San Francisco– Amid the growing fear of coronavirus outbreak in the US, Facebook on Thursday announced cancellation of its prestigious F8 developer conference.
The annual conference, attended by developers from across the world, was slated to be organised in San Jose on May 5-6.
“In light of the growing concerns around COVID-19, we’ve made the difficult decision to cancel the in-person component of F8 this year, in order to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on,” the social networking giant said in a statement.
“We plan to replace the in-person F8 event with locally-hosted events, videos and live-streamed content,” Facebook added.
Facebook has already cancelled ‘Global Marketing Summit’ in San Francisco that was scheduled from March 9-12. Over 5,000 participants were expected to attend the event.
After Facebook, Coronavirus derailed another significant tech summit in the Silicon Valley, this time from global chip-maker Intel which decided to postpone briefing sessions at its conference that was scheduled from March 12-13 in San Francisco.
Several tech companies have either postponed or cancelled their meetings in the wake of rising coronavirus threat that has killed over 2,700 people, and infected nearly 80,000. (IANS)
