It was just announced that Facebook is working on virtual reality apps. The social media giant bought Oculus VR in March of last year for $2 billion dollars and it revealed that it has been working on developing virtual reality apps for the Oculus Rift headset.
Chief product officer, Chris Cox, confirmed yesterday at the Code/Media conference in Laguna Niguel, California that the company is indeed working on virtual reality apps that use the virtual reality technology Facebook bought last year. It appears that users are going to be able to interact and create their very own virtual reality content which they can share with other users.
With the new focus on virtual reality, Facebook plans to focus on changing the mobile reading experience by adding virtual reality to it.
It was revealed that at the moment, Facebook is targeting publishers and is in discussions to allow Facebook to host their content and make the mobile reading experience a much more pleasant one. If the publishers agree to cooperate, then they will work together to provide a much better user reading experience and generate more traction for their content.
Cox mentioned that the partnerships are going to take time to become a reality and they will not make the publisher’s website obsolete, instead, Facebook is going to help them reach a much larger audience. He continued to say that virtual reality as a medium of interaction is something completely new and that users will take some time to get familiar with it. He added that at the moment with Facebook, users are just sending bits and pieces of experience, such as a video or a photo, but with the addition of virtual reality, they would be sending a fuller picture.
To launch the first Oculus, founder Palmer Luckey had to turn to Kickstarter for support and funding. Kickstarter helped the creators make the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset and also raise a whopping $2.4 million for the virtual reality project. Facebook bought Oculus VR, the company that created the Oculus Rift in March 2014.
Image Source: Oculus
