Facebook Cancels Annual F8 Developer Conference Over Coronavirus

(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. canceled its annual F8 Developer Conference over concerns about Covid-19, commonly referred to as the coronavirus, according to a blog post.

The conference, scheduled for May in San Jose, California, has become a flagship event in the technology community in recent years, and Facebook uses F8 to provide updates on the company’s product lines. In the past, the social network has announced new products at F8, like its dating service in 2018, and even teased far-reaching projects, like a brain-to-computer interface or augmented-reality glasses.

Facebook says it’s considering other ways to give developers and investors information, possibly through “locally hosted events, videos and live streamed content,” the company wrote in the blog post on Thursday.

F8 is the latest major tech event to be scrapped amid concerns about the spread of the deadly respiratory virus, which has killed more than 2,800 people and infected more than 82,400 worldwide. Mobile World Congress, a global technology conference in Spain scheduled to kick off this week, was also canceled.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kurt Wagner in San Francisco at kwagner71@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Andrew Pollack

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