Facebook is now accepting registrations for its upcoming F8 developer conference to be held at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California on March 25 and 26.
The registration will be available to a "limited" number of participants, so Facebook encourages all who want to attend to register early. However, unlike with the previous years' F8 developer conferences, tickets this year will not be available on a first-come, first served basis. Instead, Facebook will allow aspiring participants to register for an undisclosed period of time before it reviews all registrations and notifies those whose applications were approved.
Facebook's director of platform Deb Liu tells TechCrunch that this allows the company "to make sure the audience is diverse and reflects our global ecosystem." She says Facebook will consider factors such as the applicants' "geographic location, type of business, as well as things like gender, race, and sexual orientation." The new registration system will also ensure that Facebook's partners and participants who are truly serious about getting away with something valuable from the conference will make it.
Applicants who will be approved will be charged $495 for a ticket. Those who will not be fortunate enough to secure a spot in the conference or will not be able to travel to San Francisco on the said dates will be able to watch the keynote, other sessions, and live interviews via livestream, which will be available on the event's website for free.
This year's theme for the F8 conference will revolve around Facebook's push to be everywhere all at the same time. While previous F8s have delved solely on the social network as the main Facebook product, this year will show developers what Facebook has in store for its other tools and services, including Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Oculus.
The conference will also showcase how developers can make the most out of the development tools Facebook offers, such as App Links, Parse, Login, App Ads, Audience Network, LiveRail, and Video.
"What we want to do is [to] have developers think about us as all the tools we can offer, not just login and sharing that we've offered for many years," Liu says.
The event will kick off with the customary keynote by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and will branch off into several technical sessions on building tools, commerce, design, games, growth and ads, media and publishing, monetization, open source, parse, and security. Facebook will also be featuring a panel discussion on the future of communication, which will be headed by Instagram co-founder and chief technology officer Mike Krieger, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, and Messenger head David Marcus.
Developers will also be given a chance to demo the latest Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype and Samsung's Gear VR Innovator as well as test how well their apps perform in an Internet.org lab that offers a 2G network connection that is often used in emerging markets.
