Meta executives explained how Quest headset account signups moved from Oculus to Facebook to Meta in less than two years.
A podcast hosted by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth posted on July 18 contains a discussion with Reality Labs Vice President Mark Rabkin about changes in account policy and thinking about it.
For those unfamiliar, Oculus accounts were the original way to log into Facebook standalone VR headsets and buy content to play on them. In October 2020, Facebook changed its policy with the release of Quest 2 and started require buyers to use a Facebook account with a good reputation associated with “the name they use in everyday life.” The policy caused some people to report that their Quest headset turned into a paperweight due to login and login issues with Facebook accounts, even though the company said at the time it “a very small numberof those affected.
Facebook is now Meta, and in August 2022 – less than two years after the policy went into effect – the company will drop the Facebook policy and let buyers login with new Meta accounts. A “meta account includes your name, email address, phone number, payment information and date of birth so that we can verify your age. You must be 13 years of age or older (or 14 years of age or older in Spain and South Korea) to meta account. Your meta account information is not public and you can meta bills,” said to the company.
So why the rapid shifts in policy?
At about 6 minutes and 30 seconds into the podcast embedded below, Bosworth and Rabkin provide some context. The executives say the average number of Oculus friends per account was 0.5 with a median of 0 friends. In addition, Bosworth says that “the data was very clear” that “people who have friends play longer, they buy more content”. which is good for the business, good for the ecosystem, they enjoy the thing more so we knew that.”
Here’s Bosworth:
“We’re sitting here as part of some of the great social networks that exist on the planet with Facebook, with Instagram, with WhatsApp, with Messenger, can we bring these things together? And we said, ‘Okay, this is no problem, let’s do the facebook account, we have a new headset coming out, a new headset, a new account requirement.And the motivation was definitely good and it stays a little bit today, but it turned out to be the case in the end, not only some people were uncomfortable with that – which of course, you know, we don’t feel good – i think they were aware, i think they understood, i think they knew if they chose, the loss of the ecosystems, is a loss on our part, but I get it, but it also turns out that the graph you built on Facebook may not be the graph you really want for the metaverse, it’s a different identity, different profile , another set of activities that you e does.”
With Meta accounts, Oculus friends convert to followers with an Oculus profile that “a new Meta Horizon profile, which you can adjust as you see fit.”
“We want to support the richness of expression uniquely possible in the metaverse,” Bosworth said. “But we also want it to be perfectly normal for people who choose to come as themselves, both in terms of how they express themselves through their avatar, over time maybe with codec avatars that are really realistic, and also with their real name… I think there will be spaces in the metaverse where people will have the requirements to enter that space that this is the name you use in real life.
“Now that we have millions and millions of people in VR and it’s growing so fast, we’re tilting a little bit more towards flexibility and customization so people can choose the path through the metaverse that’s right for them,” Rabkin said. “We heard you, sometimes it takes us a year or a year and a half to get where you want us to go.”