Bay Area Facebook users will open their Messenger apps to discover M, a new virtual assistant. Facebook will prompt them to test it with examples of what M can do: Make restaurant reservations. Find a birthday gift for your spouse. Suggest—and then book—weekend getaways.

It won’t take long for Messenger’s users to realize M can accomplish much more than your standard digital helper, suspects David Marcus, vice president of messaging products at Facebook. “It can perform tasks that none of the others can,” Marcus says. That’s because, in addition to using artificial intelligence to complete its tasks, M is powered by actual people.

We just passed an important milestone. For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day.

On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family.

When we talk about our financials, we use average numbers, but this is different. This was the first time we reached this milestone, and it's just the beginning of connecting the whole world.

I'm so proud of our community for the progress we've made. Our community stands for giving every person a voice, for promoting understanding and for including everyone in the opportunities of our modern world.

A more open and connected world is a better world. It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities, and a stronger society that reflects all of our values.

Thank you for being part of our community and for everything you've done to help us reach this milestone. I’m looking forward to seeing what we accomplish together.

Celebrating a Community of 400 Million

We are thrilled to announce that the Instagram community has grown to more than 400 million strong. While milestones like this are important, what really excites us is the way that visual communication makes the world feel a little bit smaller to every one of us.

Our community has evolved to be even more global, with more than 75 percent living outside of the US. To all the new Instagrammers: welcome! Among the last 100 million to join, more than half live in Europe and Asia. The countries that added the most Instagrammers include Brazil, Japan and Indonesia.

Instagrammers continue to capture incredible photos and videos from all corners of the earth (and even the solar system). We’ve seen inspiring moments like the first surface image of Pluto and Champions League celebrations, as well as striking locales like the white pools of Turkey and a Namibian desert ghost town. These are just a few of the more than 80 million photos per day shared on Instagram.

Also, a few notable names have joined Instagram in the last 100 million. The most followed accounts include David Beckham from the UK, Caitlyn Jenner from the US, Indonesia’s Raffi and Nagita, German soccer player Toni Kroos and South Korea’s T.O.P.

When Instagram launched nearly five years ago, 400 million seemed like a distant dream. Now, we continue to strive to improve Instagram — helping you experience the world through images and connect with others through shared passions.

Instagram Hits 400 Million Monthly Users, Mostly Outside U.S.

September 22, 2015 — 2:00 PM PDT

• Compares with Twitter's 316 million monthly active users
• Brazil, Japan and Indonesia added the most new Instagrammers

Facebook Inc.’s Instagram has passed 400 million monthly active users, mostly by adding people in countries outside the U.S.

That compares with Twitter Inc.’s 316 million and Pinterest Inc.’s 100 million. Instagram’s number increased from the 300 million mark reached nine months ago, according to the company. Facebook has 1.49 billion monthly active users.

More than 75 percent of Instagram’s users live outside the U.S., with most of the new participants coming from Brazil, Japan and Indonesia, the company said.

As it expands, the photo-sharing application has started to ramp up its advertising business, taking advantage of Facebook’s network of tools and marketers to increase its offerings and global reach. At the beginning of this month, Instagram advertised in eight countries. By the end, they’ll be making money in more than 200, the company has said.

Instagram Says It Now Has 400 Million Users

The steady forward march of Facebook Inc.’s many messaging apps continues. Instagram now has 400 million monthly active users, Facebook said Tuesday.

It took nine months for the photo-sharing app to tack on its latest 100 million regular users. In that time, Instagram added notable celebrities such as the soccer star David Beckham and Caitlyn Jenner.

In its blog post announcing the milestone, Instagram said more than 75% of its community of users lives outside the U.S. Of the latest 100 million added to the fold, more than half live in Europe and Asia.

Facebook’s strategy of creating separate apps appears to be paying off. The texting app WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired for $19 billion in 2014, recently reached 900 million monthly active users, its founder Jan Koum said. At Facebook’s shareholder meeting in June, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s standalone Messenger app had more than 700 million users.

Mr. Zuckerberg has said that he doesn’t think about a service as a real business until it gets to a billion users — that’s Facebook territory. By that mark, Instagram still has a ways to go compared with its siblings. It has taken the photo-sharing app nearly five years to reach its current milestone. To be fair, Instagram is a niche lifestyle app, whereas WhatsApp is more of a global utility and Messenger benefited from its deep ties to Facebook.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Facebook from fleshing out its Instagram business strategy. The app is testing new ad formats and introducing features aimed at helping marketers to track ads more effectively.

Facebook's Oculus Taps Netflix, X-Men to Bring VR Mainstream

September 24, 2015 — 12:14 PM PDT

• Oculus holds its second developer's conference in Los Angeles
• Facebook unveiled first 360-degree video clips this week

Virtual reality won’t just be another technology for hard-core nerds, if Mark Zuckerberg gets his way.

