Just as I decided to start learning how to make videos they tell us it’s already old school. Virtual Reality is the future.
Mark Zuckerberg and his VR crowd in Barcelona MWC 2016. Image by Facebook.
It’s incredibly difficult to keep up with all the developments in social media and online content publishing. The moment you think you’ve got something, it’s already outdated.
A while ago most online content was just text. Pretty soon came photos and today most of your Facebook News Feed (or Twitter Feed) is made up of images.
But you’ve probably noticed the massive increase in video content. It’s not just on Facebook, but everywhere. Publishers are beefing up their stories with short videos. Blogs are turning into Vlogs. YouTube users are uploading more than 400 hours of video to the site every minute.
In fact, according to predictions from Facebook, after 4 years most of your feed will be video content. Fast-forward even further and you’ll have mostly Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) content.
The difference between the two is that VR is an artificial, computer-generated simulation or recreation of a real environment or situation. AR on the other hand is computer-generated enhancements atop an existing reality in order to make it more meaningful by allowing us to interact with it.
An interesting new technology, which augments videos but isn't quite VR or AR, is the 360 degree immersive video. It’s a kind of a spherical video where viewers can choose what angle they want to see it from. Facebook has already adopted this technology and if you follow the link you’ll be able to check out a demo.
All of this reminds me of an old music video by The Buggles, which declared that "Video Killed the Radio Star”. That prophetic song and music video was released in 1979, well before the 1981 launch of MTV.
Perhaps it’s time to make a new version of the song.