It was announced yesterday that Facebook has reached an agreement to purchase Oculus VR, the makers of the Oculus Rift headset, for about two billion dollars. Not all in cash mind you. Only $400 million of that will be in "cash" the rest of the $1.6 billion in Facebook stock. That is all upfront as well as $300 million more is offered if Oculus VR can hit certain milestones that are still yet to be defined at the writing of this article. On the upside of things though, the Oculus team gets to stay where there are to keep working so no down time for moving the operation.
So what does all this mean?
Signs still point to unclear like the milestones needing to be hit. The speculation on the other hand is what we are all about right now. Like the fun joke about a VR Farmville or Candy Crush. Or how about even a way to go all VR like shown in Futurama? I mean there are already the talks going on around about the Oculus Rift being used for advertisement purposes already so why not? One can only imagine.
Personally I see it being used to add yet another fun way to talk to each other using the social service as well as link everything you virtually do to your virtual self on Facebook. You take a virtual trip to a foreign land and it will automatically post you virtual pictures and experiences online. You play a game or watch a film socially and it will be linked and liked right there on your account. It might even track how active you are and sync it all to your virtual presence. Hopefully it won't link any of your more adult themed fun that is sure to come if the VR experience takes off again.
We'll see what kind of updates will come in the following months from now but I am still not certain on how I feel about all of this. I can also see this harming everything by bringing an experience that only Zuckerberg and other shareholders want and not the freedom we could have had before. We'll see I guess.