Name: MPW-London-Facebook
Uploaded: 2014-06-24
Duration: 3 min 47 s
Description: MPW-London-Facebook

Facebook recently made a couple of really major acquisitions. WhatsApp and this amazing virtual reality oculus, virtual reality. What, what, what should we draw from those acquisitions? What does that tell us about Facebook's strategy going forward? Okay, so. Things have changed at Facebook in recent times. Mark Zuckerberg made some announcements earlier in the year, both of these two acquisitions. We used to have everything in one app, we thought that was the way just to have the Facebook app. But actually we want to make the world more open and connected, we want people, that's the mission, we want people to share more. And we discovered actually it's not the best user experience, best consumer experience for people just to do everything in one place, and we saw the app taking messenger which has been huge. I mean our own messenger has 200 million people and then we were looking at WhatsApp, and WhatsApp today has nearly 500 million people on it, especially in the developing markets and I talked little bit earlier about why Africa matters to us and why it's so important. So we were seeing that there was a whole new way that people were communicating, still sharing more, et cetera. So we have thought why we did WhatsApp. We see that it's mobile and we think that mobile is the platform for today. Oculus Rift which is the immersive 3D virtual reality is a kind of a bat on the future we think that, again, when I was growing up this whole world of sci- fi is something that is the art of the imagination the possible what might one day be. If, anybody tried Ocular Three? Okay, so you know. You put it on and big thumb. It's unbelievable. You put the goggles on. And, if you go, it's a roller coaster ride. You imagine you are going up on a roller coaster, and you look down and it is literally like what it feels like to be on the top of a roller coaster. It's incredible. Now, if you imagine how you might use that same technology to, say, imagine there's a football game on, which apparently there's a few football games going on at the moment that quite a lot of people care about, but imagine being at home watching it as you would do normally on your television, but with this device on. And then looking around you and your friends are watching it with you. That gives you a whole different experience as to what it might look like. [ COUGH ] Imagine then that you took it further, and imagine that how it might be teaching a room of children this same sort of thing. So I think it's very, very exciting. It's a battle in the future. But if you try it. You kinda go, I've seen the future, this feels very exciting. I think the idea of people watching the last England match all wearing those is kind of depressing but, beyond that I'm very. [ LAUGH ] I think their body language might be a bit like this really [ LAUGH ]. One of the perceptions about Facebook was that you struggled a bit to get and retain young users. Is one of the reasons that you've come for this to address that? No, I think, I'll take both of those. No, hopefully I have explained why what's up and Oculus were important to us. This issue of teens is just not true. We have the most engaged audience with young people on Facebook. And actually there's some Forrester Research that's out literally just today that says actually Just off the presses. Literally off the press. So if it's interesting to you, it is out there. Which basically says that three quarter of young people on the Internet are on Facebook. They're spending more time on Facebook. And we think again this is because of shift to mobile, and how quickly people are now spending and consuming more time. But they love it, it's where they come back to. And as a mum of a few kids, two of which are on Facebook, the other two. A few, the other two are not allowed yet, cuz they're not old enough. But the older two, I mean, it's the place where they group all of their social media. Yes they use other things as well, and you would expect that with young people. But it's a place they come back to, because it's a place where people are their real selves, they know it's where their friends are, and that's why there's a huge amount of trust. And also it's a place where they seem to make most of their social arrangements. So, that's why I think we're doing well.