Facebook Launches Live 360 Video Streaming

Just yesterday it was announced that Facebook is going to launch its support for 360-degree Live streams, called Live 360.

Today on 13th December 2016, National Geographic’s Facebook page will publish the first 360 Live video at noon as scientists emerge from 80 days in isolation pods at Utah’s Mars Desert Research Station.

The Live stream will feature footage from the landscape of Mars and interviews with the researchers.

About the Mars Isolation Pods

These seven space scientists from around the world have spent their past 80 days in isolation pods, simulating every aspect of life on Mars.

National Geographic will be live in Facebook as these scientists emerge from their pods. The scientists will let us have a look on some behind the scenes action, allowing us to see how they suit up in their space suits, explore the living quarters, take a rover out for a drive across the surface of Mars, and much more.

Facebook Live 360 Videos

Facebook will even take questions from the Facebook audience in their Q&A session with the experts, writers and thinkers.

Live 360 videos is going to be made available to more pages via the Live API in the coming months, and it will roll out for all the pages and profiles next year.

An example of Facebook VR in action

Amazing 360-degree Video give you Terryfying look of a giant Tornado

The giant tornado that rolled past the city of Wray, Colorado provided some stunning video and gave one teen couple a memorable prom photo. But now it's yielded one more gift: a mesmerizing, 360-degree view of the storm as it crosses a highway.

The video — be sure to spin the view to see the storm — gives you a fuller idea of what it's like to be this close to a large tornado. Not only can the viewer swivel around to see just how large the storm that spun the twister is, the video scans up to give you a look at the full length of the twister, right up to where it drops from the sky.

This is a rare look at the full, immense power nature churns up every year across the United States, and it's worth taking the video for a spin — literally.

360-degree photos are coming to Facebook News Feed

Facebook photos are set to get a lot more immersive.

The social network will soon add support for 360-degree photos to its News Feed, Facebook announced Wednesday. 

The new 360-degree photos will function a lot like Facebook's 360-degree videos. You can change your view of the photo by dragging you finger (or cursor, if you're on a browser) around the screen or holding your phone at a different angle.

The feature will support images shot with 360-degree camera, like Rioch's Theta S, as well panoramic shots captured on smartphones. 

And, like their video counterparts, the 360-degree photos will also be viewable from Samsung's Gear VR headsets. 

Speaking of the Gear VR, Facebook also plans to make some changes to the Oculus mobile app. The app will soon be updated with a new "what's new" section, meant to highlight the latest games and videos. Later, in June, the company plans to revamp the design of Oculus' home screen on Gear VR to make it easier to find recently-downloaded items. 

The Oculus-powered Gear VR has only been out for about six months but Facebook says it has already exceeded many of their initial expectations. Though we don't know how many headsets Samsung has shipped since its launch, Facebook says more than a million people used the Gear VR last month alone. 

Facebook also revealed some new stats around Gear VR content. There are now more than 250 apps for the headset (one of our biggest initial complaints about the Gear was the lack of apps) and 21 games that initially launched on the Gear but are now also available for the Oculus Rift headset.

Of the apps and games currently available, VR video continues to be some of the most popular content, according to Facebook, with 80% of Gear users watching videos.

Everything announced on Facebook F8 2016 Conference

Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference is one of the biggest events of the year, especially given how social media is changing our lives in significant ways. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, delivered a keynote speech yesterday which showcased Facebook’s vision of the future. He also listed how Facebook is expanding vigorously in other tech fields as well.

Zuckerberg’s F8 2016 keynote was mostly about Facebook’s future and some customer products. Bots took center stage just like at the Microsoft’s developer conference that was held recently. This was followed by improvements in some customer products, new Facebook features and some new tech coming from the world’s biggest social network.

Lets take a look at what Facebook is bringing for its users down the road.

Messenger Gets a Bot Platform

Facebook is going with bots after many of its competitors did so. Telegram, WeChat, Kik offer it already and Skype just got it. Now its Messenger’s turn to incorporate AI-powered bots for its 900 million users. The company took its sweet time before launching the feature. Even now, it’ll be offered with the newly launched Messenger Beta platform.

The developer platform will let businesses, including news companies, create bots which can interact with Messenger users. Bots can send and receive text, images, buttons, bubbles and calls. Facebook showed off a CNN messenger bot which was capable of reading stories, getting summaries and offered an “Ask CNN” command.

Zuckerberg says the app will learn from your actions and personalise its algorithms to evolve with time.

Facebook Bot Engine

The social network announced the beta launch of Bot Engine, a tool which lets developers teach chatbots what to say in specific situations. Developers can use the Bot Engine along with the Send/Receive API to build Messenger bots. The technology comes from the Messenger’s Wit.AI team.

Facebook Live Stream

Facebook Live is the company’s answer to Meerkat and Periscope. It lets users stream live videos to the social network which, the company hopes, will play a big role in its next growth phase. Live API now supports third-party hardware allowing people to use separate cameras to live stream content. The company has partnered with different manufacturers to build on it and release its own products within the next five years.

Internet Beaming Satellite

During F8 2016, Zuckerberg said that Facebook’s Free Basics program will soon launch its first satellite into orbit in the next few months. According to him, the free internet program is helping more than 25 million people around the world.

Facebook has also announced a Free Basics simulator which lets developers test out how their websites would look like when accessed using Free Basics.

360 Degree VR Camera

The social network just released its Oculus Rift VR headset a few weeks ago. However, it’s not stopping there. Facebook just revealed its new open-source 360-degree camera which can capture some great quality VR content. The camera boasts 17 cameras and can record 8K video at 60 frames per second. The built-in software automatically stitches the videos together.

Being open-source, developers can make their own hardware and software based on the available designs and code.

Instant Articles for Everyone

Facebook announced a couple of months ago that it was bringing Instant Articles to everyone. WordPress will be getting a plugin which will let publishers export their content to the social network. Instant Articles will be added to user feeds directly and increase reader interactions as a result.

Account Kit

The social network announced a new software called the Account Kit. Third-party developers can add it to apps, letting their users to sign in to connect with just their phone number or email address – no passwords needed.

Save To Facebook

Save to Facebook will be a new addition to the social network’s portfolio. It will let users add content to a list of things to view later. The button will be visible on websites, and work like Pinterest, Pocket or Digg.

Share Quotes Easily

Sharing quotable quotes have become quite popular on Facebook. That’s why the company is bringing a new method that will let users clip quotes they like on the web (or e-books) and share them on Facebook in a neat and clean way.

Mark’s View on VR and AR

The founder of Facebook says that virtual reality and augmented reality of the future will be accessible using a gadget not so different from a common pair of glasses. The glasses have been announced as a part of Facebook’s 10 year plan for the future. AR and VR are expected to grow to a $120 billion market by 2020.

Vine for Profile Videos

Facebook is making it much easier for people to replace their profile pictures with profile videos. The ability to upload a 7 second video instead of still pictures has been available since last year. However, users will now be able to upload videos using third-party apps.

Vine and Boomerang will be the first two partners with support for the profile video feature on Facebook.

Facebook and WhatsApp Beat Regular SMS

People use Facebook and WhatsApp to send 60 billion messages every single day, three times more than regular SMS. The figure is a clear indication of the world moving towards online methods of communication rather than the offline ones.

So there you have it folks. Which of these announcements are you excited about? Let us know in the comments below.