The name "F8" derives from the tradition at Facebook of having eight-hour Hackathons.
Hackathon: A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development and hardware development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects.[1] Occasionally, there is a hardware component as well. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week.
F8 :
F8 is a mostly-annual conference held by Facebook for the developer and technical community who are excited to learn about the latest developer offerings from Facebook. This year F8 will consist of two full days of sessions, workshops, product demos and one-on-one time with Facebook’s product experts in the Dev Garage.
F8 conference started on March 25 morning in San Francisco with more than 2,500 developers coming together to build the next generation of apps. hundreds of thousands of developers working with Facebook around the world – with more than 70% outside the United States.
Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the morning keynote and highlighted three themes of F8 this year: Putting people first, giving people more options to connect through the Facebook family of apps (Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger.., ), and previewing the future of sharing.
Today Facebook announced more than 25 products and tools to help developers build, grow and monetize mobile apps. Facebook provides connections between every mobile platform and a potential audience of 1.39 billion people, so developers can focus on doing what they do best innovating.
-Highlights-
Messenger Platform: Introducing a new way for apps to integrate with Messenger so people can better express themselves with GIFs, photos, videos, audio clips and more. For developers, this means more opportunities for growth and engagement.
Businesses on Messenger: Previewing the first steps they are taking to reinvent the way people communicate and interact with businesses.
New Share Sheet: A simple, consistent experience for sharing from apps to Facebook.
Facebook Analytic's for Apps: Facebook Analytic's for Apps helps developers build better apps and experiences for people. Developers now have a single place where they can understand their audience, measure how people use their app across devices and improve their marketing campaigns.
LiveRail: Now Mobile app publishers can use LiveRail’s monetization platform to manage their video and display ads business. Additionally, LiveRail is enabling publishers to use Facebook’s approach for delivering the right ad to the right audience—meaning better results and better experiences for people.
Internet of Things: Developers can now easily use Parse to build a whole new category of apps for connected devices, from garage door openers to smoke detectors to wearable wristbands.
Social Plugins: Refreshed Social Plugins with updated designs and better mobile experiences that will help people engage with content off Facebook. The Embedded Video Player is an entirely new social plugin that lets publishers embed native Facebook videos in a full-bleed video player. People can now watch and interact with Facebook videos from anywhere on the web.
Spherical Video Coming to News Feed: Previewing an immersive, 360-degree video experience in News Feed that lets you choose the viewing angle to explore your surroundings.
-Build-
Stability & Bug Dashboard: Now Facebook committed to fixing 90% of bugs within 30 days and they will show a chart of our progress on their bug dashboard. In addition, for bugs which affect Core parts of Facebook platform like Login and Social Plugins, developers will now see an estimate of when they can expect their bugs to get fixed.
New SDKs for iOS and Android: They are completely rebuilt their iOS and Android SDKs for version 4.0. The simplified programming models for Login and Sharing make it easier to automatically handle errors, and reduce the size of an app using the SDKs.
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2015/03/25/Updated-Graph-API-and-improved-Facebook-SDKs-for-iOS-and-Android/
Parse Enhanced Sessions: A more secure way to manage session logins for each device.
http://blog.parse.com/2015/03/25/connecting-hardware-with-the-cloud-parse-for-iot/
Parse + React: Parse is launching a library to bring its powerful data platform to applications built with React, the popular front end framework. This makes it even easier for developers to build complex and dynamic apps with Parse.
http://blog.parse.com/2015/03/25/parse-and-react-shared-chemistry/
Parse Cloud Code Webhooks: Write code in whatever language you want. As long as you have a server running it, your Cloud Code can integrate with it.
http://blog.parse.com/2015/03/25/introducing-cloud-code-webhooks/
Parse Explorer: A new, powerful debugging tool for production issues in Parse app.
http://blog.parse.com/2015/03/25/chart-new-territory-with-parse-explorer/
Ads API v2.3: Ads API v2.3 is now open for all developers to use.
https://developers.facebook.com/ads/blog/post/2015/03/25/announcing-v2-3
Enhanced Video API: Updates to the Video API provide more control and customization of videos on Facebook.
-GROW-
Messenger Platform: https://www.messenger.com
Facebook Analytics for Apps: https://developers.facebook.com/products/analytics/
Social Plugins: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2015/03/25/Grow-Your-App-By-Helping-People-Share/
App Invites: Grow apps organically by letting people send customized invites directly to their friends.
Mobile App Ads enhancements: Our app ads helper tool has been updated to better help with app configuration. See some of our latest success stories with video and engagement ads.
-MONETIZE-
In-game Gifting: A new feature that lets players gift items to friends who are also playing the game.
References:
http://newsroom.fb.com/
https://www.fbf8.com/
https://developers.facebook.com/
For Facebook F8 Conference Videos
Some Other Tools By Facebook
Presto (Database) : https://code.facebook.com/projects/552007124892407/presto/
Async Display Kit : https://code.facebook.com/projects/1475518869403439/asyncdisplaykit/
you Can Found more at https://developers.facebook.com/products/
...
