Celebrating our Facebook Online Hackathon winners!

Thanks to everyone who joined our Facebook Live earlier today, where we announced the winners of our latest Facebook Online Hackathon!

For those who haven’t taken part yet, we’ve been running a series of virtual hackathons throughout the year, providing global innovators with opportunities to get immersed in Facebook products and build breakthrough software solutions.

This time around, participants were invited to tap into the power of one of three Facebook technology tracks - Messenger, Spark AR and Wit.ai - with a focus on projects that are designed to help build community and drive social impact.

For our winners, we were thrilled to offer up to US$21,000 in total cash prizes, alongside Oculus VR headsets.

Messenger

The Messenger team asked participants to create messaging solutions that help people and businesses build lasting relationships through conversation.

Messaging has come a long way since the early days of texting, and we love partnering with our developer ecosystem to take these experiences even further.

With this in mind, we challenged our hackathon participants to build Messenger experiences that drive social impact and leverage some of our latest features, including Handover Protocol, One-Time Notifications, Private Replies and Quick Replies.

First place
US$3,000 total cash, Oculus VR headset per team member (max. 4) and Facebook expert mentoring
MazeBot
A messaging experience to help aspiring innovators build their coding skills

Second place
US$2,500 total cash
Sayme
A travel companion for learning new languages

Third place
US$1,500 total cash
Toblee
A solution designed to help small retailers build a chat-based customer service experience

Spark AR

Our ambition is to help Spark AR creators imagine, build and share augmented reality experiences that could potentially reach hundreds of millions of people on Facebook and Instagram.

Whether they were a beginner using Spark AR templates and libraries to create their first effect, or an experienced pro using customizations to build more interactive experiences — we tasked our hackathon participants to put their creativity to the test.

We invited all creators to build a World AR effect that was optimized for an exciting new product — Instagram Reels! Freshly available right at the start of the hackathon back in August, Reels brings over Instagram’s entire Spark AR effect catalogue to allow people to record and edit short videos with single or multiple AR effects.

In the hackathon, we were looking for submissions that demonstrated an imaginative use of features like plane tracking and segmentation in an effect that’s fun and tailored for short-form, creative performances on Reels.

First place
US$3,000 total cash, Oculus VR headset per team member (max. 4) and Facebook expert mentoring
Motion Effect Kit
An amazing set of effects for Instagram Reels with custom patches to extract movement directions and areas

Second place
US$2,500 total cash
Geometry - Real-Time VFX
A mesmerizing tool that enables Reels fans to create dynamic geometric shapes around them, that look especially cool while you’re dancing!

Third place
US$1,500 total cash
Mirror World
An effect that leverages plane tracking to give users the illusion of being surrounded by multiple mirrors in the real world

Honorable mention
Mysterious Wings
An effect that enables users to choose different sets of wings by changing their facial expression

Wit.ai

Here at Facebook, we’re passionate about bringing the world closer together by advancing artificial intelligence (AI) - connecting people to what they care about; powering new, meaningful experiences; and advancing ‘the state-of-the-art’ through open research and accessible tooling.

To help us drive this vision around artificial intelligence forward, Wit.ai is Facebook's AI technology that enables people to interact with products using voice and text.

For the hackathon, the Wit.ai team tasked participants with creating an engaging, voice-enabled app for consumers featuring natural language interactions that leverage the Wit.ai platform

We were looking for innovative solutions across a range of categories including day-to-day basics, social coordination, local discovery, media consumption, fitness, voice/AR navigation, voice games, shopping assistant and entertainment.

First place
US$3,000 total cash, Oculus VR headset per team member (max. 4) and Facebook expert mentoring
Fitness Voice
A NLP fitness trainer for web browsers

Second place
US$2,500 total cash
Flo
An AI assistant that automates meeting notes

Third place
US$1,500 total cash
Dance with AR
An AR dance teacher that teaches you new moves and leverages AI voice commands

Honorable mentions
Handstand Quest
A solution applying natural language processing to help guide your fitness workout

VC4U: an aid for the blind
AR smart glasses that help identify objects for the visually impaired

Project Suavekeys
A voice-powered gaming controller

Huge congratulations to everyone who took part across our three Facebook technology tracks!

On behalf of the entire Facebook team, we’re so in awe of the way our growing hackathon community just keeps raising the bar.

But the opportunities don’t stop there!

We have a bunch of fresh and fun building experiences coming your way very soon, so stay tuned to the Facebook for Developers page for more updates!

In addition, did you know our annual Facebook Developer Circles Community Challenge is currently underway? The Challenge is another virtual hackathon - this time spanning Facebook Open Source tools in addition to Messenger, Spark AR and Wit.ai - with up to US$133,000 dollars in cash prizes up for grabs!

To get started and to check out the official rules, visit the Challenge webpage here.

From our whole team, we hope you stay safe and healthy, and we’re so honored to be supporting you as you #BuildwithFacebook.

Congratulations again to everyone who took part in the hackathon!