Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…I love it. I think it's a technology acquisition. I would say the signaling initially could lead more to a business line of keeping it separate, of it being its own revenue generator. But to me, this is a defensive play on protecting the network that Facebook has and their existing business model. I think that for them, they looked at this and said okay, VR is clearly a future. We need to make sure that we have a position on the dominant technology platform of the future and we are right now at risk of other people building all the hardware and the platforms and us having nothing to do with it, and then having no leverage and making sure that we have a dominant position on that platform. Facebook has seen – I guess the point I'm making is they don’t care about the business line of selling Oculus Rifts to people. I think that they’ve looked around and seen, “Crap, we don’t actually own the direct relationship with any of our users.” They’re in a slightly tenuous position where people are into Facebook They’re on it all the time, they’re on it every day. It’s an essential part of people’s lives and provides a ton of utility. But they access it through either their Apple device, their Android device. Facebook desperately tried to make their own phone. That didn’t work. Like Facebook is in a little bit of a tenuous position in not directly owning their customers. Or at least not directly owning the users that their advertising customers monetize. I think what Oculus is, is them trying to get out ahead and making sure that with this technology that clearly evolves to be the future of computing, that they aren’t going to be upended by someone else who decides that “Eh, we’re not going to prioritize Facebook on the platform where all the users are. ” Ben, I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s about owning the customer relationship at the point of access in the next wave which they don’t right now. It’s fun doing this episode right now and in particular after the Snapchat IPO. But it’s hard to judge right now like I think if they had kept in fully in that like, “Oh, we’re going to keep a separate mindset, this would be a failure.” But now that they’re starting to integrate it more deeply, that feels like the right approach to me at this point.…

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