Why Facebook’s First Social VR App Is So Simple

Facebook bested rival MySpace and absorbed or outmaneuvered challengers like Instagram and Snapchat as it transformed a simple "social graph" of human relationships into a moneymaking machine that helped businesses, particularly smaller outfits, target cheap ads with uncanny precision.

The public thinks the big VR app will be gaming. But I think it will be social interaction. That's why the appearance of the Oculus Social alpha is significant. It's a milestone as important as when the first smartphone came out -- a first product in its category that will completely change how humans interact with one another.

Of course, the ability to interact with others as yourself while also being someone else already exists in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and virtual worlds like Second Life. But on those platforms, the social interaction is happening "over there" on a flat screen. Psychologically, you're outside and away from your avatar, and watching as a third party. Even in a garden-variety first-person shooter game, the illusion of participation is only partial. To look to the left, you push a game controller knob to the left, and the screen changes to simulate a leftward glance. If you were to actually turn your head to look to the left, you would no longer be looking at the game.

React was born in Facebook's Ads Org. As Tom Occhino, the then React team lead at Facebook, said in his keynote address in the first-ever React.js conference in 2015, it all started very simple and fast and straightforward. The typical MVC approach was used for developing and deploying the Facebook ads platform. But as new features were added, things started to get complex.

Using social media DMs for customer service is relatively new, but already used by 29% of marketers. It has the 3rd highest ROI of any marketing trend and use will grow in 2023, with 15% of marketers planning to try it for the first time.

YouTube will see the most growth of any platform in 2023, with 91% of those using it planning to increase or maintain their investment. At the same time, 29% of marketers plan to try YouTube for the first time, the highest of any social app. 2b1af7f3a8