Facebook's is backed up its recent purchase of a messaging app with another acquisition having just  paid 2 billion for Oculus VR, the maker of a virtual reality gaming headset called Oculus Rift.  Oculus has sold 75,000 pre-orders for development kits, which cost $350, giving it approximately $26 million in income.

The deal which involves the payment of  $400 million in cash, with 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock valued at $1.6 billion.  In addition, the deal includes a $300 million earn-out in cash and stock.

Initially  Oculus got its start using  Kickstarter, raising  $93.4 million in venture funding from the following companies; Spark Capital, Matrix Partners, Founders Fund, Formation 8, BIG Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz.

According to Facebook they view  Oculus Rift as a communication platform. The company and its 75 employees will still continue to operate independently from Facebook continuing their path of developing a platform for virtual reality games.

Looking beyond the gaming platform that Oculus has developed, this acquisition could provide a new vehicle of social media interaction with a virtual reality component to it for communication between users, watching a sporting match, attending a course, seeing a doctor or even taking a guided tour of an art gallery on the other side of the world, all from the comfort of your home.

We may be seeing the beginning of the next evolution of the web and social media. Here comes Google Glass and Facebook Goggles.

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Stephen Duggan is the Chief Engagement Officer at the SocialTonik. The Company help’s businesses across the globe to create, connect and engage with their communities by creating on-line social experiences that integrate business intelligence, social networks & mobile technologies. Our mission is to provide interactive solutions to assist organisation’s to optimise their on-line presence and to drive this medium to its fullest potential by developing tailor-made on-line strategies for our clients to ensure their objectives and outcomes are achieved.

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