Facebook Cancels Its F8 Conference Over Coronavirus Concerns

It seems that this year a lot of major events could be in trouble due to the coronavirus outbreak. For example, Sony pulled out of PAX East, MWC 2020 was cancelled, and more recently, an Olympics official has hinted that there is a chance that the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games could potentially be cancelled if things do not improve.

Now it looks like we have our next casualty where Facebook has announced that they will be cancelling its F8 conference. Just like most tech companies, Facebook typically hosts an annual event where they announce new products, services, and offer updates on what they are doing and what they have planned.

According to Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s director of platform partnerships, “We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it’s important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance.” Facebook will now instead host a series of local events with live-streamed content.

That being said, Facebook’s cancellation of their F8 conference is now bringing into question as to the fate of other tech company events. Both Google and Apple have conferences set for the middle of the year as per tradition, so it is unclear if those will be going ahead now.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Facebook