Facebook Inc.’s Oculus will sell movies, video games and streaming services via its virtual reality headsets, seeking to make the devices more appealing to average consumers, the company announced during a presentation in Hollywood on Thursday. Partners include 21st Century Fox Inc. and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., the studios behind “Gone Girl” and “The Hunger Games,” Minecraft and video game service Twitch Interactive Inc., as well as streaming services such as Netflix Inc. and Hulu LLC.

Facebook is betting virtual reality will be the next main technology and communication platform, a new way for people to watch videos, play games and share vignettes from their daily lives. Video sharing has grown 40 percent on Facebook since the start of the year, the social-networking company said on its most recent earnings call, and the company introduced 360-degree videos in collaboration with Oculus earlier this week.

Zuckerberg cautioned that initial sales of virtual reality devices would be small, as consumers get used to the new technology. Many of these movies and services will be available first on Samsung Electronics Co.’s Gear headset, which uses Oculus technology.

Samsung unveiled a new version of the headset that will cost $99, a price Samsung Mobile Senior Vice President Peter Koo said will help bring virtual reality to the mainstream. Samsung’s headset needs a smartphone to work.

$16 Billion Market

Facebook will begin to sell the Oculus Rift, its first consumer virtual reality headset, early next year. It will cost about $1,500, including the computer required to run the device, according to a recent story in Vanity Fair. The Rift is the most-anticipated product in a market projected to reach almost $16 billion by 2020, according to researcher MarketsandMarkets.

Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR last year spurred other companies to accelerate or develop their virtual reality plans. Sony Corp. is working on a virtual reality headset to complement its PlayStation gaming device, and has said it will begin selling PlayStation VR next year.

Growing Interest

Thursday’s announcements also signaled Hollywood’s growing interest in virtual reality. Fox said it was the first major studio to sell movies in the Oculus store. Beginning next week, users will be able to purchase more than 100 movies from the studio, including “Alien” and “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”

“We are just scratching the surface of how Hollywood and VR will revolutionize entertainment by exploring innovative ways to develop immersive experiences as a new storytelling medium,” Mike Dunn, President of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, said in a statement.

Star Wars clip showcases Facebook's immersive 360 video

Social network features race across the Jakku desert for new immersive video project.

September 24, 2015

Facebook is showcasing a new immersive video format that allows viewers to change their viewpoint while watching.

Rather than watching from a fixed viewpoint viewers can click-and-drag on a web page (or slide their finger along the screen on a smartphone) to change their view. In the Star Wars video posted on Facebook, for example, viewers can look out of the back of the speeder as it races past a crashed Star Destroyer (and an X-Wing) or turn to get a better view of a craft that pulls up alongside, instead of simply facing the front.

Facebook's video engineering developer Maher Saba said that creating this immersive videos involves using a set of cameras to record all 360 degrees of a scene simultaneously.

The new format is not only for big brands - Facebook forsees a future in which individuals could use similar technology to create these types of videos. "In the future, imagine watching 360 videos of a friend's vacation to a small village in France or a festival in Brazil. You'll be able to look around and experience it as if you were there," said Saba.

Other publishers are showing off new 360 videos on Facebook, including Discovery, GoPro, and Vice.

The videos will be appearing in the news feeds of Facebook users on the web or on Android "soon" while the social network said it plans to deliver an iOS version "in the coming months".

The craziest Oculus experience I've had recently is playing ping pong in virtual reality. You feel like you're right there with your friend even though they may be halfway around the world. And not only can you hit the ball back and forth, but you can turn gravity up and down to simulate completely different worlds -- outer space, under water and so on.

In our new Toybox experience, you can pick up objects, build things and play games. This video shows a few examples of what's possible. What's really amazing is sharing these experiences with your friends. We're getting closer.

Also my dumbass sold this at $93.07

Facebook (FB) PT Raised to $155 by Piper Jaffray's Munster

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reiterated an Overweight rating and raised his price target on Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) to $155.00 (from $146.00) following solid Q3 beat with Q1 Oculus catalyst.

Munster commented,
The firm raised FY 2015 EPS from $2.01 to $2.09 and FY 2016 EPS from $2.21 to $2.33.

Facebook Inc. FB, -0.08% wants you to stay awhile and listen.

The social media company unveiled a new post format Thursday that allows users to listen to and share 30-second previews of a song or album on the social network. Depending on the link shared, the preview is streamed from either Apple AAPL, +0.37% Music or Spotify AB — a potential boon to the services.

Facebook’s experimentation with new types of posts is driven by an interest in getting users to share more. Surveys show users of the social network are posting less often on the social network than they did a year ago. While this isn’t a problem today for Facebook, it could be a problem down the road if there isn’t enough content to keep users coming back.

“We hope by making this experience better, artists will share more, friends will share and engage more and music will become a better part of the Facebook experience overall,” Facebook director of product Michael Cerda wrote in a blog post.

From the perspective of music companies, these new music previews, called “Music Stories,” could be a boon if they drive more people to purchase the songs. The previews can be purchased from or saved to the respective music-streaming service where they originated.