Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, will not hold the F8 conference for developers in 2022 at all.
The move comes after Facebook F8, which the social giant has used to introduce new initiatives, was held virtually in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID pandemic.
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 Wednesday. 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 planning to hold its Connect event later this year, where “we’ll share the latest on our VR, AR, and metaverse platform offerings,” according to Moreira.
At the 2021 Connect in October, CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Meta as the company’s new name, with the mission of “bring[ing] the metaverse to life.” For the full year, Meta reported a loss of $10.2 billion for its Reality Labs segment — encompassing its augmented-reality and VR-related consumer hardware, software and content businesses — on revenue of $2.27 billion. Zuckerberg had previously said Meta would invest around $10 billion in metaverse projects for 2021.
In addition, Meta has scheduled May 19 for its inaugural business messaging event, Conversations, which is taking place virtually. More than 1 billion users connect with a business account across Meta’s messaging services every week, according to the company.
From Variety US
