After canceling its F8 developer conference due to the coronavirus outbreak back in February, Facebook has now announced that it will no longer host local events as an alternative.Instead, the social networking giant is planning to do a series of updates throughout the year with the first one taking place soon, though the company has yet to provide an exact date.Facebook provided more details on how it will reach developers and customers with news and product announcements in a statement, saying:"Because we can't come together in person for F8 this year, Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook leaders will do a series of updates throughout the year to share what we're working on to help people connect, as well as updates to our developer products, where applicable."Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg also announced that the company will require most of its employees to work from home through at least the end of May.In addition to having its employees continue to work remotely, the company is also canceling all of the large-scale physical events it had planned with 50 or more people through June 2021.
Zuckerberg explained the company's reasoning behind this decision in a post on the social network, saying:Even beyond this next period, guidance from health experts is that it won't be advisable to have large groups of people get together for a while.
Given this, we're canceling any large physical events we had planned with 50 or more people through June 2021.
Some of these we will hold as virtual events instead and we'll share more details on that soon.
Similarly, we're extending our policy of no business travel through at least June of this year as well.Other tech businesses including Microsoft now plan to hold their events virtually and it now looks like Facebook is going to take a similar approach at least for the foreseeable future.Via CNET