The Tech Landscape #206 💬
Facebook messaging, Facebook Gaming, and Twitter iterating: this is issue 206 of The Tech Landscape, a weekly collection of news about consumer digital technology. Stories are selected by me, Peter Gasston, with a little insight and opinion where appropriate.
The (self-imposed) remit of this newsletter is to cover a broad range of stories so that you can get a sense of everything that’s going on in consumer digital tech. I try to add some context and insight if I can, but really it’s about the what happened first, and the why second. But if you’re also in the market for a more pointy look at the top stories, you might want to subscribe to the new newsletter OK, and? from my brilliant friend Rosie Copland-Mann.
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Right, on with the newsletter. Hope you’re well!
Facebook F8 Refresh
Facebook held its annual developer conference, but this year chose to scale it back and didn‘t hold the customary Mark Zuckerberg opening keynote. The major new features announced tended to centre around messaging—the ‘bot revolution’ may not have happened but messaging tools still play a big role in keeping businesses on its platforms.
WhatsApp added new tools and processes for businesses. They include new message and input types for automated conversations, and a streamlined setup process.
blog.whatsapp.com/new-experiences-to-make-business-messaging-faster-and-easier
Messaging
Developers can extend their Messenger bots to Instagram. The Messenger API for Instagram lets businesses maintain their communication with customers across both apps (and makes it a lot harder for regulators to break up the two companies).
messengernews.fb.com/2021/06/02/the-wait-is-over-messenger-api-for-instagram-is-now-available-to-all-developers/
Messaging
Login Connect lets customers opt in to messages from a business during the Facebook login flow. When someone uses Facebook to log in to an app or website, they’ll be prompted to let the business message them (if available); Facebook says 70% of users in their tests accepted this step.
developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2021/06/02/introducing-login-connect-messenger/
Messaging
AR development platform Spark AR announced a beta test of Multipeer, for building shared effects in video calls. It will allow multiple people in a Messenger video group (Instagram and Portal to follow) to apply the effects together, or play a game, or collaborate—details are a little vague. Shareable multi-user experience is the next big deal in AR—Niantic and Snap both announced their own versions recently.
sparkar.facebook.com/blog/spark-ar-previews-multipeer-api-for-ar-video-calling/
XR
Twitter is on an absolute tear of new features at the moment. I don’t know what’s changed there, but I like it.
Twitter announced its subscription service, Twitter Blue. For a small monthly fee, users will get an Undo Tweet feature, folders to organise bookmarks, Reader Mode to more easily follow threads, and customisation and support options. It’s coming to Australia and Canada first. There’s nothing in here I’d pay for yet, but I imagine more options and features will be added in future—include the ad-removals from Scroll, which Twitter bought recently, and I’d pay £50 a year.
blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/introducing-twitter-blue.html
Subscriptions
Twitter is testing showing ads in Fleets. It’s fairly inevitable—the Stories format is a standard advertising channel on every other social media app that has them—but if an informal Twitter poll I ran is correct, Fleets haven’t even finished rolling out to all users yet, six months after they were announced.
business.twitter.com/en/blog/fleet-ads.html
Advertising
Twitter is partnering on a local (US) weather service called Currently (renamed from Tomorrow). It will use all of Twitter’s new paid features—Spaces, Revue, etc—to create a community around the weather and explaining weather events. It’s an interesting early test of Twitter’s move into content aimed at interest groups.
axios.com/twitter-holthaus-tomorrow-weather-meteorologists-6ca8692a-112c-45a4-92f2-3fae5ea813f0.html
Subscriptions
Twitter began a test to give Spaces its own tab in the app. It should make it easier to discover Spaces that don’t involve people you already follow. I’ve said it before, but the speed at which Twitter is pushing Spaces is something we’ve never seen before from the company.
twitter.com/TwitterSpaces/status/1400531105485312008
Audio
Everything Else
Facebook Gaming is testing new monetisation options for creators. The first is allowing viewers to send Stars (micro-tips) in on-demand videos; the second is letting live-streaming creators manually trigger in-roll ad breaks. It’s also expanding the Level Up program, which lets creators start to earn revenue, to more countries.
facebook.com/fbgaminghome/blog/vod-monetization
Gaming
Facebook bought Unit 2 Games, which makes a Roblox-like experience creation tool called Crayta. It will let users easily build and deploy games to Facebook Gaming—increasing the number of titles on the platform, and giving Facebook another attempt at ‘the metaverse’ along with its Oculus VR title, Horizon.
facebook.com/fbgaminghome/blog/welcome-unit-2-games
Gaming
Warner Music Group is partnering with Genies to create avatars for its artists. Genies started as a Bitmoji-like service, but has recently started partnering with celebrities on limited-edition content drops as NFTs—obviously an attractive new revenue stream for Warner.
wmg.com/news/warner-music-group-and-genies-sign-partnership-bring-wmgs-roster-artists-life-avatars-35396
Entertainment
Nreal Light AR glasses launched in Spain in collaboration with Vodafone. This is the fourth country they’ve launched in, and I’ve yet to see any meaningful conversation about them yet—perhaps a consequence of language, perhaps because they’re not a game-changer.
twitter.com/Nreal/status/1399359682892890114?s=20
XR
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