Why Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus is great long term thinking.

Finally a proactive large bet from Facebook! The last two sizable acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were largely defensive moves designed to continue retaining users who were starting to spend their time elsewhere.

Todays announcement of the 2bn acquisition of Oculus is about the future. This is undoubtedly a long term investment into a new platform which has the potential of transforming how digital media is consumed and created.

Virtual Reality has been the thing of Sci Fi novels for quite some time but almost like everything else related to communication and media, these concepts initially rooted in fantasy eventually become a reality with every day applications.

As Facebook continues their quest to connect everyone on this planet, it makes absolute sense to invest heavily into a company producing technology which might end up being as ubiquitous as Television or Phones.

This chart is a few years old, but just look at the adoption rate of technologies in the past, who wouldn’t want to be on the very forefront of a new transport for media consumption and interaction?

Yes, just like Glass it will take a tremendous amount of energy and developments to get this ready for prime time and meaningful enough to land in the hands of every regular consumer. But it will happen. In one form or another.

So as over the next weeks and months we keep hearing jokes about virtual reality Farmvile and complaints about Oculus selling out and forgetting their kickstarter roots, what most skeptics should remember is that as a mature company Facebook is likely hoping to last a 100 years and bets like the one today are exactly what is needed to secure that future even if tangible rewards are decades away.