Money.<\/p>\n
That was effectively the only conversation missing from Facebook\u2019s F8 conference \u2014 an event that even made time for a progress update on a moonshot project that might\u00a0one day allow us\u00a0to hear through our skin<\/a>. Perhaps that\u2019s the luxury of a company whose advertising revenue is up 57 percent year-over-year.<\/a><\/p>\n But don\u2019t\u00a0misconstrue unseen for unimportant. Behind machine intelligence \u201cat scale\u201d<\/a> and cute Camera Effects<\/a>\u00a0lies\u00a0a complete\u00a0dependence on ad revenue. And barring\u00a0a black swan event, Facebook\u2019s expensive DARPA complex is only going to grow more dominant.<\/p>\n One in four engineers at Facebook are active users of its internal artificial intelligence platform. In that sense, the same technology that allows\u00a0you to take a selfie with a virtual flower-crown at Coachella also allows the company to identify objects within public photos and videos on your News Feed.<\/p>\n As\u00a0it becomes more difficult to cram ads onto Facebook<\/a> without sacrificing the user experience, targeting, engagement and connectivity become the next natural priorities. This explains why Facebook\u2019s ten-year roadmap<\/a> highlights exactly that \u2014 connectivity to get more users on the platform and AI to boost engagement and targeting. In other words, machine intelligence is the future of monetization for Facebook.<\/p>\n In a way, Facebook\u2019s platform is shrinking. Just a few years ago, almost every post a user made was text. But today, an agglomeration of pictures, videos, text and live content define the platform.\u00a0Without advances in computer vision and machine learning more broadly, Facebook would be handicapped by its own new features.<\/p>\n \u201cContent is getting more complex,\u201d Mark Rabkin, Facebook\u2019s VP of engineering for ads told me. But this complexity brings with it serious upside potential. It\u2019s still very early days for understanding the human context that enables ad deliveries that lead to conversions\u00a0\u2014 despite the fact that Facebook is the world\u2019s second largest digital advertiser behind Google and the meeting\u00a0room I met\u00a0Rabkin in was adorned with oversized champange bottles.<\/p>\nThe shrinking News Feed problem<\/h2>\n