M+E Connections

While the Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) headset remains more of a focus for Facebook than augmented reality (AR) for now, AR and mixed reality combining elements of AR and VR will offer a major opportunity for the company in the future, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Mixed reality has the “possibility of being the next major computing platform,” and there’s also the possibility that it will be “much more social and intuitive and natural than some of the devices that we have today, whether they’re computers or phones — and that’s why I’m really excited about that,” he said July 26 on an earnings call for Facebook’s second quarter (ended June 30).

When it comes to AR glasses, “the technology and science to build an experience that would be both comfortable to wear and some of the people actually want to wear out in public … doesn’t exist yet,” Zuckerberg said. “So, there’s a lot of foundational work that needs to get done there,” he conceded. VR, on the other hand, works now because it “doesn’t have that constraint; you’re not wearing VR out in public,” he noted.

Zuckerberg sees video as being the “primary driver or one of the big drivers” for Facebook’s business over the next few years and Messenger maybe comes right after that, he said. AR, in comparison, is “quite far down the road,” he conceded. But he added: “When you’re running an operation and serving people of this scale, I think you have a responsibility to invest in all these things that are downstream that could help shape and improve peoples’ lives because I don’t think that there are many other folks in the world who will.” So, Facebook wants to play a role in building the AR market, he said.

The company, meanwhile, continues to look for ways to enhance its social network via the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

“I’m excited about how AI will improve people’s experience across our products,” Zuckerberg said on the call. “We’re finding AI is both delivering consistent improvements to many of our systems — like News Feed, search, ads, security and spam filtering,” he said, adding the technology will not only improve those existing experiences, but also “change the way we do business in some important ways.”

For example, he said that today, “to keep our community safe, we rely on people flagging content that might violate our community standards for us to review.” But, “in the future, AI will be able to help flag more of this content faster and before anyone has to see it,” he said.

Facebook already “started using AI to fight terrorism and keep propaganda and extremist accounts off” its social network, he went on to say. “We’ve even started experimenting with using AI to understand text that might have been used to promote terrorism,” he told analysts.

Despite reporting stronger second-quarter revenue and profit than a year ago, shares in Facebook were trading only 0.07% higher at $165.39 in late afternoon trading July 27, after the results were announced. Revenue grew to $9.3 billion from $6.4 billion, while income increased to $3.9 billion ($1.32 a share) from $2.3 billion (78 cents a share).