Facebook Spaces has enjoyed something of a muted launch. Released in Beta back in April, the company has quietly been adding new features to the platform while keeping marketing reserved; we haven’t seen it even mentioned on the social network itself yet. Despite its subdued presence, Facebook says that Spaces is “on track” for its internal targets.
That’s what Head of Social VR Rachel Franklin told me when I asked her about the app’s performance last week, but she insisted that Space’s purpose right now wasn’t to grow a huge user base but instead help its creators to learn what makes it tick.
“What we were hoping for is that people would understand just that core bit that we’re trying to go for which is, “Hey you can feel like your present with somebody that you can’t be with that you actually care about and feel like you’re getting a meaningful connection from it,”” Franklin said. “That was that was really the impetus for putting it out early because obviously there’s so much more to do and add features to it and to make it way better but we put it out and just to gauge the reaction.”
For now, Spaces’ success is more defined by stories rather than stats. Franklin tells me about one can that uses the platform to call his Mom from inside VR as she prefers to talk to him as a virtual avatar. “She could actually see his body language and he could bring up photos of what he’d done that day and they could bring up photos of his hometown that he hasn’t visit [in years] and they could feel like they were actually there together.”
Going forward, Franklin says the team wants to hone in on what the user-base is telling them about through about actions and words. “Part of that is people saying “Hey, add more, make more of this” which to me is a great sign because it means OK we’ve got a great kind of core there that we can build on,” she said.
