Today, we’re excited to announce the brand-new social experience we debuted at OC6 across the Oculus Platform, powered by Facebook. We already use Facebook to bring people together in Venues, offer features like livestreaming, and provide safety tools like reporting and blocking. Now we’re using Facebook’s technology to roll out new social features in the coming days that will help people build their VR communities, while keeping them safer at scale by backing social interactions with their Facebook identity.

To make sure that people understand these changes, we’re also updating the Oculus Privacy Policy to clarify that these social features are also provided by Facebook. And we’re clarifying how Oculus data is shared with Facebook to inform ads when you log into Facebook on Oculus.

You can see these updates to the Oculus Privacy Policy here to learn more. And you can read our FAQ here for more information.

Building the VR Community with First-Party Social Interactions Powered by Facebook

Starting today, when you choose to log into Facebook from the Oculus Platform, you’ll be able to access new social features that make it easier for you to connect with other people, including:

Chats , so you can message your Oculus friends in or out of the headset with quick responses to hop into games together

, so you can message your Oculus friends in or out of the headset with quick responses to hop into games together Join your friends in VR directly from any device with links that open to where your friends are within an app, and see the most popular destinations where people are playing in VR

in VR directly from any device with links that open to where your friends are within an app, and see the most popular destinations where people are playing in VR User-created Events , so you can organize meetups or multiplayer games with friends

, so you can organize meetups or multiplayer games with friends Share photos, videos, and livestreaming to Facebook , allowing you to share your favorite moments to Facebook Groups from VR

, allowing you to share your favorite moments to Facebook Groups from VR Parties that any of your Oculus friends can join (previously parties were only invite-only)

that any of your Oculus friends can join (previously parties were only invite-only) Messenger friends can easily join you in VR when you send them links to join you where you’re playing

As these changes roll out and we make it easier for people to connect and build communities in VR, we’ll ask people to log into Facebook from the Oculus Platform to use both the new social features above, as well as existing social features like joining parties, adding friends, and visiting other people’s Homes. These features are already powered by Facebook, since Oculus is part of the Facebook family of apps. And now first-party social interactions on the Oculus Platform will be backed by Facebook identity, allowing us to help keep people safer in VR as we grow the social VR ecosystem.

Whether you log into Facebook or not, you’ll still maintain a separate Oculus username, profile, and your existing Oculus friends. You can choose whether you want to add your Facebook friends as your Oculus friends automatically (depending on their settings), and you control who can see your Facebook real name on Oculus. You will always be able to choose what information you post to your Facebook profile or timeline, either by giving permission to post or by updating your privacy settings.

Using Oculus Data to Improve Facebook Recommendations and Ads For Users Logged Into Facebook

As part of these changes, Facebook will now use information about your Oculus activity, like which apps you use, to help provide these new social features and more relevant content, including ads. Those recommendations could include Oculus Events you might like to attend or ads for VR apps available on the Oculus Store. These changes won’t affect third-party apps and games, and they won’t affect your on-device data.

If you choose not to log into Facebook on Oculus, we won’t share data with Facebook to allow third parties to target advertisements to you based on your use of the Oculus Platform.

We’ll have more new social features to share in the coming months, including more options to share to Facebook Groups and co-watching on Quest, as well as the launch of the Facebook Horizon beta in 2020. Stay tuned to the blog for future updates, and let us know what you think on the official Oculus UserVoice channel.