Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

thesurge.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 229 posts

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#121

Post by threeseed »

teacup50 wrote: post #87
wiremine wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general -- should have nothing to do with Oculus' vision. Honest question: why shouldn't VR be in Facebook's vision? _Someone_ is going to create a Google Hangouts-style product that incorporates VR. I'm not excited…

> _Someone_ is going to create a Google Hangouts-style product that incorporates VR. Are they? Why is VR inevitable? We already went through this once in the 90s, and the same truths are still true: nobody wants to put a face-covering headset just to communicate with other people.

You could say the same thing about computers.

Nobody wants to sit in front of a screen just to communicate with other people. Yet billions of people do.

Up until now the technology simply hasn't been good enough to address the "presence" issue.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#122

Post by bane »

encoderer wrote: post #116
bane wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why most people think Facebook is so dumb in this thread. Because Facebook is dumb. For all the talk of vision, FB is nothing more than organic growth around Zuck's desire to get lists of fellow students on his campus into a directory. FB in 2006 is barely a different experience than FB in 2014. And none of the changes made so far can be charitably described as "smart". For all the wealth of info…

Facebook has been taking their product to market for the last 8 years. What would you have them do? Change their product for the sake of it when it's still growing -- worldwide? Innovation in tech is still laudable innovation. Cassandra. Scribe. Thrift. React. Tech that is widely used. I don't think FB is as important to our industry as some other companies, but no, they're not dumb.

I'm not challenging FB to innovate. It's not in their DNA. FB is FB. It is what it is.

And that's why this acquisition is bad. There are no paths that FB will take with this tech that doesn't drive it right down the non-innovative path they're already on and committed to.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#123

Post by hibikir »

You don't even have to hate facebook to not like the merger. Anyone that has been part of a big corporate merger knows that the small company will very rarely keep its old culture for very long. Being bought changes things, and it rarely makes the company more productive. In all my years in the industry, I've not been a part of one where the consumer was helped: The only winners have always been the few people that got the millions from being acquired.

Not every acquisition like this is a total failure, but so many of them are, it's very hard to see any acquisition with optimism, unless you want both sides to fail. Can IBM please buy Oracle?

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#124

Post by bane »

superuser2 wrote: post #109
Geee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you see it? Facebook can't currently monetize face-to-face interactions, but in virtual reality they can. The purchase makes a lot of sense for Facebook. Facebook's business model is to monetize human interactions. Today, most of human interaction happens over the Internet (with messages and images), and in the future, it will happen in virtual environments. VR will be the ultimate platform, and Facebook wants…

Other businesses that are about monetizing human interaction: telephony (pay us to talk to people), restaurants (pay us for a venue to have a conversation/date, show off your wealth), clothing (pay us to increase your apparent status/attractiveness), theater and movies (pay us to have an activity with your friends/date), beyond-low-end housing (pay us so you can entertain and impress and be in a city with lots of hum…

No FB is exactly the same. They monetize interactions. So what kind of interactions will you be having with an OVR strapped to your face that they'll now be monetizing?

I upvoted you because I thought your comment didn't deserve the downvoting it was getting

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#125

Post by threeseed »

dragontamer wrote: post #24
jader201 wrote: post #9

> Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. > If you actually understand [Facebook’s] vision of letting us be who we’re going to be, just like they wanted to let Instagram be who they are. The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general --…

Case in point: Facebook games are Mafia Wars and Farmville... games that represent raking in tons of money by offering very poor (but addicting) gameplay. The core gamer audience is pissed off at Facebook as it is, and that is the audience Oculus Rift is aimed towards. If Oculus sold out to Valve, Sony, Microsoft... hell... maybe even EA or Activision... they wouldn't have nearly as bad of a reaction as with Facebook…

See this is why I like that Facebook acquired Oculus. VR shouldn't be the exclusive domain of hardcore gamers.

I want the equivalent of Playstation Home in VR. And nobody can pull that off except Facebook.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#127

Post by threeseed »

bane wrote: post #115
danabramov wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen Paper?

Does anybody use Paper?

Absolutely. You only have to look at the number of reviews to know it is very popular.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-stories-from-facebook/...

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#128

Post by mavrc »

dwc wrote: post #64
kybernetikos wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pretty sure that they want to create something like a successful second life - i.e. a VR social network, where users have their own virtual property that they can customize and virtual spaces where they can meet. Basically something like the metaverse in Snowcrash. And I can completely see the high ups in Occulus thinking that this is a brilliant match of visions.

> Basically something like the metaverse in Snowcrash More like the Oasis from Ready Player One, but owned by the Sixers from the start.

This is what I was thinking, too. Facebook buying Oculus is the exact sort of disaster that Parzival spent the entire book trying to prevent against.

In fairness to Mark Zuckerberg, RP1 was wildly idealistic in a way I can only describe as Stallmanesque. Beautiful, but wildly idealistic.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#129

Post by threeseed »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #58
arrc wrote: post #52

Guys Facebook is no Microsoft or Google who only buy to soft kill the competitor. FB is different just look at their past acquisitions like Instagram and others, they all survived and are still in active development and rolling out new features. If it were MS/Google acquiring Oculus, negative reactions would have been justified.

All of FB's past acquisitions before Oculus (just Instagram and WhatsApp) were social media platforms, precisely what FB specialized in and knows how to work with. They don't need to do any radical shift with them, they already serve as private data and analytics incubators. Oculus is a completely unrelated avenue for them, and one can only wonder what their intentions are. Zuckerberg already made a PR statement that…

But what makes Facebook different to what Google was a few years ago ?

Google has been a long time advertising player that only recently got into hardware.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#130

Post by danabramov »

bane wrote: post #119
danabramov wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>FB is nothing more than organic growth You seem to be underestimating how difficult organic growth is. (In terms of product design, not engineering. And yes, Facebook circa 2006 is great product design because it was what people wanted.)

Organic growth is execution and engineering, not innovation. FB in 2006 is a good design, and magically hit upon what people wanted, an easier to use private email system with a public announcement board. Is FB 2014 fundamentally different? Is there innovation? How about FB's other acquisitions, are they innovative or just derivative? Hint: If it's in the social space, it's just derivative. FB acquires purely to secu…

... or buying companies that know how to innovate.
Post reply on HN