Facebook Spaces

Facebook Spaces was a virtual-reality social application developed by Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms, Inc.) and launched in April 2017. It was designed for the Oculus Rift VR headset and allowed users to create a personalized avatar, meet with friends in a shared 3D environment, and interact using voice chat, hand gestures, and virtual objects. The product represented Facebook's early attempt to define social presence in virtual reality, positioning VR not just as a gaming medium but as a communication platform. In Facebook Spaces, users could join friends in a virtual room, draw in 3D space, watch 360-degree videos together, take virtual selfies, and make video calls to friends who were not wearing a headset. The app was tied to a user's Facebook account and used the social graph to connect people. It was available free of charge on the Oculus Store for the Rift and later for the Oculus Quest. Facebook Spaces was part of Facebook's broader VR strategy under CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had acquired Oculus VR in 2014. The app was developed by Facebook's VR social team and led by product director Mike Booth, among others. It was positioned as an experimental product that would help the company learn about social interactions in VR. In 2019, Facebook announced that it would discontinue Facebook Spaces and replace it with Facebook Horizon (later renamed Horizon Worlds), a more ambitious social VR platform that allowed users to create their own worlds. Facebook Spaces was shut down on October 25, 2019. The product is remembered as an early milestone in the evolution of social VR and the metaverse, even though it did not achieve mass adoption.

Facebook Spaces was announced at Facebook's F8 developer conference in April 2017 and launched the same month as a free app for the Oculus Rift. It was one of the first social VR applications from a major tech company, aiming to bring Facebook's social networking into virtual reality. The app allowed users to create an avatar that could be customized, and to meet with up to three friends in a virtual space. Users could draw with a virtual marker, watch 360-degree videos, and take virtual selfies that could be shared on Facebook. In 2018, Facebook updated Spaces with new features, such as the ability to make video calls to friends not in VR, and support for Oculus Go and later Oculus Quest. However, the app received mixed reviews and did not achieve widespread adoption. Critics noted the limited avatar customization and the lack of compelling activities. In September 2019, at the Oculus Connect 6 conference, Facebook announced Facebook Horizon, a new social VR experience that would allow users to build their own worlds. Facebook Spaces was subsequently shut down on October 25, 2019. The shutdown was part of Facebook's shift towards more user-generated content in VR. Facebook Horizon was later renamed Horizon Worlds and became central to Meta's metaverse strategy.

• Facebook Spaces announced and launched at F8 for Oculus Rift.

• Added video calling to non-VR friends and support for Oculus Go.

• Facebook announces Facebook Horizon as successor at Oculus Connect 6.

• Facebook Spaces shut down.

Social virtual-reality platform for connecting with friends in immersive 3D environments.

• Facebook Spaces

  A virtual reality app for Oculus Rift that let users hang out with friends as avatars in a shared 3D space.

1. 1Facebook Spaces - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org