After a three-year long break Facebook announced it will again be hosting its developer-focused F8 Conference in April
Facebook held its F8 developer conferences almost every year until the company offered its IPO in May, 2012. The annual conference was disrupted for three years, but the social network seems to be back on track with its developer-centric F8 Conference this year. According to the head of products for Facebook's developer services, Ilya Sukhar, the highly technical F8 Conference is scheduled to take place at the San Francisco Design Concourse, April 30, 2014. The announcement was made during a session at South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, Saturday.
The one-day conference, for developers only, will draw as many as 1,500 enthusiasts. According to the company, the F8 Conference will feature a main keynote address followed by smaller sessions to cover various topics.
"This year, we're going back to our roots and having a pure developer conference," Sukhar said in a statement to CNET. "F8 will open with a morning keynote, followed by four tracks that will cover getting-started guides, technical best practices, infrastructure strategies, engineering deep dives, and advertising tips for making your app or game highly successful."
The F8 Conference has been one of Facebook's most significant events for any big product news. Looking back at the company's F8 timeline, Facebook held its first F8 Conference in 2007, introducing the world to social media. In July 2008, when the company hosted its second event, Facebook Connect was introduced alongside a new profile design. Facebook did not follow-up on the event in 2009, but in 2010 the company revealed its social plug-ins including the most popular "Like" button, Graphic API, Open Graph Protocol and OAuth 2.0 support. The social media giant did not host the F8 in 2012 and 2013, but three years on, Facebook is keen to build on its Parse acquisition.
This year's F8 conference will be more technical than before, and might have big consumer product announcements.
