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Comment by stingraycharles | Hacker News Reader

And in the end, it's their choice anyway. People respond mostly negatively because of their expectations about how Facebook will monetize this. It's now up to Facebook to prove them wrong.

I personally think it's not going to be as bad. Oculus has a clear path to monetization, while Facebook, with their other products, have always been struggling to monetize their user base, which lead them to implement controversial features like Beacon. In this case, all they have to do is back off and make sure the right people are leading Oculus -- and so far, I think they are doing fine with that.

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> "Oculus has a clear path to monetization"

"Monetization" is a bastardization of a term that was necessary to describe how non-profitable companies could somehow make money from giving away their product for free -- usually by abusing the userbase they're handing the free product to.

See the second paragraph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetization

I think what you meant to say is:

"Oculus has a clear product that they will sell for money, because that's how businesses that actually sell products to their customers survive".

This is a major reason why the Facebook buyout is so terrible for a product company. Facebook doesn't know how to make and sell a product that isn't their own users.

> Facebook doesn't know how to make and sell a product that isn't their own users

And how is this any different to Google ? They have exactly the same business model as Facebook.

My initial reaction was to ask why you brought Google into this conversation. Upon further thought, while Google does have a similar business model to Facebook, they have also built actual products and sold them directly to consumers, which Facebook has not. They also build an operating system, Android, used by the majority of smart phones sold worldwide.

So no, they're not quite the same, but ignoring that, why bring up Google when no one is talking about them here?

Because Google used to be just a search engine. Seriously, is the idea that "things change with time" so alien to the HN audience?

That still has nothing to do with what I said. The poster I responded to brought up Google in a conversation that was completely unrelated to them. Not only that, his comparison wasn't even apt, because Google has built and sold hardware and develops Android, so saying their business model is exactly the same as Facebook isn't even remotely accurate.

I have no problem with companies changing their focus and direction, and my response was strictly related to the poster's out-of-left-field comment.

> And how is this any different to Google ?

It isn't, they're both raping their users' privacy for money, and that is why Oculus selling to Facebook is disgusting. Facebook will only use it for more privacy-raping, since that's just what Facebook does.

Why do people think Facebook has a problem making money ? They had over $7 billion in revenue in 2013.

And should they ever decide to compete with Google's AdSense they would be able to make a significant amount more.

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