( CNN ) -- Facebook announced Tuesday that it plans to buy virtual reality firm Oculus VR for $ 2 billion . It 's the latest high-profile acquisition during the for the social network giant during its 10-year existence . Some of those near-50 tech startups have been bought for their technology , others for their talent . Here 's how the best of that shopping list has panned out . Oculus VR . Oculus makes a virtual reality headset which covers users ' eyes and immerses them in a virtual environment that responds to their head movements . Facebook said its focus is on investing in the product for the future . WhatsApp . In an attempt to dominate messaging online , Facebook acquired WhatsApp for the record sum of $ 19 billion . The five-year old app had 450 million users at the time of the acquisition in February , adding a million users every day . Face.com . Facebook recognizes people 's faces in photos and tags them with their names . The social network acquired a face-recognition technology company which made this possible , Face.com , for between $ 55 million and $ 100 million in 2012 . Instagram . Facebook bought the photo-sharing network Instagram for $ 1 billion in 2012 with a combination of cash and stock . `` Providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together , '' Mark Zuckerberg said about the purchase . Atlas Advertiser Suite . Atlas Advertiser Suite boosted Facebook 's ad sales after it bought the company from Microsoft for between $ 50 and $ 100 million in April 2013 . The campaign management platform was developed for marketers and agencies . Patents deal . In April 2012 , Facebook announced an agreement with Microsoft , which assigned Facebook the right to purchase a portion of a patent portfolio that the PC giant acquired from AOL Inc. Price tag : $ 550 million in cash . Gowalla . Facebook acquired location sharing service Gowalla for an undisclosed sum in 2011 . The purchase enabled Facebook users to share their location more often . Its features were integrated into Facebook 's Timeline , which was launched at around the same time . FriendFeed . The social media feed , which pulls in updates from different social networks , became part of Facebook in 2009 , when the social network purchased it for $ 15 million in cash . As part of the agreement , all FriendFeed employees joined Facebook while the company 's four founders were given senior roles on Facebook 's engineering and product teams . Parakey . When Facebook bought Parakey in 2007 for an undisclosed sum , it was its first big acquisition . Facebook was actually buying the brains behind the startup -- Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt , the co-founders of Mozilla Firefox , an open-source web browser . Ross and Hewitt joined Facebook 's team to work on the development of the network . ConnectU . In a deal that inspired the 2010 Oscar-nominated drama `` The Social Network , '' Facebook agreed to acquire ConnectU from the Winklevoss brothers after a court settlement under which Facebook bought the rival networking site for cash and a share in Facebook stock .
Facebook announced Tuesday that it plans to buy virtual reality firm Oculus VR for $ 2 billion . It 's the latest high-profile acquisition during the for the social network giant . Facebook previously bought Instagram , WhatsApp and many other successful startups .