Facebook's Parse has announced a number of new features at Facebook's F8 developer conference in San Francisco.
The news was leaked yesterday thanks to a notification from the Facebook app. However, it was officially announced today.
"We believe that connecting more hardware devices with the cloud has the potential to change the world for the better," said Parse in a blog post. "We are already seeing devices that add tremendous value to people's lives, from wearables that help you sleep better to insulin trackers that aid people living with diabetes."
The new tools are essentially aimed at making it easier for developers to create apps that work with devices that are connected to the Internet. For example, Chamberlain, which is a manufacturer of garage doors, will be using Parse to allow people to open and lock their garage doors straight from their smartphone.
"We've been listening to feedback from a wide range of Parse customers who are already using our platform in hardware products — like Chamberlain, who makes a line of smart garage door openers that interact with our REST API; Milestone Sports, who make the wearable running tracker Milestone Pod; and Roost, who make smart batteries for smoke detectors. From these conversations, we decided we could go one step further," continued the company.
Parse was bought by Facebook back in 2013, and over 400,000 developers have created apps using Parse.
It's certainly not surprising that Facebook is making more of an effort in the Internet of Things, which has been growing in importance over the past few years. Companies like Microsoft, Intel and Cisco have all announced moves into the market or strategies for the next few years in the Internet of Things.
Parse itself has also been expanding on an international level. For example, the number of active apps on Parse in Asia grew by almost 90 percent in the first half of 2014.
Facebook itself has been making a lot of announcements of late as it attempts to expand into newer markets. For example, the company purchased Oculus VR last year for a whopping $2 billion, suggesting that it is interested in entering the virtual reality market. In fact, the company demoed the headset at the Facebook F8 conference today for its new, 360-degree Spherical Videos.
Facebook also announced today that it would be turning its Messenger app into a platform of its own, essentially meaning that developers can create apps for Messenger. Businesses will also be able to take advantage of Messenger, with customers being able to use it to communicate with these businesses.
