Former Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra will be joining Facebook. Barra, who had also formerly held a key position at Google, is set to lead all of the social media giant’s virtual reality efforts – which happens to include Oculus.
Facebook has been looking into both VR and augmented reality as the future of social computing. CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented that Barra is going to help build the future that he believes is coming, and even shared a picture of the two as Facebook’s virtual reality avatars.
Joining Facebook as VP of virtual reality (VPVR!) to lead Team @Oculus. So excited! Mark posted about it here: https://t.co/kYgIniSQiM pic.twitter.com/7fYTkniykr
— Hugo Barra (@hbarra) January 26, 2017
At the moment, Barra is still contracted to work at Xiaomi. It is expected that he will transition into his new role at Facebook after the Lunar New Year celebrations, although no starting date has been confirmed. As it stands, Barra will be filling the role left behind by former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe; who stepped down to fill a smaller role at the company.
The new appointment at Facebook was made over Facebook and Twitter, with Zuckerberg writing a warm greeting for the new addition to the company. Unfortunately, the comments on the greeting sound like an army of bots was set up to write them; or at least several dozen interns were dragooned into saying something nice.
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