to stream live video to Facebook from any device. That includes flying drones, which Facebook demoed during the event.

Live video will also get new controls so a controller can switch cameras and zoom in on certain areas.

360-degree Camera

Facebook also unveiled its new Facebook Surround360 Camera, a virtual reality camera for generating 3D digital content.

The 17-camera setup has software that knits the images together which Facebook says will reduce the amount of time it takes to make a 360-degree video. It claims this puts it above its competitors.

It's offering filmmakers instructions for how to build the camera The catch is it will cost a more than $40 thousand to make.

"We had to do a lot of math, said Chris Cox, Facebook's chief product officer. "The eye is so sensitive, especially if you put it in an immersive environment."

Newshub.