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Facebook this week completed the $2 billion acquisition of virtual-reality company Oculus, and now founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is saying his social network is planning to “invest heavily” in even more VR and related technologies, Variety reported.
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“There are huge opportunities to build the next generation of computing platforms, ” Zuckerberg said on Facebook’s second-quarter earnings call.
Zuckerberg explains the move saying with it Facebook has a chance to define the next set of computing platforms. “We’re going to spend a lot and invest heavily to get it right over the long term, ” he said.
He also sees the development of artificial-intelligence technologies as be part of Facebook’s future platform for communications.
Zuckerberg said he wants more autoplay video on Facebook, both in video ads and video content from users. But he wants them kept short.
“You are not going to come to Facebook to watch a movie or a TV show – that’s long-form stuff.”
Mobile ad revenue constituted about 62% of advertising revenue for the second quarter, up from 41% in Q2 2013.
And unique stuff, too, “content that you can’t get anywhere else, ” like Shakira’s thank-you video to fans, when she topped 100 million “likes” last week.
Facebook is today’s Wall Street’s sweetheart, with Q2 revenue of $2.91 billion, up 61% year over year, and $791 million, up 138% versus $333 million in the year-earlier period.
On June 30, Facebook had 1.32 billion monthly active users overall, up 14% year over year, and mobile active monthly users at 1.07 billion, an increase of 31%.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said the 2014 World Cup was a high-activity event for Facebook, with 350 million users worldwide generating 3 billion interactions related to the games.
Facebook’s McDonald’s ads, in which soccer players were represented by French fries, was seen by 125 million Facebook users.
Facebook now has 1.5 million active advertisers, with more than 30 million small businesses hosting pages on the site.
