In recent months, public opinion of Facebook has soured in light of the company’s less-than-admirable handling of user data and privacy. Despite its tarnished public image, Facebook still has high hopes for its future in the worlds of augmented and virtual Reality (AR and VR).
Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s lead on initiatives like mobile ads and commerce, now leads the company’s AR/VR efforts. At Oculus Connect 6, Bosworth announced, “We are building AR glasses. We have a few working prototypes, but these are still a few years out, so in the meantime, we’re focusing on the deep tech stack necessary to bring these to life. Today, Spark AR is the largest augmented reality platform for the phone. We’re working on deepening the technology to bridge the physical and digital divides.”
This announcement came as no surprise, especially in light of Facebook’s recent partnership with Ray-Ban to accelerate the AR glasses project. However, Bosworth went on to say that “We (will) ship it as early as we can…we’re focused on delivering an experience that we’re really going to learn something from.”
“Facebook has a good track record of adapting itself in the face of changing consumer landscape. To the skeptics—that’s fair. We have to show them with the work that we’re serious.”
— Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s Vice President of AR/VR
Facebook has also made a splash with the recent announcement that they will be acquiring CTRL-Labs, a neural software startup that developed a wristband that read the body’s electrical signals and could turn them into digital signals. Lead by Thomas Reardon, the creator of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, it’s planned that CTRL-Labs will be folded into Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) in order develop its mind-reading technology for future possible use with Facebook’s AR glasses.
While Facebook collected $55.8 billion of revenue in 2018, the biggest challenge as the company makes forays into the leading edge of technology will be to get consumers on board. In the wake of Cambridge Analytica’s scrutiny and a hefty $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission for its privacy practices, Facebook must once again woo the public by reassuring users their data will, in fact, be properly protected.
In a recent interview with BBC, Bosworth acknowledged that “For Facebook as a company, and for each product that we build, we’ve got to earn people’s trust, and that never stops. That’s every single decision we make. That’s every single product release.”
Another challenge will be for Facebook to handle problems of hate speech, violence, and fake news that have shown the darker side of the social media platform in the wrong hands. It’s difficult to tell what new problems may be caused as Facebook expands to AR/VR. “It can’t just be the Wild West,” says Jon Lax, the director of AR/VR product design. “When you open up emotional bandwidth, you can threaten people.”
