By Deepa Seetharaman
To Mark Zuckerberg, Pokémon Go wasn't just a fad from last
summer. It was a sign that augmented-reality technology was coming
more quickly than he expected.
The mobile game was among the trends that helped the Facebook
Inc. chief executive realize that augmented reality might catch on
sooner than rival virtual reality technology -- where Mr.
Zuckerberg had placed his biggest bet. On Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg
shifted his view toward augmented reality, which mixes the physical
and digital worlds, when he announced at Facebook's annual F8
developers' conference that Facebook would make its
augmented-reality tools available to third-parties to create custom
masks, filters and other effects. Early partners include Nike Inc.,
Electronic Arts Inc. and Warner Bros.
"I think people look at this stuff and think: OK, that's kind of
fun, kind of primitive, this is just what kids like doing today,"
Mr. Zuckerberg said in an interview last week at Facebook's
headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. "But we look at that and we see
the beginning of a platform."
Facebook's focus on augmented reality at F8, which takes place
Tuesday and Wednesday in San Jose, Calif., is a major new salvo in
Facebook's competition with Snap Inc.'s Snapchat. Facebook's
smaller rival popularized simple augmented reality tools, such as
Snapchat filters, which overlay masks or dog noses on users' faces.
Also on Tuesday, Snapchat introduced a new feature to capture
backgrounds.
For now, augmented-reality technology remains nascent, Mr.
Zuckerberg said. But he predicts that eventually it will open the
door to a broader set of services and perhaps one day replace
household objects like a television set with $1 apps.
In Mr. Zuckerberg's view, Facebook's nearly two billion users
favor more immersive mediums like photos and videos, and will
increasingly use their cameras to interact with the world. Last
month, Facebook tried to make the camera more central to the use of
the app by adding a "swipe right" move to open the camera.
But the embrace of more visual forms of communication comes with
challenges. Facebook is already struggling to moderate
objectionable videos posted on its site. The broadcasting on
Facebook of a murder in Cleveland on Sunday became a national issue
that Mr. Zuckerberg addressed onstage at F8.
"We have a lot of work and we'll do all we can to prevent
tragedies like this from happening," Mr. Zuckerberg said.
Steve Stephens, the alleged killer who posted the videos, shot
himself earlier Tuesday after a brief pursuit from police.
Facebook's other apps, including its two chat apps Messenger and
WhatsApp and the photo-sharing app Instagram, are going through a
similar shift toward more visual communication. All of Facebook's
apps feature a "stories" tool, created by Snapchat, that allows
users to post images and videos that vanish in 24 hours.
Facebook had seized on virtual reality to vault the company into
the next generation of technological interaction. By buying
virtual-reality company Oculus VR for more than $2 billion in 2014,
Facebook was seen to have placed its chips on virtual reality, in
which users are fully immersed in a fabricated world, over
augmented reality. Mr. Zuckerberg said virtual reality would become
the next major computing platform after mobile devices.
But virtual reality has struggled to take off, at Facebook and
at other companies developing the technology. Oculus built a
headset to experience virtual reality, but it faced production
delays and was expensive to purchase. In addition, no game or
application has caught on as a must-have that would make a broader
audience buy into virtual reality.
Pokémon Go did that for augmented reality last July. Mr.
Zuckerberg declared himself a fan of the game that displayed
characters on a sidewalk through the smartphone screen.
Over the past year, augmented reality has figured more
prominently in Mr. Zuckerberg's vision of how people will
communicate, shop and consume information in the future. Mr.
Zuckerberg said both technologies would serve as the next computing
platform over the next 10 to 15 years. Oculus technology and
research in areas like motion tracking helped strengthen its
foundation in augmented reality, he said.
"I think VR and AR are two sides of a coin," Mr. Zuckerberg said
in the interview.
Last year, Mr. Zuckerberg said his biggest takeaway from
Pokémon's success was that most people would be introduced to
augmented reality through their phones, not through glasses, as he
previously expected. That made the barrier to using augmented
reality much lower than virtual reality, which leans heavily on
costly hardware. (Facebook is still developing augmented-reality
glasses.)
"If you look at how we use our screens today, about half the
time is TV -- so pretty immersive -- and then half the time is
phones and computers -- so more just like transitory, utility," he
added. "Even in that long-term case, maybe half of the use case
will be virtual reality."
Facebook's focus on virtual reality means it has devoted much
less time and investment to augmented reality. It made a minor
acquisition last year of a startup called MSQRD, which also creates
face filters. Now, in augmented reality, Facebook faces competition
from companies like Snap; Microsoft Corp.; which is developing an
augmented-reality headset called HoloLens; and Magic Leap Inc., an
augmented-reality startup backed by Alphabet Inc.'s Google.
Snap's new augmented reality feature could allow it to obtain
more data on products users have around them -- potentially
valuable to advertisers. The feature could have the capability of
spotting brands in a user's surroundings.
Mr. Zuckerberg also sees the Facebook app offering a much
broader range of services through augmented reality, such as
displaying purchase information for a bottle of wine or a tour of
the Colosseum, along with illustrations of what it would have
looked like during the Roman empire. Augmented reality could open
the door to new styles of art, Mr. Zuckerberg says.
Facebook could even combine its augmented-reality tools with its
facial-recognition technology to help users who need to be reminded
of someone's name, Mr. Zuckerberg said. But that raises thorny
privacy issues.
"There are many, many things to figure out," Mr. Zuckerberg
said.
Separately at F8, Messenger unveiled several new features and
revamped its chatbots to allow for services that didn't require
conversation, like a Spotify "chat extension" that just helps users
share songs.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 18, 2017 16:37 ET (20:37 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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