Hisham Sarwar
The internal innovation culture of Facebook is a story that rarely gets told. But this culture is worth investigating that how such a young organization grabbed so much attention. It all starts with its engineers who have made it a real wonder for the tech world.
Facebook’s innovative process is less about getting approval; it is more about getting its engineers to participate. For this purpose, the company asks its engineers to tackle a project other than their regular duties after every month or two. Such engagements of engineers often lead to creation of important products such as the company’s first video player, its chat system, and its developer platform.
Once the engineers prototype their ideas, they are present them in front of their colleagues who vote for every project. The CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the executive team are presented only with those ideas that get highest votes.
The recent hackathon of Facebook was no less than the American Idol. On Monday, Cox and other top company executives presented most popular ideas in front of Zuckerberg during a livestream on the CEO’s personal Facebook page. Although not all the ideas will become real features but few of these have been given very much importance.
Following are the ideas that were presented.
Oculus VR Headset’s hand controllers:
Modified hand controllers for stimulating the feeling of heat and cold in virtual reality were presented by an employee from Facebook’s owned Oculus. The hand controllers were demonstrated using embedded thermal coolers.
Location request in Messenger:
Through this feature, a friend’s location can easily be known through the Messenger. Worried for the safety of loved ones, people will be able to send location request on their phones. This request will start a timer on the friend’s phone giving them a chance to approve or deny it. Location of the person will be sent automatically if the timer expires on its own.
GIFs to Facebook comments:
Zuckerberg regarded this idea as most practical for future. In comments section on Facebook, comments will be appearing with GIFs.
Offline messaging:
This idea was extremely liked by Zuckerberg and he regarded it as something he has been thinking to work on. This feature will allow people to send offline messages to others without internet access only by using WiFi signals in their phones.
Video galleries and shared photos:
Facebook engineers demoed how to create shared photo and video albums by using machine learning. If the feature gets approved, then platform users will be able to present everyone with shared albums along with very person’s thoughts in the comment section.
Zuckerberg’s personal AI assistant:
After the presentation of ideas from engineers, Zuckerberg shared an update on his own project. All this year, he has been working on the artificially intelligent assistant for his home. It wasn’t a much detailed demo but he only explained few of the things that the assistant is able to perform up till now.
Via: Business Insider
