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by rtpg 4424 days ago
>What do you think will happen to Oculus applications? Those that are sanctioned by Facebook will thrive and those that aren't will be brutally shut down.

Does Facebook have a history of doing this? Instagram is still completely seperated (there's fb integration but twitter is the one that broke instagram integration, not the other way around).

Not even mentioning the fact that the Oculus is not a SaaS, it's a screen. How is Facebook going to "shut down" calls to a device driver (if it's even that)? Why would they do that?

People here seem to think that Facebook the company can only consist in Facebook the website, but they have a lot of money to invest in other things.

2 comments

That's not sustainable. Facebook is not buying these companies because they are adhering to some kind of moral code. Facebook is a corporation like any other that needs to justify things to investors and analysts. That's the model as far as I know. So if they're pouring money into Oculus and its ecosystem then surely they expect to get something out of it. Ultimately they control the technology and as a profit driven corporation they are going to drive the technology in the direction of profits. They are not going to drive it in the direction of sustainability. Facebook is not in this to break even and they are not going to subsidize more benevolent but unprofitable uses of the technologies they acquire.

Like I said in my original comment. I don't think this is a good or bad thing. My philosophical stance on technology is different and I'd much rather see a sustainable ecosystem of technologists that are not always driven by profits and quick payoffs from acquisitions.

Startups need to be profitable too.
I don't think that's true. Sustainability makes for a better ecosystem. If you're driving towards breaking even and delivering value instead of profitability then it's a different kind of mentality. It's just that it's not the current status quo.
Just to nitpick about your Instagram integration comment - Instagram broke the integration, not Twitter. See: http://status.twitter.com/post/37258637900/instagram-photo-r...