New features are coming to Facebook and Instagram.
I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on Tech Daily.
Facebook is holding its annual Faight Developers conference this week near San Francisco, and they announced a bunch of new features and products for all of their brands, including Facebook, Instagram, Whatsappened Oculus. I'm going to go over the biggest things coming to Facebook and Instagram, which are two of the most popular apps.
Let's start with Facebook.
The two biggest announcements have to do with dating and the ability to clear out your Facebook history. Now I'm not talking about your search history, but this is all the stuff that Facebook collects about you as you browse the web and use their website. The feature is called clear History. It's kind of like erasing your web browser. But it really has to do with all the websites and apps that send information to Facebook when you use them,
and spoiler alert, it's pretty much all of them. You can delete the information after you see it, or you can even turn off collection of this and going forward. Now, keep in mind this is not going to be an easy process. Well, it might be easy to turn it off, but once you do, Facebook kind of hinted that it might not be so simple to use the Facebook login option for websites after this.
Also, your data is still.
Going to be collected, it's just done so in a more anonymous way. So we'll have to keep an eye on this one because the feature is not available just yet. I'm kind of curious to see how this will be implemented and whether it's useful or kind of frustrating.
Dating is the next.
Big thing Facebook's going to build into their app, and this makes a ton of sense. Facebook has so much data on people. I think some people might be hesitant to use it at first because they might want to keep their dating life separate from their Facebook life. But then again, this might really forward some pretty interesting connections. Facebook knows all about you, they know all about your friends and everyone on there, and they also know who
you stalk on there. Now, the dating part of Facebook's going to be a separate section of the app, so you're going to have to create a new profile to use it. Facebook's going to recommend matches based on your dating preferences, the things you both have in common, and also your mutual friends. They are not going to recommend people that you're already friends with and dating profiles are only going to.
Show first names. One more thing to know.
Dating messages will be sent through a special inbox, and if you're chatting with someone for the first time, you will not be able to exchange links or photos.
That's probably pretty smart all right.
Now, on to Instagram, so many new features here too. For starters, Instagram is getting video chat now. This is different from the live video function that you're familiar with. This is more like FaceTime, but with your Instagram friends. It's all private. But the cool part is that you'll be able to video chat with one person or several people at once, and you can also minimize the video and you can still browse around on Instagram while you're
talking to your friends. So this definitely appeals to our ever shortening attention spans. Look for this feature to come to Instagram in the next few weeks.
And I have to say.
Instagram is slowly but surely becoming a really nice way to get in touch with everyone because guess what, everyone is on there. It's kind of like secondary to text messaging. I find myself doing more direct messages on Instagram because all your friends are on there. It doesn't matter if they're on iOS or Android. And now with video chat thrown into the mix, this is going to be pretty interesting, very useful.
Now.
Also on Instagram, they're adding a new Explore page, so it's going to show groups of things that you might be interested in, like hashtags of dogs, travel or architecture. And there's also going to be some new ways to share to Instagram Stories right from popular apps.
They mentioned Spotify and go Pro at first. Now here's the thing.
If you have an Android phone, this functionality is sort of already there, or at least it is on my Pixel. Perhaps it was something Instagram was testing, but I found it really useful to be able to share photos from my gallery right to Instagram Stories as opposed to taking them with the camera inside Instagram Stories.
See the difference.
So I can see this feature getting very popular as more and more apps lets you share right to your story from the apps and you don't have to connect them at all. It just sort of happens through the app. For instance, let's say you're listening to music on Spotify and you want to share this to Instagram Stories right now. You'd have to take a screenshot and Spotify, then go over open Instagram, go to your stories, import that picture
right on it and then share it. The new feature would just let you share right from Spotify, so that's pretty cool. There you have it, just a few of the things coming soon to Facebook and Instagram. Let me know what you think on Twitter I'm at rich Demurro or on Instagram at rich on tech. Remember many of these features are coming soon, so they might.
Not be available just yet, but be on the lookout for them.
If you like this podcast, be sure to leave a review and rating in the Apple podcast sapp. That way more people discover it. And as always, links to everything I mentioned here on my website.
Just go to a richontech dot tv. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Richdmurro. I'll talk to you real soon.