Facebook Halts F8 Developers’ Conference This Year to Focus on Metaverse

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, on Wednesday, announced its decision of pausing the F8 developer conference in 2022 as it gears up for new initiatives towards metaverse. Instead, Meta will organise its inaugural business messaging event called 'Conversations', which will be virtually held on May 19.

Meta is pausing F8 this year "while we gear up on new initiatives that are all tailored towards the next chapter of the internet, and the next chapter of our company too: building the metaverse," Diego Duarte Moreira, director of developer and startups programs for Facebook, wrote in a blog post.

He added, "Similar to the early stages of the web, building the metaverse will be a collaborative effort at every stage — with other companies, creators and developers like you."

Meta is scheduled to organise a Connect event later this year, where it is expected to announce and share the latest on the company's VR, AR, and metaverse platform offerings.

While Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously said that the company would invest around $10 billion (roughly Rs. 74,963 crore) in metaverse projects for 2021, it reportedly suffered a loss of $10.2 billion (roughly Rs. 77505.21 crore) on a revenue of $2.27 billion (roughly Rs. 17248.7085 crore).

Several other big tech companies are also progressing for the same. Google I/O will take place on May 11 and May 12, while Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2022 is set for June 6 through June 10.

While both of these events would be held online, IFA 2022 is set to be an in-person event in early September this year.