- Late yesterday, Facebook made an announcement: It has acquired the virtual reality startup Oculus VR, the maker of the Oculus Rift headset, for around $2 billion in cash and stock. The news excited some in the tech industry, and confused many others. (As Alexis summed it up: “The dominant reaction to the move could be summed up in three letters: WTF.”)
Oculus purchase price: $2bln. Linden Labs market cap: $200m. Jerry's Place, Oculus Rift: Second Life, last year: If people wanted to meet in virtual space, they would have done so in 1999. When was the last time you even heard Linden Labs mentioned in the press?But on the other hand, and much more broadly, Oculus’s technology should be able to help Facebook developers to create immersive virtual spaces that digitally mimic those of the physical world.
Your analysis in the other post about Oculus is spot on in my opinion. This acquisition is going to be part of a advertisement list post five years from now at the bottom of our screens entitled "Twelve Worst Tech Acquisitions." Oculus is a move away from mobile. I'd be surprised to see Facebook compete in the console space and desktop is on the decline. The only way they are going to be able to monetize this is if they also acquire Fleshlight.
They're flailing like Microsoft, in my opinion. "Can't figure out how to maintain your profitability? Buy something." It's my opinion that Facebook is entirely too controlling to innovate, otherwise they'd be a much bigger player than they are. It's also my opinion that they were driven by egotism for the longest time - "why buy something when we can build it better for cheaper?" It's like eBay shoving BidPay down everyone's throats despite 90% of their site commerce happening on PayPal because they didn't want to pay Peter Thiel. That's how you pay a billion dollars for Instagram - you suck at Instagramming and are forced to pay fines. I remain unconvinced about Google Glass. However, the stock market considers it innovative. I suspect Facebook thought they'd look like they were addressing the gap by purchasing Oculus; instead they lost 7%. Still. A tenth what they paid for WhatsApp.
Some kind of Google Glass like device will be huge 5-10 years from now. The way phones blew up makes everyone feel like they will be destroyed if they don't hit the next thing (they might be right), so everyone will try to buy into everything at every opportunity.
I really don't think so. We've been resistant to putting things on our faces since the invention of glasses. Glasses with a UI on them? That's a completely alienating experience. I suspect they'll be used much the way head-mounted displays are used now - for when you have no other choice. A downhill skiier could use something like that. A motorcyclist. We've had devices tied to the atomic clock in our pockets for 20 years now, yet watches are still commonplace. More than that, watches that aren't synced to the atomic clock are commonplace. Sometimes fashion isn't fashion, it's psychology.
I'm not at all excited about the idea of having my glasses be the conduit for my tech. Now, a wrist device is exciting to me. There is something engrained in me, perhaps a survivalist instinct that says I shouldn't impair my field of vision if I can avoid it. That said, I've yet to actually try them and it could very well be that after doing so, I'm won over. The proof is in the pudding. -Have you tried them yet? You ought to get your hands on a pair, I'd welcome that #bl00sreview.
It isn't a survival instinct, it's a social instinct. The eyes aren't just the window to the soul, they're the primary indicator of body language. Saccading = humanity; the muscles around the eye exist for signaling as much as they do for controlling vision. When you put so much as a prism in front of that, it distorts others' perceptions of our emotions. That's how we can be anonymous and aloof simply by putting on a pair of sunglasses. Buddy of mine is a "pioneer." He had the choice between spending $1500 to be a Glasshole or spending $1500 to make a $500 profit on eBay. Once I pointed out the gouging possibilities he considered it for all of fifteen seconds.
Google Glass seems awkward as all hell, I'm not convinced it will catch on. Then again, I thought G+ was the death nail of FB, so I don't have the best track record for such things.It isn't a survival instinct, it's a social instinct.
In this day and age, the two are intertwined. But yeah, I get what you are saying. When I'm in a social setting, even if the sun is bright and we are outside I will take my sunglasses off so that I can look someone in the eye.
That's a little dramatic, don't you think? How many times in the past year has your your survival been on the line? And how many times in the past 24 hours have your social skills played a part in your day? G+ was a mismanagement of an idea. Most everything that Google plus had as an advantage over Facebook it stole from D*... which was never designed to be monetized. So Google took that privacy-centric framework and forced it to fit their "we track you everywhere all the time in all things" business model. What was left was something more confusing than facebook with none of your friends on it. mk, forwardslash - we need a better symbol than the plus sign for bold. I appreciate the new markup over the old markup but every time I use a symbol I shout at somebody.In this day and age, the two are intertwined.
That's a little dramatic, don't you think?
-It was meant more as a commentary on what "survival" means in modern western culture. Most of us (thankfully) aren't facing daily "survival threats" so our concern shifts to a social-centric one. The moment my true survival is threatened, I'm sure I'll care less about my social standing. But then, I would guess that in a very real way the better thought of you are in society the more likely you are to survive longer. -But yeah, it was dramatic, no doubt.And how many times in the past 24 hours have your social skills played a part in your day?
