Social networking giant Facebook cancelled its in-person annual developer conference on Thursday on growing concerns over COVID-19 outbreak.
F8, Facebook's annual developer event, brings together creators and innovators from around the world who build products surrounding the social media firm's ecosystem. The event was scheduled on May 5th and 6th in San Jose, California.
"This was a tough call to make. But we need to prioritise the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on," the company said in a statement.
"We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it’s important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance," it said.
The company plans to organise locally hosted events, videos and live-streamed content instead of the in-person event in this year's F8.
Last year, participants from nearly 50 countries had gathered for the two-day event in which creators of a tool that helps immigrants connect with their new community won the F8 2019 Hackathon award.