Even with so many new social media sites, Facebook remains the most trusted and most loved social site. The Facebook social platform has grown impeccably since it was launched in 2004. Facebook constantly grows with new feature updates, tools, improvements and trends that everyone can enjoy. Facebook's markable tools, features and 2.37 billion monthly users make it a most preferable choice for marketers worldwide.
With a new decade, 2020, Facebook has planned the fifth redesign of its platform FB5. Libra. This year is big for Facebook trends, with new trends like virtual and augmented reality, Facebook is ready to give users the ultimate fun experience.
So without waiting longer, let's dive into the list of Facebook's most important trends in 2020.
Facebook Live
Going live on Facebook is always on trend, and it's also one of the most effective ways to create engagement on Facebook platforms. According to the Search Engine Journal, engagement created from the Facebook live video was double than the engagement created from posts. Facebook Live videos give your audience an organic feel. Also, time interaction between publishers and audiences is something that makes it more successful.
More focus on private channels
Last year at the annual F8 developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned privacy-focused social media networking. In a Facebook update, Zuckerberg said: “the next five-plus year's social environments will feel different, re-emphasizing private interaction and building small and strong communities is what we need”.
This means Facebook will prioritize the private channels it offers that include Facebook group, messengers, and other channels in its app family-like Instagram and WhatsApp. Also, close Friend filters that were introduced on Instagram will show up on Facebook as well. Private Instagram accounts have proven successful for many brands. Facebook introduced Groups for pages in 2017 for brands and last year; they introduced Private groups.
Group centric model
The fifth version FB5 features Facebook Groups at the center of the platform. The official redesign was announced in April. However, only a few new formats have received a grant to access while some formats are already being used.
Here is the group-centric design of Facebook:
- Discovering new groups will be easier as the Group tab will get a new look.
- Group updates will be seen in the News Feed more frequently.
- The group tab will create personalized feed showcasing activities of all the group's members that joined in the group.
Support for small business
Facebook is an ideal place for small businesses. At Facebook, small companies can easily connect with their respective audience without going over budget. The number of small companies on Facebook has grown remarkably in the last twelve months, i.e. from 140 billion from 90 billion.
That's not it, Mark Zuckerberg shared his ten-year vision for Facebook this year, And one of the main priority of his vision is the growth of small businesses. In the next decade, Facebook will build an easy to use tool for eCommerce and payments for small companies that earlier was accessible only to big companies.
Each year Facebook introduces something new for marketers. Last year it launched video editing tools, appointment booking tools, and automated ads. This year it will bring storefront related features that simplify shopping and making payments. Also, Facebook will feature AI-driven automation for Ads.
The growth of AR/VR Ad formats
In the year 2017, Facebook announced moving advertisements towards augmented and virtual reality. Since then, the platform continues to expand AR/VR ad opportunities for users and marketers.
Advertisements on the Facebook platform have moved from content to dynamic formats like stories. To support the current advertising trends, Facebook launched new features last year, i.e. Video polls on feeds. Video polls have proven to create more engagement than video ads.
Facebook features Virtual reality on its platform built by its Oculus team. This hardware makes users experience anything, anywhere with anyone. Users can interact with friends in different avatars using Facebook's virtual reality.
Oculus is the dedicated team of Facebook for building social experiences in VR. In one of its promotional videos, Facebook shows Spaces that allows users to meet friends in a virtual world even if they are not physically at the same location.
AR
The new Facebook's AR platform aspects, tools and features that will help users to create rich and relevant contextually AR experience.
Location AR: This feature lets you place different images in the camera's viewfinder. Mark showed an example of location AR in an event. The image features a cereal bowl with sharks swimming around it, and it also contained a graphic “it's feeding time”.
Patch editor: This tool is used for controlling audio, adding interaction, manipulating materials, and also for creating your shaders without any codes.
Background segmentation: This features exactly what it says, it separates people or objects from the background. You can then place the person or object to another background and have fun.
Semantic Scene understanding: It helps users create contextually aware experiences such as the rising of heatwaves when a coffee mug gets detected.
3D posts on Camera: it allows users to take a 3D post from News Feed and experience it through the Facebook camera on their mobile device.
Free to use assets: With this tool, users can choose and add a ready-made sound file from Facebook's library and 3D models. For this Facebook has partnered with Sketchfab.
