Facebook wants to put the 'social' in virtual reality - CNET

But that may soon change. At the moment Zuckerberg took the stage, Facebook simultaneously announced the creation of a dedicated "Social VR" team.

The new team will work with both Oculus and other teams at Facebook to explore the future of social interaction in VR. "This team will explore how people can connect and share using today's VR technology, as well as long-term possibilities as VR evolves into an increasingly important computing platform," the company wrote in an official blog post.

It's not the first time that Facebook has talked about making VR more social. One year ago, Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox admitted that the company was working on its own VR apps at Recode's Code/Media conference. And separately, Oculus has released a "Social Alpha" experience on the Samsung Gear VR headset which lets owners watch videos on Vimeo or Twitch with other Gear VR owners -- but not necessarily their Facebook friends.

Facebook has struggled with how much to steer its own VR ambitions. Originally, Oculus VR was the grassroots success story of the boy genius -- Oculus founder Palmer Luckey -- who managed to raise $2 million on Kickstarter on the strength of the idea that cheap smartphone components could make VR affordable. When Facebook bought the company for $2 billion in 2014, some of the goodwill evaporated.

To counter complaints that he had sold out, Luckey told me that Oculus would stay an independent company within Facebook. According to Luckey, staying independent was one of the conditions of the Facebook / Oculus deal. And though CNET understands that most Oculus staff has relocated from the company's original Irvine, Califoia offices to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, it appears that Facebook has mostly stuck to its word.