Oculus VR Now is Facebook's Baby

On Tuesday this week, Facebook announced that it acquired Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift gaming handset in a cash and stock deal. The deal was valued $2 billion.

The terms of deal include $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock.

"Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Facebook says that Oculus will remain headquartered in Irvine and it will also continue with the development of the Oculus Rift platform. The Oculus team was never really committed to bring out a consumer version of the VR headset to the market. However, more than 75,000 developers had already ordered developer kits for the technology.

Oculus is the social media giant’s second major acquisition in less than two months’ time. Last month, Facebook acquired Whatsapp for a whopping sum.

In a conference, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook said that it was a move taken keeping into mind the future, Buying Oculus is a long term bet on the future of computing for Facebook.

The idea that Oculus represents the future of computing isn't relegated to just investors. Shane Hudson, a London-based web developer, says he thinks that Oculus has the ability to offer up a “fully immersed experience." Hudson thinks that experience could extend from tasks such as "playing a game, watching a film, reading a book or even chatting your friends 'face-to-face' despite being on the other side of the world."

Hudson works with data visualizations and he sees the Oculus Rift as giving an entire new way of working with that kind of data. "It's a very interesting technology that could go in any number of directions, much as the web did," Hudson says.

That's what Zuckerberg thinks too. He sees Oculus's current focus around games and entertainment as just the beginning. 

"Oculus has the potential to be the most social platform ever,"

"Oculus has the potential to be the most social platform ever," he said. "Imagine not just sharing moments with your friends online but entire experiences."

Zuckerberg also said that buying Oculus was a way of investing in the best and brightest players in computing. He said Oculus is "years ahead in terms of technology" but that "all the best and brightest in the space already work there."

Over the last two years, the Oculus team has amassed tons of talent, including many of the best minds in virtual reality and in gaming. John Carmack, the co-founder of id Software — and the lead programmer of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom andQuake, joined Oculus in Aug. 2012 as its CTO.

Facebook has faced backlash before. After Facebook announced it was going to purchase Instagram, users threatened to leave the service en masse. However, the users did not leave and Instagram has been on the rise ever since!  

Zuckerberg is clearly hoping the same situation will take place with Oculus VR. He would definitely not mind a bit of a backlash for a better future!

Umeng: 700+ Million Smartphone Users in China

An analytics firm named Umeng has reported that China has over 700 million of active smartphone users. Moreover, out of all the devices that were sold 41% of the buyers were purchasing their first ever smartphone. Rest of the customers were upgrading to a better model.

In November 2011, China had become the world’s largest smartphone market. However, the sales gradually dropped down after the mobile penetration rates increased. As per a report from the IDC, shipments decreased in 2013 for the first time in two years. The first –time users are buying their smartphone devices after prices have drastically gone down.

Majority of the smartphone devices sold in China were Androids that cost less than $350. However, the demand for these devices is very strong today as well. A lot of high-end smartphones were sold as well. 80% of the same were iPhone smartphones.

iPhone users are also now less likely to jailbreak their phones, thanks to China’s new status as one of Apple’s launch markets; tools like Kuaiyong Apple Assistant, which offers free versions of paid iOS apps; and security concerns about jailbroken devices. Last year, the percentage of jailbroken iPhones in mainland China fell to 13% from 30% at the beginning of the year.

Samsung and Xiomi highly dominate the Android marketplace though it is fragmented with more than 100 manufacturers. In 2013, the top 10 Android devices came from these two phone giants.

Mostly, people who are owners of smartphones costing less than $150, stick to casual games. However, many people spend a lot of time in every title thanks to the improvement in hardware like the processors and memory and graphic cards.

In fact, Umeng writes that “the term ‘casual games’ is becoming a misnomer as users are spending large blocks of time playing these games rather than dipping in and out as was once the case.”

Players are also starting to demand the official versions of games, instead of clones or pirated versions. Last year was the first year “Chinese developers took IP seriously with many developers licensing IP from rights holders,” said Umeng. He further continued saying that, “With the loyalty of fans, game developers realized a well-known, officially licensed IP/brand will help them easily attract IP fans and get promoted in the app store and potentially acquire more high value users.”

 A lot of social networking services like WeChat, Sina Weibo, QQ and Renren should be integrated into social networking services. The amount of app content shared over social media platforms has been increasing ever since; it has tripled over the last six months. 48 per cent of it has come from games.

