Facebook Messenger Adds New Ways to Connect

AnnaSophia Corra | @x_annasophia

When Facebook was first introduced, it was primarily for college students looking to make connections with peers and classmates. Originally, it included little messages to each other and pokes back and forth. Over the course of the years, Facebook evolved more and more and began to include images, videos, and so much more. So what’s next on their to-do list? Virtual reality.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook cofounder and CEO, described the future of communication for the social media platform. This includes aforementioned virtual reality as well as the ability to talk with brands directly regarding customer service and custom GIFs that you can send to your friends and family. Five years ago, Facebook was more of a text-based social platform, allowing you to share content strictly through words. Now, they’re more focused on video and images to convey different updates to family and friends, and according to Zuckerberg, if you fast-forward a few more years, the content will be even more immersive like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).

Spherical video is going to start showing up in your news feed soon so you can start to experience the Oculus VR and AR. More immersive content will be introduced to Facebook including the Messenger platform, which allows users to create their own GIFs and share them with their friends. Messenger will even be able to update you on shipping when you order a product through certain retailers and give you the ability to talk with the brand and make sure you’re getting exactly what you wanted.

Facebook is creating a richer sharing experience for its users that includes the Messenger app, Instagram, WhatsApp and even more. Facebook’s goal is to connect the world through video, virtual reality and even GIFs. This connection will bring people closer and businesses closer, for that matter, even if it is through cat GIFs.