Facebook F8

Facebook F8 (pronounced "eff eight") is a mostly-annual conference held by Facebook, intended for developers and entrepreneurs who build products and services around the website. It takes place in San Francisco, California.^[1] Previous events have 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 name "F8" derives from the tradition at Facebook of having eight-hour Hackathons.

The scheduling of F8 has been somewhat erratic. No conferences were held in 2009, 2012 or 2013, and the date for the 2011 conference was announced late. ^[2][3][4]

2007

This was the first F8 event, held May 24, at the San Francisco Design Center in San Francisco. The notion of the social graph was introduced.

2008

The 2008 F8 event was held July 23, 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 April 21 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. 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

The 2011 F8 happened on September 22, 2011. Facebook introduced 'Timeline' that showed a history of user's activity on their profile and also a broader version of 'Open Graph'.

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

It was announced on March 8, 2014 by Facebook representative Ilya Sukhar that the F8 event would return on April 30.^[5]

The F8 2014 event was focused on Facebook's strategy to become a 'cross-platform platform'.^[6]

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

On April 30, 2014, at the 2014 F8 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the 2015 F8 conference would be held on March 25, 2015 at the Fort Mason Center.

References

• Facebook To Release A “Like” Button For the Whole Darn Internet
• Yes Facebook Developers, There Will Be An f8 This Year

Further reading

• Barnett, Emma, "Facebook f8: Zuckerberg announces revamp: Facebook's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has announced a host of changes to the site at the social network's f8 conference in San Francisco", The Telegraph (London), 22 Sep 2011.

External links

• Official website