WeChat was especially popular–the amount of app content shared through the messaging app grew by a whopping 8,600% between March and November 2013.

Umeng said non-game developers should keep an eye on the other five fastest growing mobile app categories, which are news, health and fitness, social networking, business, and navigation. Popular social networking apps included photo- and video-sharing apps, as well as app targeting niche markets, like dating and parenting

Apple Apparently Adds a New Feature to iAd

After updating its mobile operating system to iOS 7.1, Apple seems to have added a new feature to its iAd program. The feature is designed to allow the company, not only to take credit for the app downloads driven by its ads, but also allows advertisers to get a better sense of whether their campaigns are paying off or not.

While there is no such mention about the change in Apple’s documentation, there is API code, which seems to indicate a change. Here’s how HasOffers interprets the code:

Based on our interpretation, we believe this method will provide insight into whether a user engaged (impression or click) with an ad from iAd, in specific, prior to installing the app. If the user did engage with an ad specifically from iAd, then the “determine App Installation Attribution with Completion Handler” method will return a value of 1 for yes. If the user didn’t engage with an ad from iAd (perhaps the user engaged with an ad from another channel like Google Adwords or didn’t even engage with any ads at all), then the function will return a value of 0 for no.

Whether this interpretation is completely true or not, has to be known yet from the Apple officials.

WeChat Better than Whatsapp?

It was a surprise to everyone when Facebook bought the messaging service giant Whatsapp for $19 billion and people were even more surprised when Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook went on to say that Whatsapp was worth even more. What has happened now is that the analysts at Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia have evaluated several messaging apps and have come up with a statement which says that WeChat, a Chinese competitor, owned by Tencent, is worth at least $60 billion. They claim so because according to their study, WeChat has more active revenues streams incorporated into its service than Whatsapp does. CSLA ranges the valuation between $35 billion and $64 billion this year.

Though the users of WeChat are less as compared to Whatsapp, it has more revenue streams. Analysts Elinor Leung and Terry Chen write, “WhatsApp only generates US$1/download. WeChat could generate revenues from mobile games, advertising, eCommerce, O2O, mobile payment and Internet financing. Asia leads the global smartphone game market especially Korea, Japan and China. eCommerce, online to offline payments and mobile payment are unique business opportunities in China given the poor offline infrastructure. Tencent has also invested heavily and made aggressive acquisitions such as JD and Dianping to secure the business opportunities.”

Also, it seems like WeChat is likely to hit 450 million users this year, with each subscriber worth some $142. Whatsapp has been maintaining for a while now that it will continue to operate under Facebook in the same way without advertisements. On the other hand, WeChat has taken a quite delicate approach when it comes to advertising for now at least.

 “While most online and offline corporates are eager to tap WeChat users, Tencent has been careful controlling the promotional activities by its public accounts,” the CLSA analysts write. “Users can only find and follow the public accounts unless they know the name. Tencent doesn’t provide a list of public accounts for users. Tencent has also limited the daily promotional messages sent out by public accounts.”

However, CLSA goes on to note that Tencent “will likely turn more aggressive on monetizing through social advertising once user penetration is mature. Display ads may not be the best advertising format on mobile social messaging platforms.”

WeChat has made some interesting developments in terms of incorporating some additional features like payments. Tencent has launched apps like red envelope and taxi apps which will also be integrated with WeChat to complete transactions for things like paying bills, buying things, red envelopes and subscriptions.

“WeChat payment registered users reportedly jumped 5 times given the viral effect of the red envelope app,” CLSA writes.

Pay For Your Friends' Subscriptions On Whatsapp

Facebook’s newly acquired messaging giant Whatsapp has come up with a new update for the Android version of the app.

There are a few privacy related features which the new update has, but the most interesting feature added is that the users can now pay for their friends’ and families’ subscriptions no matter what the platform is.

Right now, users can use the messaging service free for a year and later pay $0.99 as a yearly subscription. Whatsapp and Facebook are definitely looking out to promoting the invitation of new users onto the platform by adding this feature.

Right now, for Whatsapp, its growth is of high importance. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, is quite clear when it comes to monetization of Whatsapp. So, the growth of the app is priority and letting users invite and pay for others is a good step.

Whatsapp is also looking forward to incorporate voice calling in the later part of this year.

Read Faster With the Spritz Reader

Spritz has developed a speed-reading text box. It shows no more than 13 characters at one time. This box flashes words in such a way that you do not have to move your eyes like you do when you read a page of a physical book. Sounds interesting, doesn't it? Well, what it does is, it increases your reading speed and doubles your usual pace.

