• Facebook has canceled its biggest event of the year over coronavirus concerns.
  • F8, its annual conference for developers, was set to be held in San Jose in May. Facebook said it planned to replace the in-person conference with “locally hosted events, videos and live-streamed content.”
  • In a statement, the company said: “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.”
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Facebook has canceled its annual F8 conference due to concerns over the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Normally the biggest event of the year for the California social networking giant, F8 was due to be held in San Jose in May 2020, but on Thursday the company announced that the “in-person component” of the event would be canceled.

In a statement, Facebook said: “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.”

Facebook still plans to hold some smaller local events and produce online material: “We plan to replace the in-person F8 event with locally hosted events, videos and live-streamed content.”

The cancellation highlights how COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is causing increasingly widespread disruption and uncertainty for major businesses as it continues to spread across the globe. The outbreak has infected more than 81,000 people and killed more than 2,700, most of those in China. US health officials warned on Tuesday that a COVID-19 outbreak in the United States might be inevitable.

Facebook itself pulled out of the March 9 Global Marketing Summit, a 5,000-person marketing conference held in San Francisco. Facebook's business has already been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. The company said that its supply chain for hardware has been disrupted, and its employees are being told not to travel to China. Meanwhile, Facebook employees who have visited China are being asked to work from home, according to Bloomberg.

Facebook's announcement follows the cancellations of other high-profile conferences this month. Workday announced the cancellation of its March 2 sales conference on Wednesday, and the Mobile World Conference, the largest trade show for mobile phones, was canceled last week. Several major companies including Unity and Microsoft have pulled out of the Game Developers Conference scheduled for March 16.

This story is developing...