Mark Zuckerberg Says: Virtual Reality the Next Big Thing for Facebook

http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/mark-zuckerberg-virtual-reality-the-next-big-thing-after-video-for-facebook-1201552797/

by jadeddrag • 11 years ago

6 4 11 years ago

variety.com

hermanmerman• 11 years ago

Good thing he's saying it out loud, but for those who think actions speak louder than words, it was clear enough when he decided to buy Oculus VR for $2bn.

It makes sense after all: 75% of Facebook's money comes from a platform (smartphones) that was nonexistent 10 years ago. In 10 years it is possible that VR will represent 75% or more of the revenues of Facebook — they'd be fools not to invest in it early.

norea-armozel• 11 years ago

Well, I think the problem that VR has is mostly trying to make it easier to build applications for its use. Second Life could've been that platform but LL just didn't have the talent nor the money to pull it off. If there's anything anyone can do to make VR attractive to developers is make the development tool set easy to integrate. Don't make developers depend on a clientside tool like SL had (barf). And make it possible to bring over existing IDEs and modeling tools.

After that, it's really up to developers to make compelling applications for VR. Facebook will have to start down that road themselves to demonstrate the potential market for it, obviously.

yellowapple• 11 years ago

I'm conflicted.

On one hand, I can see the value in VR in a theoretical sense. I grew up with quite a bit of fascination over things like Star-Trek-esque holodecks and Matrix-style simulated universes, and this part of me thinks Facebook's smart for wanting to be on the leading edge of such a world where people can share their current experiences and others can also experience them in a similar manner.

On the other hand, I can't get the images of previous VR fads out of my head, especially that of the last decade, dominated by projects like Second Life and Project Wonderland, and thus can't shake the feeling that most people are going to picture a VRified Facebook as little more than some nerd toy.

jadeddrag• 11 years ago

There is a lot of VR hype right now, but it might be justified now by the big tech advances of accurate low latency position tracking.

Mark Zuckerberg Says: Virtual Reality the Next Big Thing for Facebook

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