It has teamed up with the smartphone giant Samsung to integrate its speed reading functionality with the latter’s upcoming Galaxy S5. The written word, even after 8,000 years of discovery is a very effective way of communication. Moreover, it is an effective way to get one message from one mind to the minds of others. However, we haven’t yet reached the level where we have optimized the benefit of the same.

According to Boston-based start up Spritz, you spend as little as 20 percent of your reading time actually taking in the words you’re looking at, and as much as 80 percent physically moving your eyes around to find the right spot to read each word from. What Spritz has done is, it has decided to get rid of that time and have your eyes focus on one spot.

The Spritz reader is a small box which streams one word at a time to the reader. The words are presented in a way which is easy to read. The fonts are reader friendly. The words are presented in such a way that the optimal recognition point of each word is recognized. The box shows only 13 characters at the most. This is done with an intention to break up larger words.

Google Glass: Can This Be The Future Of Advertising?

The use of Google Glass in advertising and content sure looks out of focus, but the initial use of this budding technology might turn out to be a perception changer! Well, this is majorly because advertising agencies and brands are getting ready for a wearable ad tech future.

The first brand to advertise with Google Glass app was Kenneth Cole. It is a new way the Internet specs are used to sell products. “Even though the technology is still in the pilot program, we want to be looked at as an innovator and early adopter,” said Lauren Nutt Bello, partner at Ready Set Rocket, a firm working for Kenneth Cole.

To go with the launch of new cologne, the agency built an app for Google Glass. The theme of this campaign is to encourage chivalry and gentlemanly behavior. What does the app do? It prompts the users to photograph themselves for accomplishing a good deed per day for 21 days.

Well, this effort could do some good for Google Glass’ image as the new technology is already facing a growing repercussion. “One of the criticisms leveled at wearable tech is that it makes people more insular and more wrapped up in their devices rather than interacting with the world about them,” said Gareth Price, technical director at Ready Set Rocket.

Well, last week a woman wearing Glass in a much renowned bar in San Francisco claimed that she was assaulted after some fellow revelers accused her of video recording them secretly. Google released a primer to prod early users to be respectful or face the label of “Glassholes”.

These glasses currently cost $ 1500 and Google is expected to sell more widely later this year. It has sold only about 10,000 to 20,000 glasses to “explorers” who apply to a pilot program.

This actually means that very few will actually be seeing any kind of Glass- related promotions. However, early Glass advertisers are aware of the fact that this is more of an experiment rather than actually acknowledging any kind of reach. “It feels like we’re building for how ad campaigns will work three to five years in the future,” Price said.

“You’ll see us begin to ship products for some of the leading wearable devices this year,” said Doerr. Though Weather doesn’t have an app for Glass yet, the company does test it and smart watches internally. It could be a possibility that they eventually deliver advertising and content which targets users and their locations.

Apple Launches CarPlay: Siri in Your Car Now!

Well, the tech giant Apple is now ready to be in your automobile! The iPhone making company has announced the launch of CarPlay, its rebranded iOS in the Car initiative from the Geneva Motor Show. The company also revealed that automobile giants like Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and many others to be their first partners. These companies will build CarPlay straight into their cars. So, are you ready for Siri in your car’s dashboard?

Well, Apple has been working on this service for quite some time now. It’s now finally ready with it this year! CarPlay lets you make calls, check maps, listen to music and have an access to your messages with a simple touch of a button or a spoken word.

What’s more? It integrates the Lightning equipped iPhone 5, 5s or 5c into your car’s dashboard, including Siri, media playback, phone control, selected apps and Maps. So, you can easily activate Siri with a push of a button on your steering wheel, without the need of taking your eyes off the road. This week, companies like Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, and Ferrari will plan to showcase their cars with the CarPlay. Other manufacturers like BMW Group, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai Motor Company, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia Motors, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan Motor Company, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Subaru, Suzuki and Toyota Motor Corp plan to incorporate the same in future.

One of the best features of the CarPlay is that when you connect your iPhone with it, Siri will read out your messages to you, while you drive. Also, Apple’s Maps can also be integrated with it, so, you get your driving directions easily. You will also be given information about the traffic conditions and ETA while you are on the move. You can also access your podcasts, music and audio books.

So, you can enjoy smart driving with Siri. Whether or not CarPlay is a big hit, we are yet to see, but it definitely looks promising!