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0 pointsartfulhippo6y ago0 comments

That Oculus is the leader in consumer VR (games and porn) does little to spark confidence in Facebook as a hard product design firm. Oculus was an acquisition, and we know Facebook is good at acquiring amazing companies.

But can Facebook create innovative products that people want? This is still an open question. After all, Facebook's success comes from out-executing on the ideas of others.

I haven't used a Portal, but isn't it video-focused? And doesn't it integrate Alexa?

I'm sure Facebook is aggressively trying to build a competing voice interface, but it's far behind Google, Amazon, and Apple. It will be harder to out-execute Amazon than Snapchat. And Facebook will need to improve its branding to even have a chance.

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the_watcher6y ago

Oculus was acquired long enough ago to attribute the product success of pretty much all of the consumer success to Facebook's ability to ship. The Quest was designed and shipped entirely under Boz, for example. They didn't buy Oculus and simply stop working.

artfulhippoOP6y ago

Facebook deserves credit for iterating on solid foundations.

If they make VR useful outside of games and porn, then they will deserve credit for meaningful innovation.

To clarify why FB cannot be satisfied with the games and porn market is that theres a big gender imbalance in those markets, and it runs against the demographics of Facebooks other apps, which have equal or even female-majority user-bases.

Given its PR and branding issues, Facebook does not want to be a games and porn company (techbro) company.

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