Zuckerberg sets a giant goal for virtual reality, but without a timeline

That’s about 13 percent of the world’s population.

Zuckerberg threw out that goal as he opened the Oculus developers conference on Wednesday.

He talked about using virtual reality to create jobs for people who live in areas where there is less economic opportunity than areas such as San Francisco, because being virtually present would, in theory, eliminate the need for a person to be physically present. A person could work at a job in New York City from, say, somewhere in New Mexico.

Tellingly, Zuckerberg didn’t set a time for when he would like 1 billion people to use virtual reality — the medium has been slow to catch on, with some players (like Nokia) pulling out entirely. The number is, uh, not a small one, but Facebook already has a reported 2 billion monthly users. If virtual reality is the direction in which Facebook wants to go, they’ll be able to push it onto a giant swath of the world.