In this blog post, we explore whether Facebook’s dominance in the video market can continue through its VR technology investments and content strategy.
At some point, videos began occupying a significantly large portion of Facebook’s News Feed. This clearly shows that Facebook has succeeded in its push into the video service market. Last year, it already surpassed YouTube, the former undisputed leader, in terms of both the number of video posts and interactions (views). Having become the most powerful platform in the existing video content market, Facebook now aims to take another step forward: preempting the virtual reality (VR) market. In March 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR, a startup specializing in VR devices, for a whopping $2.3 billion. Subsequently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared during a Facebook earnings call, “Immersive 3D (VR) content will clearly be the next generation of content after video.” Considering his stature as a leader in the IT field, his statement is not something to dismiss lightly. There is definitely something to VR. Let’s examine what that something is, focusing on how VR differs from existing media like text and video.
Text demands the most mental effort from content users. Readers of literary works presented in writing must each create their own world based on impressions felt within their imagination and understand the work’s content accordingly. Music is somewhat more accessible than text. Elements like lyrics, melody, rhythm, and the singer’s image make it easier for users to form their own impressions. Video is even more accessible. Movies provide more information than stories conveyed through speech or text, allowing us to exert less effort while still using our imagination to create our own worlds. However, we still need to use our own imagination for the space outside the frame captured by the camera. Thus, people recreate the content into their own worlds while consuming it, and it is through this process that they truly begin to appreciate the content.
Unlike traditional media, VR differs significantly in that it does most of the preliminary work (recreating the content into one’s own world) for us in advance. This is because VR provides a spatially complete world. When experiencing VR content, we simply accept the pre-made world as it is and surrender our body (or brain) to it. This greatly reduces the need for the tedious mental effort required by other media. In this environment, VR enables users to become more deeply immersed, delivering a more vivid and stimulating experience. Imagine watching the movie ‘Avatar’ in VR. We would become companions following the protagonist, traversing the director’s breathtaking world. The term ‘movie viewing’ no longer fits here. Unlike traditional content consumed passively while seated, VR, infused with the element of active participation, transcends being merely a new video format. It carries the expanded meaning of a ‘platform for experience’. It opens the possibility of conveying even the most subtle sensations—those difficult for existing media to convey, sensations hard to grasp without direct experience. For humans as experiencing beings, there could be no better tool.
Our lives are perpetually exhausting, so we increasingly favor “outsourcing our imagination.” Novels perform various imaginative feats we rarely attempt ourselves. Songs fill in the gaps imagination cannot reach through words, while videos complete the imagery our minds cannot conjure. Thus, we can effortlessly make others’ imaginings our own simply by sensing and recognizing them. In this era where we experience new things without straying far from daily life or exerting much effort, thanks to the overflowing content in the world, VR might just deliver the ultimate efficiency. Taking it a few steps further, we’ll outsource not only imagination but also everyday experiences. Traveling to distant places or visiting theme parks for rides might become nothing more than a bothersome luxury. Why go to the trouble of doing it yourself when you can have an indirect yet vivid experience through VR? The day when we will live by selecting our personal experiences from a variety of options seems not far off.
