Virtual Reality the future of social media?
Social media is an ever-growing sector and is dominated by big players like Facebook, Snapchat, etc. It can be found that a staggering 42% of the world’s population has at least one social media account. To stay on top of the game, one needs to fulfill their user’s demands and constantly keep up with all the latest and happening trends. One such trending topic is Virtual Reality and thus the question arises. Is Virtual Reality the future of social media?
How close is this so-called ‘Future of social media’?
For that, I must say it is very near. In the next couple of years, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (A.R.) will be introduced to more practical applications in the marketing world.
Humans are visual creatures. Clearly, pictures, videos, and immersive content are mostly the future of social media. So companies really need to hop on this bandwagon if they are to maintain their dominance over the market. AR And VR are quickly becoming an essential component of many marketing campaigns, so companies need to look at aspects in which these techniques are incorporated in their marketing campaigns.
According to reports, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Bitmoji, WeChat, and QQ personal communication applications will utilize A.R in the near future, to increase advertising revenue. Companies like Google have already started testing their interactive mixed reality advertisements.
How to implement this?
The possibilities of incorporating technologies like AR and VR are endless but it looks like Facebook has it all figured out.
In 2014, Facebook acquired a company that promised to form VR’s future. The company was Oculus. The high-end appeal won millions of enthusiastic, early PC consumers and millions of mobile customers who gained early access to the service. The seeds for a VR future were already planted by Facebook back in 2016. Facebook introduced the ‘Facebook Social VR ‘ Demo on the Oculus Connect event (2016). The video shown below will blow your minds.
Look at the video below to get a brief idea of the possibilities of mixed reality.
Even though the achievement is remarkable, the concept of such an immersive world scares me a bit. Let us talk about that and see how pop culture takes this.
How pop culture takes this
If you are into sci-fi drama, then you probably may have heard about ‘Black Mirror’. An episode called ‘Nosedive’ depicted how society has developed into a situation where social presence is appreciated above real emotions, character, and individuality. This social presence that we are talking about is achieved by giving and receiving each other personal ratings.
It’s basically Instagram or Facebook that came into life. A person who posts vacation, workout, and portrays good deeds finds himself/herself in the top rung of the society, while a person who has any shred of aversion from ideal behavior, finds himself/herself at the bottom rung of this future society.
As the gap between the modern trend of real social experience and the virtual social world is narrowing day by day, we can expect the future of social media has people either becoming a version of themselves that are inherently fake and pandering to group identity.
What’s even scary is, the same ideology is being implemented in China.
An article in Wired sheds light on a recent’ personal credit ‘ scheme in China, which is associated with a mobile payment platform in China that provides customers a rating from 350 to 950 based on the user’s daily habits.
Most of the features appear innocent enough like, to pay back debts, which, for instance, give you a decent rating, but some other parameters seem a little bit more disturbing, such as the individuals you stay with or stuff you purchase to determine your score.
What are your thoughts about this?
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