Facebook is known for launching different products to take on the competition. And the next ones from the company will be Standalone AR Glasses and Music Video app. Revving up its hardware efforts, social networking giant Facebook is now planning to build its own Augmented Reality (AR) glasses, TechCrunch reported. "Yeah! Well, of course, we're working on it," Facebook's AR Head Ficus Kirkpatrick was quoted as saying on Thursday at TechCrunch's AR/VR (virtual reality) event in Los Angeles, as reported by IANS.
Facebook AR Glasses Coming Soon
"We are building hardware products. We're going forward on this . . . We want to see those glasses come into reality, and I think we want to play our part in helping to bring them there," Kirkpatrick said. The announcement follows Facebook's launch of its first self-branded hardware - a pair of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered smart video chat devices, Portal and Portal +.
Some of the other American tech giants have already ventured into the AR space already. While Microsoft has its HoloLens, Google Glass is being developed for the enterprise. Apple has been talking about the potential of AR for quite some time now and the Cupertino, California-headquartered company earlier acquired AR hardware developers like Akonia Holographics and Vrvana to fast-track development of its own headsets.
Facebook has a big plan on VR as well. It acquired Oculus, a virtual reality company, in 2014 for $2 billion. The social network sees its Oculus VR headsets helping it bring the AR glasses by providing the software know-how.
Facebook Working on Music Video App to Take on TikTok
Facebook is reportedly working on a stand-alone app to compete with music video app TikTok that recently absorbed Musically. According to a TechCrunch report on Thursday, Facebook is trying to win over teens with Lasso, an app where users can record themselves dancing and lip-syncing to music.
"It's basically TikTok/Musically. It's full-screen, built for teens, fun and funny, and focused on creation. A lot of what they're doing is just trying to be cool," a source was quoted by TechCrunch.
The report comes on the heels of Facebook's new music features that launched on Thursday in which the company added music stickers to its Stories feature and rolled out lyrics to its Lip Sync Live feature that already lives within its own app. Lasso would most likely be the stand-alone app version of Lip Sync Live.
With licensing deals secured with all of the major labels, Facebook would have access to songs that are longer than TikTok's 15-second limit.
