Facebook is holding its big F8 developer conference at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco center today. Unfortunately for the social networking company, it has accidentally leaked most of its new announcements early thanks to its official app for the conference. The app appears to have sent out a notification to attendees ahead of time, detailing what they can expect at the conference, as you can see in the screenshot below.
Whoops! Facebook just pre-announced its big initiatives from F8. So what’s a teleportation station? #StarTrek? pic.twitter.com/kcO5NXmKht
— Ian Sherr (@iansherr) March 25, 2015
Let’s break them down.
“Parse for IoT” refers to a company that Facebook bought in 2013. Parse provides the core operational elements of an app, so that developers can build whatever pretty thing they want on top of that foundation. Facebook has apparently chosen to extend this paid service for anyone who wants to create Facebook-centric smart devices. We’ll likely hear more details of this program today, though it’s hard to imagine what business a smart coffee maker or Wi-Fi jump rope has in alerting you of a Facebook friend’s birthday.
“Messenger as a Platform” confirms the rumour currently circulating that Facebook is planning to turn its Messenger app into a platform that developers can build upon. Rival messaging apps Line and WeChat already do something similar. The change could let users pay their phone bill, control their hotel room, or buy movie tickets without ever leaving the app.
The last one, “Teleportation Station,” is a bit tricky. Our best guess is that this refers to new Facebook features on the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, which the company bought in a $2 billion deal last March. It’d be appropriate for Mark Zuckerberg to show us how he’s put the gadget to use almost exactly a year after the mammoth purchase.
This is the second leak from Facebook in less than a week. Android Police recently got their hands on a screenshot of a banner ad appearing in the Facebook app advertising an as-yet unannounced Phone app that would replace the user’s default dialer.
Either way, we will get more details later today. Stay tuned.