Mostly-annual conference held by Facebook, intended for developers and entrepreneurs
Facebook F8 is a mostly-annual conference held by Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), intended for developers and entrepreneurs who build products and services around the website. It was hosted in San Francisco, California until 2016, and moved to a more central Silicon Valley location in San Jose, California in 2017.[1] Previous events 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.[2]
The scheduling of F8 has been somewhat erratic. The 2008 conference was held in late July and the 2011 conference was held in late September. There were no other conferences held in 2009, 2012 and 2013.[3][4][5][6] The 2020 F8 conference, formerly scheduled for May 5 and 6, was not an in-person event. The event was rescheduled for April 25 as an online conference and it was live streamed. The change was due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[7] The 2021 F8 conference was announced on March 23 as F8 Refresh and held on June 2 and 3 as another online conference.[8] Meta Platforms announced Conversations on March 31, 2022 and scheduled it to be held on May 19 as an online conference. On April 6, Meta Platforms announced that the 2022 F8 conference would be cancelled in favor of Conversations and that it would focus on the metaverse.
2007
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.[9] The notion of the social graph was introduced.[10]
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.[11] This feature is now integrated within around 2.5 million websites worldwide, with 10,000 more being added daily.
Additional news and announcements included:
- Social Plugins (e.g. Like button)
- Open Graph Protocol
- Graph API
- OAuth 2.0
2011
F8 2011 was held on September 22, 2011.[12][13] 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.[14]
The conference was focused on Facebook's strategy to become a 'cross-platform platform'.[15]
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
The 2015 F8 conference was held on March 25, 2015 at the Fort Mason Center.[16]
2016
The 2016 F8 conference was held on April 12 and 13, 2016.[17]
Announcements: Facebook Analytics adds push and in app notifications feature [18]
2017
The 2017 F8 conference was held on April 18 and 19, 2017, at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California.[19] Announcements included:[20]
2018
The 2018 F8 conference was held on the first two days of May 2018 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California.[23] 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.[24] Announcements included:
- Facebook's mission being to "defy distance"[25]
- Hugo Barra opened up his keynote talk mentioning Itaipu VR, produced by a Brazilian developer, Imersys.[26]
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."[27]
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
Conversations was announced at the end of March 2022. It will be held on May 19 as a virtual event. The 2022 F8 conference was canceled on April 6 in favor of Conversations. Instead of holding the F8 conference for 2022, Meta Platforms will focus on the metaverse.
