Snapchat became the latest tech company to move a yearly partner conference to an online venue in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
On Monday evening, Snapchat announced it would stream its second annual Snap Partner Summit on April 2, canceling the on-site meeting that had been scheduled in Los Angeles. The summit is meant to be a gathering of developers that use Snapchat applications in their products and services. Marketers, publishers and creators also usually attend the summit where the company delivers its latest updates to the platform.
"We’ll miss having the opportunity to have our partners together in person but are excited to share what our team has been building with you and the world," Snapchat said in its announcement.
Snapchat follows in the footsteps of fellow tech companies that already made similar decisions in recent weeks. Major industry conferences have been upended by coronavirus fears, including SXSW in Austin, Texas, which was scheduled to start this week but canceled on Friday, and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which was canceled last month. Facebook shut down F8, which was set for May 5-6 in San Jose, Calif., and instead plans to stream sessions online. Google I/O, set for May 12-14, also is moving online.
Coronavirus, COVID-19, has been causing panic globally since it was discovered in China in January, and it has led to widespread disruptions to business events and travel. Companies from Seattle to New York are telling workers to telecommute instead of coming into offices, and non-essential travel is being limited.
Snapchat said it will stream the keynote address for its partner summit at Snap.com at 1:30 p.m. EST on April 2. Last year's inaugural summit featured a presentation from co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel and co-founder Bobby Murphy, Snapchat's chief technology officer.
Snapchat did not disclose details of this year's keynote address or who would be presenting, but it's likely to include the co-founders again.
Last year, Snapchat introduced its audience network, which it has yet to release for wide-scale adoption, but it has been building the service for much of the past year. It is meant to be an ad network similar to Facebook's, in which advertisers extend ad campaigns to apps run by publishing partners, while relying on the same targeting data that they use to reach people on Snapchat.
At last year's summit, Snapchat also demonstrated its latest augmented reality technology, which developers and brands use to build the animated filters that adorn Snapchat videos.
