Everything that mattered at F8 2015

F8 2015 highlights

Facebook's F8 conference may be geared toward the guys and gals that make our favorite social network tick from behind the scenes, but there were plenty of important announcements that will impact the everyday usage of folks like you and me.

The question is, just how much will these new bits make our lives (our Facebook lives, anyway) better? That remains to be seen, but tag along as we look at the top news to leave Mark Zuckerberg and Co's mouth during F8 2015.

Oculus Rift in 2015

Among the biggest revelations of this year's dev con came from Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer, who vaguely mentioned virtual reality will arrive in 2015.

While he didn't go so far as to say it will be the Oculus Rift we'll see before the year is up, it's a safe bet this is the VR headgear he was referring to, namely because Facebook owns Oculus.

It also corroborates Oculus founder Palmer Luckey's earlier statement that Rift will be out in 2015. Oculus CTO John Carmack's previously alluded to Gear VR for the Galaxy S6 releasing by year's end, a fact that should put pressure on Rift to come out this year.

Facebook Messenger applications

The other earth-shattering news of F8 was Messenger related.

Facebook is positioning the chat client it forced users to download as an end-all-and-be-all communication station. How's it going to do that? For starters, by giving you third-party apps as a way to express yourself and communicate with your friends.

The Messenger Platform allows developers to create applications specifically for user expression and communication. TechRadar Wearables Editor Lily Prasuethsut checked out some of the 40 applications already created for Messenger, deeming them perfect for the selfie generation.

ESPN, The Weather Channel and apps that let you make GIFs are among Messenger Platform's applications.

Facebook Messenger for businesses

Additionally, Businesses on Messengers seeks to revolutionize the way businesses communicate with customers.

Launching in a few weeks, the feature will let businesses send things like shipping details and order confirmations to customers, who must opt in to receive the notifications.

Customers can also ask the businesses questions, and Facebook hopes this kind of interaction will create a more personable e-commerce experience, one akin to what we used to experience back in the day.

The feature is currently being tested with Everlane and zulily, but more business integrations will launch in the coming weeks.

Sperhical videos

Being that VR was a major theme of F8, it was no surprise Facebook revealed a feature perfect for the future tech during its Day 1 keynote.

Spherical videos, basically 360-degree streams that let users control where they're looking, are coming to the News Feed.

Not only will this lend a new dimension to Facebook's marque feature, it also makes it VR-ready. Imagine wearing an Oculus Rift, popping into your Facebook News Feed and being instantly immersed into a video posted by one of your friends?

It seems like an early but important step in Facebook creating the kind of immersion needed for VR to succeed. We can only expect there will be more to come.

By the numbers

As with every keynote by every company, Facebook had some bragging to do about its users and the amount of time they spend on the social network.

Among the biggest figures to stick out were 600 million and 3 billion. That's 600 million monthly Messenger users and 3 billion videos viewed a day in Facebook. Yes, that's "billion" with a "b" and that's a day, as in, every 24 hours.

Facebook is still raking in big numbers despite the rise of competitive social networks. It's still looking for the right formula to keep users - especially young ones - but it's seemingly working very hard to hit on the right mark.

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