At the annual developer conference on Tuesday Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, announced plans to shift users towards private conversations and away from public broadcasting on social networks.
The conference also unveiled a redesign of the Facebook desktop and mobile app. The updates will include new features that will promote more small group conversations instead of messages and status updates on the news feed. The redesign is being hailed “FB5” and will be rolling out over the next several months. Zuckerberg is convinced these updates “will end up creating a more trustworthy platform.”
Facebook has made a conscious effort to push messaging apps WhatsApp and Messenger. This update will allow them to be in the forefront of changing social media behaviors and encourage more private and small community conversations.
There are updates to other platforms including Instagram. The photo-sharing social platform has a new camera feature called Create Mode which will allow users to create a post for stories that aren’t a photo or video. At the developer conference it was also announced that Instagram is going to be running testing on hiding likes for users. The company stated “We are testing this because we want your followers to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get.” The post creator will still be able to see the number of likes on a post.
They will also allow influencers to tag clothing items they are wearing in a post so followers can purchase within the app. Zuckerberg also announced Oculus, the virtual-reality company, will start shipping two VR headsets later this May.
