Facebook Rebrands Oculus Conference, Announces Date

Facebook is retooling its mixed reality division. Yesterday, FB exec Andrew Bosworth said the company will merge its VR, AR, and Portal work within the newly named Facebook Reality Lab (FRL). While it seems small, the revamp offers a peek into the company’s vision for mixed reality.

FRL’s crown jewel

Once upon a time, FRL was known as Oculus Research. FB paid $2 billion to acquire VR headset maker Oculus in 2014. Facebook is chipping away at the standalone Oculus brand:

• As of yesterday, FB has rebranded the annual Oculus Connect event to Facebook Connect. This year, the free-to-attend mixed reality-palooza will be held on Sept. 16.
• Last week, Oculus said it will require a Facebook login to use VR headsets. Existing users can merge their Oculus and FB accounts. If they decline to do that, support for their Oculus accounts will end in two years.

This integration antagonized many privacy-conscious VR users. While Oculus headsets don't display ads (for now), FB did start using Oculus data for ad targeting and recommendations last year. Oculus cofounder Palmer Luckey, who’s no longer with the company, once promised to never require a Facebook account for Oculus use.

The longer game

On the hardware side, the company already has Oculus VR headsets and the Portal product line.

But there’s a lot more cooking in FRL. FB says it wants to build the computing platform of the future, which could involve AR smart glasses, a bespoke operating system for FB hardware, and neural interface technology. FRL’s research projects span more than just VR—that’s why FB said it was time for the Oculus rebrand.

• Just like Instagram by Facebook and WhatsApp by Facebook, Oculus’ destiny is deeper integrations with the core app.

Outside view: “Facebook desperately wants its own operating system,” Big Technology author Alex Kantrowitz tells the Brew. “‘There are things that you can only do when you build the platform, and not just the apps within it,’ Mark Zuckerberg told me last year. That's why Facebook is betting on VR, where it owns the leading operating system in Oculus.”