All roads led to the future at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at Las Vegas, held in the beginning of the year. From smart cars and televisions to virtual reality and drones, the show had everything under one roof — mind-blowing tech as well as some plain weird gadgets.
This year, healthcare and wearables continued to be a big trend. But since this column is about social media, let’s take a look at what the giants of the space were showing and saying at the event.
The hardware connect
For starters, Twitter announced that it had invested in Muzik, a connected headphone company. This is the micro-blogging platform’s first investment in a hardware firm. On Muzik’s wireless headphones, users will be able to tweet to others what they are listening to, by swiping buttons built into it.
Music is the third most discussed topic on the micro-blogging platform and obviously, Twitter wants to capitalise on it. Earlier, it had created a music discovery app, which did not do well.
This announcement was not really surprising because, for some time now, the drift has been that social networks are no longer just user generated content powerhouses but are slowly edging into consumer hardware play.
This was evident when Facebook bought out Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology in 2014. Today, Facebook’s Connectivity Lab is building drones, satellites and lasers so that it can deliver Internet to people.
Logical progression
At CES 2016, we got some more insights into how and why social media players, whose business is connecting people to people, are getting into the area of devices. With the Internet of Things (IOT) upon us and billions of devices talking to each other and to people, building social media on to gadgets is a logical natural progression.
Take the example of Tencent-owned Chinese chat app WeChat, which has been working with IOT cloud services providers — to see if people can use the chat app to control their devices — for some time now.
In fact, literally, every social media company is steering in that direction and working with wearable device makers. Fitness band FitBit is already connected with Facebook, allowing users to share data with their friends.
But merely working with device makers is one thing; owning the devices that will spew out data is another. When Facebook bought out Oculus VR, it spelt out its ambitions all too clearly.
Rift launches
While till now, Oculus Rift had only remained a teaser, at CES 2016, there were hints that Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles will launch soon. The company said it had begun taking orders for a headset and controller devices priced at $599 — if you include a computer as well, the price could go up to $1,000.
The products on which people can play dozens of immersive virtual reality games will ship to 20 countries (and no, India is not on the list) in March. Rift promises a never before seen kind of experience.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg as the social web gets increasingly into device controls!