AR ADs: It helps users shop better online, they can try the products like makeup, glasses, clothes on their mobile app. AR makes online shopping very convenient, especially for women. They can now try lipstick shades and other makeups without going to a store. Over 63 % of people have purchased a product after trying it with AR technology.
The list isn't over yet. There are many features still on the way. Facebook will soon be launching new tools and capabilities like AR Target Tracker, Body Tracking, Hand Tracking, High-Fidelity Face Tracking, and more to follow the movement and tie it to your experience.
Artificial Intelligence
Facebook has also invested in Artificial intelligence to keep up with tech trends. Facebook uses AI to collect user's data for advertiser's benefits. Facebook's Artificial intelligence will play a crucial role in building businesses for long term prospects. Also, Facebook uses for so many different purposes like identifying fake accounts that spread malicious content and shutting them immediately.
AI enables the machine to learn to clarify data by itself. AI is letting Facebook revolutionize its business with different use cases. Artificial intelligence on Facebook has seven categories, mentioned below.
- Analyzing Text: Most of the content published on Facebook is text to analyze Facebook using a great tool called Deeptext. The tool deciphers the meaning of posted content for relative meaning. Later facebook uses a tool for lead generation it directs users to advertise based on their conversations. It also offers related shopping links and posts based on their interest.
- Mapping Population Density: using AI technology, Facebook is working on mapping the population density of the world. Till 2016 Facebook has successfully mapped twenty-two nations. Facebook has now also mapped the population of the majority of Africa. Soon it will complete the mapping population density of the whole world.
- Easy Translation: Facebook connects people from all over the world on its platform. However, there stands a language barrier, so to remove that Facebook has built an automated translation system. This system is helping more than 800 million people to find their preferred translated posts in the news feed.
- Chatbots: These are highly efficient multipurpose tools that simplify tasks through automation. Like automated subscription content as weather, shipping notification, automated messages and more. Facebook has built a powerful bot API for messenger which has three functions, i.e. Send/receive API, Message template and welcome screen.
- Detecting Bad Content: The main concern of every social media site is its privacy. Facebook uses AI to detect bad content that can be categorized into seven categories: hate speech, terrorism, nudity, graphic violence, spam, fake account and suicide prevention.
- Preventing Suicide: In the fast running world, more people are moving towards depression and anxiety, which leads to more numb er of suicide case. Suicide cases are the second leading cause of death for teenagers and youths. And so Facebook using AI to prevent suicide cases. AI signals on people most who need help and have suicidal tendencies.
- Caffe2go: is a fun and creative camera tool of Facebook AI. It can turn videos into artwork on Facebook apps. It basically takes artistic qualities of one image or video and applies it to another image/video. The technique is known as Style transfer.
No Like Counts display
Facebook plans to hide like counts, last year in September it confirmed a count hide test in Australia. The test will be similar to the Instagram move, i.e. hiding like counts on private accounts globally. The users included in the test will not be seeing the total number of likes and views on photos and video posts of feeds. However, users can see likes on their uploaded posts.
The Instagram test was accepted positively, so it's most likely that Facebook likes counts will be removed as well. It is not certain that it will affect business on Facebook or how it will affect it. However, if we talk about partnering influencers, you will not be able to know their engagement through like counts.
Upgrading a desktop version of the Messenger app
Mobile apps are now a big deal for ad revenues. Over 94% of Facebook ad revenue comes from the app. However, this social site doesn't fail to target desktop users; it has created small pivots for desktop.
At the F8 annual developer conference held last Facebook introduced the desktop version of messenger. But only the beta version of the app can be found in test markets. The full roll-out version is still to come.
The desktop version will include the same features of phone apps. New formats of group call and collaboration can be seen that support the platform's shift to private spaces.
Mounting Political pressure
Facebook is improving political ads and pages as the U.S election is nearing. The social media giants add new controls to political ads and pages and also make it more transparent. The new controls allow users to watch less political ads and use other controls like seeing presidential campaign spend tracker, labels for political ads and state-controlled media.
Chris founded Youpreneur® in 2015. He is a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker and author of the bestselling books “Virtual Freedom” and “Rise of the Youpreneur”. He hosts our podcast, live events and coaches our clients inside the Youpreneur Incubator. Chris is based in Cambridge, UK.
