Oculus, the Facebook-owned virtual reality company, has hired former Hulu SVP Eugene Wei as its new head of video. Wei was most recently head of product at Flipboard, and also spent seven years at Amazon beginning in the late ’90s.
Oculus Has Hired Former Flipboard, Hulu Product Exec Eugene Wei to Run Video
He’s been there since November, but was mum about it until this week.
Oculus
Wei has actually been at Oculus since November, according to his LinkedIn profile, but he didn’t change his title or update his Twitter bio with the new role until late this week. Eagle-eyed VC Hunter Walk noticed the change, and tweeted out the new role. An Oculus spokesperson confirmed Wei’s status.
https://twitter.com/eugenewei/status/703622888788619265
We’re not entirely sure what “head of video at Oculus” entails, but we do know this — Facebook cares a lot about video and a lot about virtual reality. It has started to infuse virtual reality-like 360 degree videos into its News Feed, and Facebook even creates a little virtual reality content of its own through Oculus Story Studio.
Mark Zuckerberg says often that he believes VR is the next great platform after mobile for content consumption. So running video at Oculus sounds like a key role.
If you are the type of person who cares about content and where it lives on the Internet, you should read Wei’s blog post here, too. He lays out a defense of Facebook’s Instant Articles, and argues for why publishers shouldn’t be afraid of handing over their work to the social network.
Update: Wei’s video team is in charge of building the platform at Oculus that houses VR and 360 degree content from other creators, like LeBron James. Wei and his team focus a lot on 360 degree video, which Facebook is trying to push mainstream.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
