Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, January 18

• Mark Zuckerberg, in Suit, Testifies in Oculus Intellectual Property Trial: Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, has said virtual reality could be the next big thing in technology. While virtual reality hasn’t quite reached the mainstream, it has succeeded in landing Mr. Zuckerberg in the middle of a courtroom fight over who owns a crucial piece of the technology. The dispute started two and a half years ago when a videogame publisher, ZeniMax Media, sued Oculus VR, a start-up behind a virtual reality headset, only months after Facebook announced that it would acquire Oculus for $2 billion. ZeniMax accused Oculus of stealing important elements of the technology that went into the creation of the headset, eventually including Facebook among the parties it was suing. While fights over ownership of prominent technologies are common, this one defied some predictions by making it to a jury trial, which started in a federal court here in early January. On Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg made a rare appearance in court and was questioned about the Oculus deal. While pushing back on accusations that Oculus took technology that it didn’t own, Mr. Zuckerberg said it was his first time testifying in a courtroom. “We are highly confident that Oculus products are built on Oculus technology,” said Mr. Zuckerberg, who wore a suit while testifying, instead of his regular uniform of a hoodie and jeans. “The idea that Oculus products are based on someone else’s technology is just wrong.” Facebook could face hefty damages if it loses the suit, which could make its payoff from virtual reality recede further into the future. While virtual reality has excited people in the technology industry, most headsets, including those from Oculus, are not selling in big numbers because of high prices and limited content for them. The core of ZeniMax’s case is that one of its former employees, John Carmack, shared ZeniMax virtual reality technology with Palmer Luckey, a founder of Oculus, during the early days of Oculus, technology for which ZeniMax was never compensated. Mr. Carmack, a game industry stalwart behind games like Doom, later joined Oculus.

• Twitter is phasing out the “Buy” button, will continue to offer donations: There have been rumors for a while about Twitter preparing to retire its commerce operation. Now it looks like the company has finally started to wind down its partnerships in confirmation of that fact. Customers of e-commerce platform Shopify are receiving notices informing them that the Twitter sales channel is getting shut down “as a result of the Twitter team pivoting way from their ecommerce focus.”  From what we understand, Twitter is now gradually winding down the “Buy” button, and with it the partnerships that it forged to bring in retailers and other businesses to use them. At the same time, Twitter will continue to offer a “Donate” button to give to charitable causes and other nonprofits, which Twitter will offer directly. Other links to Buy information, such as this information page on Twitter’s Business site, will also slowly now start to disappear, as the products are no longer being offered. None of this should come as a surprise, apart from the fact that it’s taken so long. The moves to wind down the Buy button come about eight months after a report noted that Twitter was ceasing product development of its Buy button and was disbanding its commerce team. Nathan Hubbard, the executive who was leading that team, left the company a day later. A few months after that, Twitter announced a new focus on its website conversions product, which is where it is now channeling interest in action-based marketing on the platform.

• Snapdeal revenues up 56% but losses more than doubled to $436 mn in FY2015-16: Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, which runs online marketplace Snapdeal, more than doubled its losses to Rs 2,960 crore (around $436 million) in the financial year ended 31 March 2016. Its total revenues went up by 56% to Rs 1,456.6 crore in FY2015-16. It had garnered revenues of Rs 933.3 crore with a net loss of Rs 1,319.2 crore in the previous financial year, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies. The company’s consolidated loss grew to Rs 3,315 crore from Rs 1,328 crore in FY2014-15. This implies that the firm lost Rs 9 crore every day in the past year. Snapdeal-owned digital payments firm FreeCharge clocked losses of Rs 270 crore, while its logistics firm Vulcan Express netted losses of Rs 20 crore. Gojavas, where Snapdeal owns a 49.9% stake, saw losses of Rs 70 crore. The company’s TV shopping joint venture with DEN Networks witnessed losses of Rs 45 crore in FY2015-16. The firm’s employee benefit expenses tripled to Rs 911.1 crore from Rs 367.2 crore. Snapdeal’s provision for bad debts increased significantly to Rs 303.9 crore in the last financial year from Rs 9.6 crore in the previous year. Advertising promotional expenses and packing expenses increased 22% to Rs 574 crore. In September 2015, Snapdeal had acquired US-based Reduce Data Inc, a startup that runs a programmatic display advertising platform. The documents filed with the Registrar of Companies show that the acquisition was made for just $0.05 or around Rs 3. Snapdeal’s competitors Flipkart and Amazon also saw their losses double in the last financial year.