At Facebook’s F8 yesterday, the company made some interesting announcements like offering its messenger as a platform, analytics for apps, real-time comment system and more. Here’s a brief look at some of the major announcements the social media giant made. - Messenger as a platform: Probably the biggest announcement of the lot is the ability for developers to develop apps for Facebook’s Messenger. For a start the company has launched around 40 new apps, for photos, videos, audio clips and GIFs among others. The platform will be available to all developers on iOS and Android. - Analytics for apps: Facebook has also opened Analytics for apps for all developers. This move makes sense for Facebook as it has loads of experience in analysing user data through its own app. Developers will be able to figure out who is using their apps using this service. - LiveRail: Mobile app publishers can also now use LiveRail’s monetization platform to manage display ads as well as video ads. This will enable advertisers to “use Facebook’s approach for delivering the right ad to the right audience”. Facebook had acquired the video ad tech startup for $400m to $500m, in July last year. - Internet of Things: Another important announcement from Facebook was regarding Parse, the company it acquired in 2013. Parse will now support IoT development through an SDK for Arduino, although it will soon launch for other platforms as well. Other than this the company also introduced support for React, a new debugging…
