Living apart from each other, the whole family still could take a walk on the seaside; you are present before a checkerboard immediately when you suddenly want a chest contest and just lift a figure; sitting on the comfortable sofa at home, you are taking a math class with your classmates all over the world ...There is an incredible thing helping you feel like being at another place with other people. Virtual reality could be this kind of technology that creates various worlds with much more authentic and multifaceted interaction. People can be aurally, visually, tangibly immersed into a wide range of scenes, like education, healthcare, sports games, entertainment, etc. without spacious limits.
Media innovation, in my view, will most possibly include virtual reality while media platforms will be characterized by highly immersive interaction between users. Up to now, the vectors of spreading information and communicating on the Internet are words, pictures, voice and videos. And the form of interaction only covers giving likes, making comments, posting and sharing status. If virtual reality (even with more advanced technology) is applied into social media networks, it would be revolutionary as a landmark of communication. Because in the virtual world, people could interact with others by becoming someone or something virtualized and present their better figure they prefer to the world, such as being more beautiful, erudite, slender or younger. Even more, fanciful things and people could be existent during interaction process. Of course, that would be the world that you can share unbounded spaces and experiences and adventures with the people in your life.
Facebook, as a leading social media, has anticipated the influence of virtual reality. The founder Zuckerberg once said: Virtual reality would become central to the next great wave of computing. Having over one billion users, Facebook is seeking opportunities for making headway in the next generation of technology. Its action that bought Oculus in 2014 was quite representative of claiming the purpose of entering in the field of virtual reality as a leader and entrenching its position in social media. At present, Facebook achieves great success in web games but lost the market of mobile games and falls far behind iOS and Android. It would be supplementary and prepared for occupying more market of VR games which would be the mainstream in the future. Apart from the side of games, Facebook will expand into new vertical fields like media, entertainment, communication, education. If possible, Facebook would like to build a network for users' communicating and buying virtual product or develop off - line advertisement, which could be significantly profitable. Due to its social nature, Facebook would create a more advanced experience by means of virtual reality in order to maintain its characteristic. Oculus is going to make each other’s world more connected and open. Its devices will be installed in people’s home and more importantly, its great amount users will enter this system with personal Facebook ID. Undoubtedly, the entirely new communication and interaction can be of great function of keeping users and attracting new comers.
Obviously, it will not be soon to realize the conception of virtual reality mentioned before. Twitter wants to catch the technology of more predictable trend and then acquired Periscope. Live streaming during last few years has achieved considerable development and cultivated many users’ habit, mainly resulting from a series of features like authenticity, variety, interactivity and easy intelligibility. Compared with Facebook and Snapchat which typically excel in capturing the market of Internet celebrities and the youth, Twitter is more characterized with spreading news by instant updates and live commentary. Being delivered in live video formats goes with Twitter’s nature. On the other side, live streaming is instant and one-to-many, which breaks the deterrent for time span existing in traditional social media. The audience will be allowed to see the scene from the angle of live broadcasters, and perceive the surroundings through 360-degree live. Moreover, people can be both content accepters and producers and they will feel far more sense of participation by making comments and receiving feedbacks. The contribution of this kind interaction is readily recognizable of increasing the number of users and improving users’ viscosity. If these are done, boost in profit would not be problematic.
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