F8 2015: Using Facebook's Family of Services to Build, Grow and Monetize Apps

Today more than 2,500 developers joined us in San Francisco at F8, our annual developer conference where we bring the global community together to talk about how we can help developers build, grow and monetize their apps.

Over the last few years, Facebook has evolved into a family of apps and services to give people more ways to share what matters to them with the people they care about most. Our goal is to help developers build great experiences and services that help people connect and share.

We announced more than 25 products and tools for developers to build better apps and businesses across all platforms and devices. We can't wait to see what you'll create.

BUILD

• Stability & Bug Dashboard: We're committed to fixing 90% of bugs within 30 days and we'll show a chart of our progress on our bug dashboard. In addition, for bugs which affect Core parts of our platform like Login and Social Plugins, developers will now see an estimate of when they can expect their bugs to get fixed.
• Graph API v2.3: API v2.3 marks our fourth versioned API release, with a new Debug Mode offering more visibility and additional data on each API call, updated functionality for managing videos and Pages, and new features that give people more control over their information.
• New SDKs for iOS and Android: We've completely rebuilt our iOS and Android SDKs for version 4.0. The simplified programming models for Login and Sharing make it easier to automatically handle errors, and reduce the size of an app using the SDKs.
• Parse for IoT: Connect apps to hardware devices and build for the Internet of Things with new SDKs for the Arduino Yún microcontroller board and Embedded C.
• Parse Enhanced Sessions: A more secure way to manage session logins for each device.
• Parse + React: Parse is launching a library to bring its powerful data platform to applications built with React, the popular front end framework. This makes it even easier for developers to build complex and dynamic apps with Parse.
• Parse Cloud Code Webhooks: Write code in whatever language you want. As long as you have a server running it, your Cloud Code can integrate with it.
• Parse Explorer: A new, powerful debugging tool for production issues in your Parse app.
• Ads API v2.3: Ads API v2.3 is now open for all developers to use.
• Enhanced Video API: Updates to the Video API provide more control and customization of videos on Facebook.

GROW

• Messenger Platform: A new way for apps to integrate with Messenger so people can better express themselves with GIFs, photos, videos, audio clips and more. For developers, this means more opportunities for growth and engagement.
• Facebook Analytics for Apps: A single place to understand your app's audience and measure how people use your app. This enables you to see the effectiveness of your ads, create better experiences for people in your app, and better understand the people who use your app through anonymized, aggregated insights.
• Social Plugins: Refreshed designs and better mobile experiences that will help people engage with content off Facebook. The Embedded Video Player is an entirely new social plugin that lets publishers embed native Facebook videos on their sites in a full-bleed video player, and lets people watch and interact with Facebook videos from anywhere on the web. With the new Comments plugin, people can have unified conversations about interesting content they see across the web.
• App Invites: Grow your app organically by letting people send customized invites directly to their friends.
• Mobile App Ads enhancements: Our app ads helper tool has been updated to better help with app configuration. See some of our latest success stories with video and engagement ads.

MONETIZE

• LiveRail: Mobile app publishers can now use LiveRail’s monetization platform to manage their video and display ads business. Additionally, LiveRail is enabling publishers to use Facebook’s approach for delivering the right ad to the right audience—meaning better results and better experiences for people.
• In-game Gifting: A new feature that lets players gift items to friends who are also playing the game.

The full keynote session is now online to view. To experience the rest of F8, sign up to get access to keynotes, sessions and other exclusive content only for online attendees.

Look out for a full preview of day 2 later today.