Not too bothered by Facebook acquiring Oculus

The persistently level-headed John O'Nolan makes some good points about the outrage surrounding the Facebook/Oculus acquisition, and he has some experience with similar backlash. For the most part, I'd agree (especially where Facebook is concerned), that a larger company acquiring a smaller one doesn't always spell doom and gloom (though he's left out some of Google's acquire-and-kills).

However, all of Facebook's high profile acquisitions (that's a lot more companies than I thought!) have one thing in common - they play well into social, or they would augment a current Facebook feature well. They're social companies; they were started that way, and when people were scared of what Facebook would do, it was because they didn't want the service to be subsumed by Facebook and lose its identity. A valid concern but, so far, one that appears to have been unjustified (except in the case of Friend Feed). Yes, it's early days for WhatsApp, but Instagram still seems to remain Instagram (I don't use it, but the whining has died down). The app's had a (much-needed) facelift, but it hasn't become Facebook Photos, which is what scared people.

Oculus is not a social company. They make a video game peripheral, and a popular one at that. The reason people are scared now is because they had a vision of what Oculus could mean for gaming, and I'm betting that vision didn't include being bought by a social network. However, that doesn't mean that it can't still be used for that - the concept of VR doesn't begin and end in gaming. Presumably, in purchasing Oculus, Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the people behind the decision see something very valuable for VR in social. I don't see it either, but maybe that's why I don't have billions of dollars!

The point is that Facebook owning Oculus doesn't preclude Oculus from being used for gaming any more, and it doesn't mean that Facebook's going to close it off and stop all the paranoid gamers from finally getting VR (I'd rather have hoverboards, but you get what you're given I suppose). It means that it'll get a huge cash injection to get it ready to be used by everyone. And when it's ready to be used by everyone, you have to assume that it'll be ready to use for gaming, too, because there's no precedent; no evidence to the contrary. Gaming will hopefully be a large part of the future of VR, so why buy a company for $2bn, then shut out a huge potential source of revenue? Big companies might be evil, but they're evil because they're only driven by profits, not because they want to steal your toys and stop you using them (except pharma companies, who'd rather you died than slim their profit margins). My bet is Mark Zuckerberg's gone "Sony's getting involved with this?! Time to play with the big boys".

If this acquisition proves anything (not that it needed it), it's that people still haven't figured Kickstarter out, and that most people are not suited to the business of seed investment at all.

From Notch:

And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.

No, you didn't. You paid ten grand to seed for 0% stake and a bit of hardware, and that's what you got. Kickstarting does not get you a stake in the company, or the ability to make decisions on its future, regardless of how much you throw at it.