The future of the media might not be televised. The future will be an all immersive experience that will be spiritual and intimate. The future of media is a revolution and we are going through it right now. At the very center of this revolution is Facebook with their constant research and development. This revolution is for everybody as they are making their advancements and technology open source with the software and hardware blueprints for their Surround360, available for free for development and modification.
Facebook has been championing the cause for revolutions since their inception. First from beginning, the era of real information of real life people getting on the Internet. Before 2005, people and their dealings online have been with pseudonyms and nicknames. After breaking through that barrier, they moved on from moving their core crowd of college students to high school students and then on to other countries and now engagement with members of government to their constituents and citizens.
Chris Cox, of Facebook, explains that the company is now moving from telling stories to showing stories. This they are achieving by making strategic moves in improving their platform to cater for Video, 360, Live and VR/AR.
“There are some experiences that might not be articulated well or enough with text and just photos.”
For the past few years, Facebook has been experimenting and developing on their video platform and storytelling on the platform. The aim has been to bring forward intimacy in a way that has not been experienced before. Intimacy does not have to be limited to a physical experience. With Facebook’s feature of videos and video calls with many participants, new experiences are created as people can be there without ‘being there’ and the intimacy is still preserved.
Facebook is also expanding and creating new ecosystems. Brian Cabral, of Facebook, created the first 360Camera. A shift from people sticking GoPros together and trying to make 360 videos. His camera design fixed the problems that came with color correction, image stitching, The new 360Camera; Surround360 by Facebook has been used to tell immersive stories of places and was recently used by Shakira in the World Economic Forum in Devos.
The aim of these advances is to provide an authentic experience. The major questions that these new technologies in media are trying to answer are personal and inflective.
What do I see?
What can I do with what I see?
Creators like Mai Ibrahim, Femi Kuti make use of their social media platforms to bring their personal stories to their fans. The experiences are intimate, the experiences are authentic. Jorge Ramos, a journalist in America, makes use of Facebook to reach new audiences as well as tell stories.
The new future of media overall will be used to reaching the community. These communities sometimes want to enforce social change. The future of media, with the new use of technologies, will change the world. There will be a million and one people coming together to create change, to tell stories.
The future of media is still unknown as new thought processes are being developed as well as new technologies. But we are certain Facebook as well as its fantastic team of engineers and developers will be in the very middle and it will be exciting.