Meta’s F8 conference is taking the back seat this year now that the company has announced the cancellation of the developer conference, giving precedence to its metaverse ambitions. However, the tech giant said its inaugural business messaging event, Conversations, will go on as scheduled on May 19.
F8 was conducted virtually in 2020 as COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March that year. It continued to be held as a virtual event in 2021. But this year, the social networking company is canceling or “pausing†the event altogether.
“Similar to years past, we are taking a brief break in programming and will not hold F8 in 2022 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,†wrote Diego Duarte Moreira, the director of platform partnerships at Meta, in a blog postOpens a new window .
Considering Meta has earmarked $10 billion for Facebook Reality Labs, the division responsible for developing metaverse and corresponding AR/VR products, putting F8 on hold seems like a small price to pay.
See More: Everything You Need to Know About Metaverse and Web3
F8 derived its name from the traditional eight-hour-long hackathons the company conducted in its early days for developers that built products based on the Facebook ecosystem. Gradually, it became a place for the company to introduce new features.
Previously, Facebook didn’t hold F8 in 2009, 2012, and 2013. The Conversations conference, slated for next month, isn’t meant to replace F8. Instead, it is aimed at creating collaborative tools on existing messaging platforms.
Meta said it would conduct Connect, the event where it announced its rebrand last year, later this year. The company will announce its latest VR, AR, and metaverse offerings. In August 2021, Meta launched Horizon Workrooms. It is a VR-based work collaboration platform that offers a glimpse into what Facebook envisions concerning the metaverse.
NVIDIA is also developing its metaverse ecosystem through NVIDIA Omniverse, now available over the cloud.
In late March, the GPU-maker rolled out the Omniverse Cloud to give millions of artists, creators, designers and developers access to its Omniverse platform. It said the cloud platform will help users interactively build 3D worlds in real time and let non-technical users stream Omniverse scenes using the NVIDIA GeForce NOW platform. “Omniverse Cloud will connect tens of millions of designers and creators, and billions of future AIs and robotic systems,†it said.
Has NVIDIA’s metaverse progress spooked Meta into canceling F8 this year? Let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!