Facebook F8 is a mostly-annual conference held by Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) since 2007, intended for developers and entrepreneurs who build products and services around the website. The event has generally started with a keynote speech by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, followed by various breakout sessions concentrating on specific topics. Facebook has often introduced new features and made new announcements at the conference.
The "F8" name comes from Facebook's tradition of 8 hour hackathons.[1]
Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's first F8 event in 2007
The first F8 event was held on May 24, 2007, at the San Francisco Design Center in San Francisco.[8] The notion of the social graph was introduced.[9]
2008
The 2008 F8 event was held on July 23, 2008, at the San Francisco Design Center once again. News and announcements from this event included:
Introducing the New Facebook Profile & More
Integrating Facebook Connect into your Website
2010
The 2010 F8 event was held on April 21, 2010 at the San Francisco Design Center. The main announcement was the feature to add a “Like” button to any piece of content on a website by the owner.[10] This feature is now integrated within around 2.5 million websites worldwide, with 10,000 more being added daily.
F8 2011 was held on September 22, 2011.[11][12] Various things Facebook introduced at the conference included a new profile redesign named 'Timeline' that showed a history of user's activity on their profile, and a broader, more advanced version of the 'Open Graph' protocol.
The F8 2011 event was mainly focused on introducing new products, transforming industries, building and growing social applications and product Q&A. Some of the details of the topics were:
The Future of Digital Music
Mobile + Social
The Rise of Social Gaming
Investing in Social
Developing Products at Facebook
Social Design
Distribution: Growing on Facebook
Marketing on Facebook
Hack Better: New Tools for Developers
Inside HTML5 Development at Facebook
Making Fast Social Apps
2014
Early, hacker-geared motto: Move Fast and Break Things...
...to new motto: Move Fast with Stable Infra
F8 2014 was announced on March 8, 2014 by Facebook representative Ilya Sukhar that the F8 event would return on April 30.[13]
The conference was focused on Facebook's strategy to become a 'cross-platform platform'.[14]
Here is a list of the main topics:
Audience Network
Autofill With Facebook
Anonymous Login
Removing The Ability To Pull Friends' Data
Granular Mobile Privacy Permissions
2-Year Core API Stability Guarantee
Graph API 2.0
FbStart
Mobile Like Button
Send to Mobile
Message Dialog
AppLinks
Visualization APIs For Media
Pricing changes
Analytics and Offline Storage
Internet.org Innovation Lab
DisplayNode
2015
Users numbers updated for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Groups at F8 2015
Helicopters that provide internet via fiber optic cable
Building 8 project aiming to allow people to type straight from their brain and hear through their skin[21]
2018
The 2018 F8 conference was held on the first two days of May 2018 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California.[22] At the conference, Facebook announced the creation of their own online dating service. Shares in the dating business Match Group fell by 22% after the announcement.[23] Announcements included:
Hugo Barra opened up his keynote talk mentioning Itaipu VR, produced by a Brazilian developer, Imersys.[25]
2019
The 2019 F8 conference was held at the end of April 2019 and the beginning of May 2019 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. During the keynote, Mark Zuckerberg announced: "The future is private."[26]
2020
The 2020 F8 conference was held on April 25, 2020 as a virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
2021
The 2021 F8 conference, AKA F8 Refresh, was held on June 2-3, 2021 as another virtual event.
2022
The 2022 F8 conference was canceled on April 6 in favor of Conversations, which was held on May 19 as a virtual event, focused on Meta Platforms' virtual reality Metaverse initiative.
