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Comment by nobodysfool | Hacker News Reader

>Facebook could stay hands off

No, they could have made a sizable investment without having a controlling stake in it. No, they Acquired it. You don't do that unless you want to change something there. My best hope is that the Zuck sees something cool going on with the Oculus and wants to try his hand at something new. My worst fear is that they will develop the 'Oculus API' as a wrapper around the original API and Facebook. Now Facebook can ad ads featuring your friend's faces in games... and free 3d games if you just watch a 15 second ad for every five minutes that you play...

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My god, the tinfoil on HN has become unbearable. Are you even listening to yourself?

Facebook is a company whose revenue is entirely based on advertising spend. They pitch their network's services based on the fine level of control you can have over market segmentation - the more information Facebook has about people, the better they can promote these services.

It's reasonable to speculate on the extent to which Oculus can resist being assimilated into the already-existing business model. It seems less reasonable to speculate that Oculus will become Facebook's flagship product and not just some sidekick to enhance their current revenues if possible (or if that doesn't work, consigned to the dustbin of history).

Since all of this is speculation anyway, what do you think is going to happen?

Are you even listening to yourself arguing with nothing but a baseless ad hominem AND still having the gall to ask someone if he's listening to himself?

I can't hear myself because my tinfoil hat is deflecting not only thought-reading beams and sunlight, but also my own sound waves, due to being shaped like an inverse sombrero.

I think. Or maybe I am hearing other people's thoughts and the sombrero is working as a beacon??? I'll give Dr Xavier a call.

> Now Facebook can ad ads featuring your friend's faces in games

Facebook doesn't run ads for the sake of running ads...it requires money to run a social platform that's completely free for a billion+ users. It's unlikely they'll be handing out Rifts for free so they can rely on sales of the devices to generate revenue from the Oculus division.

Except that hardware has very slim margins, & all the woes associated with shipping a physical product. Ad revenue is cheap & easy.

Hardware is how you deliver eyeballs. It's why android was bought. Oculus will be a medium for delivering eyeballs as will Google Glass.

If there was an alternative to google search Apple would default to that search engine. They don't need the billions they make from Google search being in iOS.

> Now Facebook can ad ads featuring your friend's faces in games... and free 3d games if you just watch a 15 second ad for every five minutes that you play...

But that might be fairly easy to compete with, perhaps, and so people would, if the situation you described came to be, just think "this is ridiculous" and maybe not buy an Occulus Rift. Sony's working on something similar.

That said, my interest in the project also just took a severe beating. I'm kind of done with Facebook, I don't want to be a part of it but I should keep an eye on it. Maybe Facebook will allow the product to become what its makers are intending. Or, maybe they'd require you to have, say, a Facebook account for, some reason, in which case I wouldn't really be interested in the product.

No need to buy it if the device is free or very low-price and has capabilities.

Free headset, just sign this agreement that gives Facebook all your eye tracking data that shows exactly what you are interested in looking at at millisecond resolution.

It's still a $300 visor. Ads would be ridiculous unless he can find some crazy scheme to make it count as a mobile phone for Verizon.

Oculus is still predominately a relatively small hardware and low-level software centric company. I wouldn't be surprised if he were trying to leverage his company's app-making experience to create a suite of new functionality for it outside the realm of video games and gimmicky proofs of concept.

Also, Facebook uses video. Facebook will need 3D integration once the first 3D video feeds start coming down for this thing. Is 2 billion worth it to have early access to the most important emerging technology in Zuck's new favorite space? Yes. Yes it is.

That said, I have no idea how 3D video chat will work with a giant screen strapped on top of my face.

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