Pakistani developers win prize at Facebook's F8 Hackathon

The F8 Hackathon recently took place in California where developers from around the world were invited to hack on Facebook technologies to bring the world closer together.

Held in San Jose at the McEnery Convention Center, thousands gather to participate in  the  Facebook's annual developer conference to experience new, breakthrough technology from the social media giant, learn first-hand how developers are innovating on the platform, and explore new ways to build community.

This year Facebook added a two-day Hackathon in the annual conference, where developers from all over world were selected to compete using Facebook technologies.

145 developers in 53 teams participated in the competition.

The News has learnt that a team of Pakistan developers, comprising Asad Memon and Azka Qaiser, have won a prize for building an app that helps users communicate with pseudo-names in Facebook groups.

The duo will get $10,000 USD, Facebook for Developers blog post, F8 blog post and a Special hackathon swag.

Memon, who could not be reached for comments, provided details of their project on his Facebook profile.

"We noticed a common pattern in many discussion groups: A lot of members want to discuss important issues but many topics are best discussed in anonymity. Unfortunately, Facebook's real-name policy forces them to keep mum when they have a lot to contribute otherwise," the Pakistani developers said while giving project information and the reason behind their idea.

They said a Facebook group 'Soul Sisters Pakistan' became major inspiration for them to build the app.

"It is a Facebook group only for females from all around the world connecting them together.

 Its a platform where women can ask, share and discuss things they like, but many times there are situations when people don't want to reveal their identity but they want solution to their problem at the same time. 

In such a scenario, they started sending their issues to their friends to post them 'Anonymously' on their behalf. This is a 'hack' that is widely used by the community.Usually under the hashtag #anonymous or #anonymouspost".