Just when you thought Facebook was being too generous for buying Whatsapp for $19 billion, we have another surprising news again today. From Facebook’s official blog post, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder and CEO) announced that Facebook has acquired Oculus for $2 billion ($400 million in cash + Facebook shares valued at around $1.6 billion).
Oculus is the company behind Oculus Rift, a popular virtual reality head mounted display.
Why Facebook wants an Oculus Rift is kind of a mystery, but not to Mark:
Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate – Mark Zuckerbeg
I don’t think we will be seeing Facebook interactivity with the Oculus Rift (such as tiliting your head to see your Facebook news feed), but it’d be interesting to find out where the company is heading, due to this acquisition development.
I did have a play with Oculus Rift on Australian Open 2014 (was invited by IBM). Although it was cool and all, I did get nausea (motion sickness) from using it for a few minutes. The product will definitely get better in the future. This grandma seems to be having fun though:
What do you think of this news? Is Facebook on a shopping spree?
Source: Facebook blog post