-I've made 5 phone calls this morning where my social skills played a very real part in my day and in a "earn your bacon" way, a real part in my survival. You might say I make a living by utilizing and leveraging my social skills. What was left was something more confusing than facebook with none of your friends on it.
-Exactly.
What cracks me up is that Facebook paid 19 billion for Whatsapp, and they didn't even buy the vertical by a longshot. Wechat is growing like crazy and has 355 million...not so far behind Whatsapp's 450+. And that's just one IM network among many. How many wolves are they planning on feeding?
I mean, if mk can roll up a chatting app it's not like there are serious barriers to entry. That's the thing about Oculus - mmmmkay, you've got screens and headphones and gyroscopes, oh my. And now the company that invented the Trinitron and the Walkman says they're gonna do it too. Granted - Sony has been stumbling over every major tech innovation since Microsoft was a bunch of rebels in Redmond but they kinda have something to plug it into already. Oh, but Rift is open, Sony is closed. Said Zuckerberg's bitch.
Yep. There's no evidence that people want that experience so much that it's worth the costs. I guess it would be fun to play multiplayer Halo or whatever, but that's about the extent to which I want to slap a screen on my face. Facebook bought something that has no legs outside the gaming market.That's the thing about Oculus - mmmmkay, you've got screens and headphones and gyroscopes, oh my.
To look at it from the other side though, what if you didn't get all strategerie about it and just did some napkin math on the value of Whatsapp users: Facebook revenue per user is about 9 bucks per year. Monetized at the same rate, that's over 4 billion in revenue for the Whatsapp network, per year. On one hand, they can't monetize them anywhere close to that rate yet, but on the other hand, they'll seek to and the number of users is growing. Oh yeah, and that's revenue, not profit. When I look at the acquisition as a defensive strategic play, it looks terrible, but if I look at it just nuts and bolts....well, I honestly don't know enough to value it properly, but it doesn't look overtly abysmal. I was on a car ride with mk this past Fall and was telling him about an idea I had for a messaging app. I wish I was a software engineer because I think that messaging apps are actually quite difficult to implement. Syncing is a real challenge. People are out there doing it left and right, but I swear to god Apple can't implement services to save its life. iMessage is the buggiest, conversation losing-est, least "it just works" IP messaging app I've ever used by far. I thought AOL had this sorted out in the 90's...
It's overtly abysmal. By the numbers: - WhatsApp has a revenue of $20m/year - Does not do advertising, charges s buck a year per user second year onward - Facebook paid $42 per WhatsApp user A little more math: WhatsApp has 450 million users. It made $20m off them. It has no advertising at all. That means roughly one in 200 WhatsApp users have ever given the site any money (I know I haven't - didn't even know they charged!). With the current business model, Facebook needs 405 billion people to use WhatsApp before it turns a profit. Which is going to be a hard thing to do unless they've struck a deal with the Core Worlds of The Old Republic. Or they need to make WhatsApp a factor of 400 more profitable amongst current and future customers. These are people who don't use Skype because it's expensive. At a penny a minute. iMessage does suck bilgewater, and I'll tell you why. Apple uses a proprietary mishmash of iPV4, iPV6, Apache, Samba and VNC , the makeup of which changes on whim. They also took their home-grown SMB proprietary in 2011, thereby making it nearly impossible for 3rd parties to integrate with it. It's haxie as hell and a company with that much clout and marketshare should really know better. But they don't, and iCloud is a mess, and nobody wants to use iWork, and iChat is pure shit. They offered to buy Dropbox in 2010 for a billion dollars and Dropbox said "no thanks, you don't have your shit together and if you ate us you'd fuck us up, too." Kinda see why.
Yeah, I'm working on the assumption that Facebook is absolutely not going to stick with Whatsapp's business model. They probably chuckled and patted it on the head when they first encountered it. Could be wrong. iCloud is terrible. It is so very clear why Jobs wanted Dropbox. It is the very epitome of "it just works". I love Apple products (that aren't services), but I am SO GLAD Dropbox refused to sell to them. So glad. I wish Box had more consumer application support and wasn't so enterprise-centric, I snagged 50GB of storage/yr free in perpetuity (it's actually a great strategy for them I'm just being selfish). Apple should just build a new Box/Dropbox app from the ground up, platform agnostic, put it on all their home screens, and kill iCloud. It would make me want to buy their hardware more.
$20b for WhatsApp... Do you know why it sold for so much, compared to Oculus? It may just be my U.S.-centric frame of reference but WhatsApp doesn't seem very forward thinking or even that relevant now. $2b seems like chump change comparatively, especially for something with so many possibilities down the road.
Yeah, kb is right, WhatsApp is very popular everywhere else and it's market share is growing rapidly in places like India where the size of the market is enormous. -a strategic purchase.
I never felt the excitment over oculus, I figured that there would be several more companies and technological iterations before VR was ready for the general consumer. I don't think facebook will push VR forward as fast as gaming or porn will if they keep it in their walled garden.