Mark Zuckerberg's virtual reality demo [video]
I've had a course about social media last year (analyses of
communication via social media, not the marketing kind) that talked a lot about the problems with online human-human communication and how VR might be able to solve these problems.<p>Physical space has social meanings. 
We use space to structure how we start conversations,
to show our engagement with our partner, to show our openness to engage with others. Think of the formations you form at parties, and how you know as outsider if you can join a conversation or not.<p>You also have the important of gaze. Eye gaze is not only an outward expression of an emotion, it is used as a communicative device – as a tool to interact with others. People turn towards to each other to make eye contact and initiate a conversation.<p>Both space and gaze have so far been missing in online social media. This is the positive value for better communication you add to social media with VR. It's very exciting to see this development already going so fast.<p>It saddens me though that it seems Facebook is the company making the first steps into this future. This cynic in me says Facebook only develops this to have more ways to manipulate people in seeing ads and other forms of commercial persuasive communication. Tupperware parties 2.0.