M+E Daily

Zuckerberg: Facebook Hitting ‘Important Milestones’ for VR

It’s still “really early” for Facebook when it comes to virtual reality, but the company is already “hitting some important milestones,” according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

As of Facebook’s second quarter ended June 30, more than 1 million people a month were using Facebook’s Oculus VR technology on mobile phones, through the company’s Gear VR partnership with Samsung, he said July 27 on the company’s second-quarter earnings call. Samsung’s Gear VR headset costs $99 and works in conjunction with Samsung Galaxy smartphones. More than 300 apps are already available at the Oculus online store for Gear VR, Zuckerberg said.

Facebook also “filled all of our pre-orders” for the $599 Oculus Rift VR headset and is “seeing increasing demand from retail as stores plan for the holidays,” he said. But he didn’t say how many units of the headset were sold so far.

“We believe that virtual reality can help people share richer experiences and help everyone understand what’s going on around the world,” Zuckerberg said.

It’s also “still early” days for augmented reality (AR), he added. Facebook is doing AR research and seeing “lightweight” versions of AR technology today in mobile apps that include the Facebook-acquired “MSQRD,” he said.

Asked by an analyst about the success of the AR mobile game “Pokemon Go,” he said: “I, like everyone else, am enjoying” the title. He added: “The biggest thing that I think we can take away from this as we invest in augmented reality in addition to virtual reality is that the phone is probably going to be the mainstream consumer platform that a lot of these AR features first become mainstream, rather than a glasses form factor that people will wear on their face.”

That’s being seen “in a number of places, whether it’s location through Pokemon or some of the face filter activity” including “MSQRD,” he said, adding: “That’s kind of a fun way to augment social experiences that you’re having with someone. I think there’s a big opportunity to build out that platform and a lot more functionality around that. And one of the big themes that we’re talking about here is becoming video first. And as people look for richer and richer ways to express themselves, just like people in the past have shared a lot of text and photos on Facebook, we think in the future more of that is going to be video and more of these augmented reality tools I think are going to be an important part of delivering that experience and making that fun to use and expressive as it can be.”

Facebook was pleased in general with the progress it made in video during the second quarter, he said. “Over the past six months we have been particularly focused on Live video,” he said, calling Live a “new way to share what’s happening in more immediate and creative ways.” Candace Payne’s Chewbacca mask video was seen nearly 160 million times in the second quarter, he told analysts. Live is also “changing the way we see politics, as news organizations and delegates go Live from the Republican and Democratic conventions,” he said.

Facebook also launched 360 Photos in the quarter, allowing users of its site to post 360-degree photos by using a mobile app and without the need for a special camera to take the images. Since launching, more than 4 million 360 photos were shared on Facebook, with 1 million more being shared every week, Zuckerberg said.

Facebook has also been “making progress” with artificial intelligence, he said, pointing to the company’s recent announcement about DeepText, a deep learning-based engine that can “understand the context of several thousand posts per second across 20 different languages.” That’s a “long-term project but it also has some near-term benefits, like helping show people more of what they want to see and filtering out what they don’t want to see,” he said.