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Facebook’s big F8 developer conference is this week: Here’s what to expect

Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote starts Tuesday at 10 am PT.

Facebook Holds Its Fourth f8 Developer Conference
Facebook Holds Its Fourth f8 Developer Conference
Justin Sullivan / Getty

You can expect a lot of updates this week from the world’s largest social network.

Facebook will hold its annual developer conference on Tuesday and Wednesday, an event where the company has traditionally laid out plans and updates for some of its key initiatives, like messaging, artificial intelligence and live video.

The conference, called F8, has moved from San Francisco to San Jose, where Facebook is expecting close to 4,000 attendees. The event will kick off with a keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday morning.

F8 tends to be more technically focused — it’s for developers, after all — and has traditionally centered around Facebook’s flagship service and Messenger. Other Facebook properties, like Instagram and WhatsApp and Oculus, aren’t usually involved, and you can expect the same this year.

Look for Facebook to focus on Messenger again, and its connectivity efforts to bring internet to remote areas around the world. The company may also shed some light on its secretive hardware efforts, including new cameras and augmented reality, according to Business Insider.

The updates Facebook tends to announce here are wide-ranging. In 2014, it unveiled its ad network, Audience Network, at F8. In 2015, the big news was that Messenger, its standalone messaging app, was opening up to developers so they could start building customer service and shopping features inside the app.

Last year, Facebook extended the conference to two days, launched its bot platform for Messenger, showed off “social” virtual reality, pushed deeper into live video and rolled out a 360-degree video camera.

Zuckerberg also used his keynote in 2016 to lay out the company’s 10-year plan, which included his first public mention of augmented reality. Zuckerberg recently penned a lengthy manifesto about how he hopes Facebook can change the world, and it’s likely he’ll take his time onstage to follow up on those ambitions.

So a lot usually happens at F8. TechCrunch has reported on a few of this year’s product updates: More bots for Messenger groups, and a platform so outsiders can build more features for the Facebook camera.

Whatever Facebook has in store, you’ll be able to read about at Recode.

Zuckerberg’s keynote is set for 10 am PT Tuesday morning.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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