Facebook’s 2018 F8 Developer Conference took place May 1-2 in San Jose, California – a two-day forum full of learning and discovery as Facebook showcased their new tools and the amazing work of the developers who are using them. Our VP of Creative Technology and TMP Labs guru, Craig Knutson, attended the conference with recruitment applications in mind, and here are his top takeaways:
While introducing their 2018 product roadmap of social, messenger, AI, AR and VR tools, Facebook reinforced the fact that “people” are the center and focus of their technology – a technology designed to use people’s data to bring them closer together and connect their world of family, friends, partners, and colleagues.
With this technology comes a great responsibility to protect the data that it leverages and the integrity of their platform. They continue to put measures in place to do so, including using AI tools to recognize fake accounts. Also, Facebook now requires credentials for specific content category postings and provides additional transparency to user’s ad-tracking settings, even introducing a new feature that allows users to clear their browsing history within the app.
In addition, Facebook is restricting data that third-party apps can collect on users, and has established a team of 20K people to review and audit all third-party apps. This audit temporarily restricted any new app publishing during the process, but has since been re-opened as announced at the conference. This is a great benefit to any clients looking to implement new career chatbots or third-party apps.
Facebook research showed that users who socially engaged with others have greater benefits to their overall well-being than those who passively digested content.
So, Facebook is updating its social app to include tools to allow people to engage with one another more seamlessly and in new ways. Watch Party will allow users to watch videos and chat with friends in real-time while watching the same content. This feature also increases the opportunity for businesses to provide engaging SME videos, career advice, job info, FAQs and much more.
Also, Facebook created a new Groups Tab and Join Group button, making it easier for users to discover, manage and join new groups. Students and experienced job seekers could join career groups to ask questions and learn what it’s truly like to do a job from the people doing it.
The conference focused on building meaningful relationships, and Facebook announced it will be offering a new Dating matching service using the power of its social graph.
While this is currently being offered for dating, you can see the future potential of leveraging this tool to connect people for jobs, such as in an ERP or mentorship capacity, using this authentic and interconnected graph to push trusted, informative and inspiring conversations among like-minded candidates and employees.
With over 800M views a day, the Instagram Explore Tab is being redesigned, making it easier to find communities based on user’s interests. The new design tab organizes a user’s content around topic channels that meet their interests. In addition, Instagram will soon feature Video Chat and an AR camera effects studio for face filters and effects. This will provide organizations a great opportunity to build engaging custom consideration content to support their jobs and culture.
Facebook is continuously focused on creating the feeling of presence and defying distance in VR. In addition to internal skills training, this continues to be a great tool for companies to immerse candidates into their culture and work environments. To make it even easier, Oculus released Oculus GO, the first stand-alone virtual reality headset that doesn’t require a phone or connection to a computer to operate. It costs $199, has built-in audio and connects to the Oculus store with access to over 1K games and experiences.
Along with the new headset, Oculus will be releasing three new social VR features.
OculusTV transports users into a virtual space to watch TV and movies with friends on what would be the equivalent of a 180” TV. Oculus Rooms is an updated space where users can interact with friends to watch movies, play games or listen to music. And Oculus Venues will offer fans the opportunity to experience concerts, comedy shows, movie screenings or sporting events as if they were in the audience at the event through live 180-degree video. Future career applications could include town hall meetings, keynote speeches, career events and more.
Facebook will also soon allow you to share 3D rendered content in your feed for users to interact with or pull into their live spaces via AR or social VR. This merges technology with content to personalize engagement, making skills training and remote collaboration a reality. Companies can give candidates personalized tours and the chance to interact with their future work environments and colleagues, bringing their culture to life.
This summer, Facebook will be rolling out 3D photos in users’ newsfeeds. Users can take a photo with their smart phone and upload it as a 3D photo to their feed for users to interact with. They are also testing an AI concept that will reconstruct physical spaces based on information gathered from flat videos, porting users into a virtual photobook to explore with their friends. This will truly take content and storytelling to the next level, allowing companies to make their content come alive while connecting people to their brand.
In discussing its future vision, Facebook mentioned how AI is remaking industries across the globe, highlighting the fact that AI is general-purpose technology that transforms every field it enters, from health care to finance to law to recruitment.
Similar to the technology used in scanning job descriptions to detect and normalize job titles, Facebook is using the neural net to train computers to do tasks or answer questions by learning answers through image and hashtag recognition, language input, translations, and reasoning.
All of this proves that Facebook is committed to connecting the world and focused on advancing core features of AI to identify, authenticate and distribute genuine content.
Companies that recognize the opportunities will be able to leverage their technology to reach candidates in a whole new way.
Check out the video highlights here:
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