Facebook's new camera could make you question reality

"Even if we were a little slow to add cameras to all our apps, I'm confident that now we're going to push this augmented reality platform forward", he said.

A recent push by Facebook to add camera features to its suite of apps will help popularise AR, Mr Zuckerberg said.

Hanging Out with friends in Virtual reality: Facebook is beta testing a new social VR product called SPACES that lets users create an avatar and meet with other users' avatars in a digital world.

As he appeared at Facebook's annual F8 Developer Conference in California, he announced the "second act" in Facebook's camera development - a platform that will allow developers to create AR apps in a bid to take on Snapchat.

This also has competitive implications for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), which thinks AR has much more potential than VR. For example, Facebook recently launched its own "stories", which are a collection of photos and videos that can be viewed by friends for a limited amount of time, as well as various masks and filters heavily inspired by Snapchat.

Note that augmented reality is not the only area in which Facebook and Snapchat are competing.

New integrations with Facebook's Workplace offering are also aimed at making it easier for users to collaborate using third-party applications such as Microsoft Office, Box, or Salesforce.

Facebook announced a new "Discover" tab that allows people to find the bot for Messenger they're looking for in an intuitive and thoughtful way, right from the home screen in Messenger. Now, Messenger wants to do the same for businesses, creating a "yellow pages" of sorts that let companies communicate with their customers.

While users might primarily see Messenger as a way to chat with friends, Facebook wants to make it a place where businesses and news organisations can connect with people. The idea is simplify what might otherwise require a flurry of texts and sharing of links.

"Local developers will lead each circle by organising offline events and managing a Facebook Group for that specific region", the report said.

He also briefly acknowledged the "tragedy in Cleveland", in which Steve Stephens shot to death a randomly chosen victim, Robert Godwin, on Sunday and then posted video of the crime on Facebook.

The incident raised questions this week about Facebook's ability to monitor violent material on its site.