Social VR to Transform the Social Media Experience

Social virtual reality applications are of growing interest from companies including Facebook, SteamVR and many others. Microsoft is joining the social VR business segment by acquiring virtual reality social media gaming company Altspace in early October 2017. Altspace is a VR start-up which launched a virtual reality social media gaming application in 2015. According to Microsoft, it will continue to run the Altspace social VR platform. Microsoft plans to focus on improving the Altspace social networking community where users can connect and interact with friends in the virtual environment. 

Altspace social VR platform lets users meet with friends or play games in VR spaces, and create customized avatars of their own. The platform supports Daydream, HTC Vive, Oculus, Gear VR devices and 2D mode on Mac or PC. It is compatible with Perception Neuron and Leap Motion controllers and provides more than 30 activities to play. Altspace managed to raise more than US$15 million in funding from GV, Comcast Ventures and others. Despite a good amount of initial investment and its presence in major VR headset and PC platforms, it failed to attract investors to keep the company running. It announced the shutdown of the company in August 2017. Altspace social VR platform has only 35,000 monthly active users with average user spending around 35 minutes per day.

The reason Altspace failed could be due to limited public interest. The average consumer’s interest in virtual reality focuses on gaming applications at present. Social VR is still very new, and it may not be attractive to users of every demographic quickly. Social media using virtual reality does provide a better user experience by providing various virtual environments, interaction, and expression of users’ emotion by hand and body movements. And, 3D avatars representing each person participating in the chat might be a bit confusing for older generation users. It might also hard for users to translate the emotional responses when users are represented by avatars. Social VR might be able to immediately attract tech savvy users; however, older generation users might take a while to understand and get familiar with the technology.  

Social VR is evolving as many companies are working to provide social VR to consumer and business segments. Facebook and SteamVR launched beta programs on social VR platforms earlier this year. These platforms allow users to create avatars, meet in virtual spaces, communicate, and share photos and videos. Virtual reality social media app provider VRChat announced recently that it has completed a US$4 million investment round which is mainly led by major VR market player HTC Vive and venture capital firms Brightstone VC, GVR Fund, and Rothenberg Ventures. HTC has been the key investor and strategic partner of VRChat and it plans to expand its business in the VR social space. VRChat expressed that it is targeting its platform in both consumer and enterprise segments. VRChat social VR platform enables users to create personalized avatars, meet, talk, play games and share videos and photos with other users in a virtual space created by users.Currently supporting HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and OSVR headsets, VRChat has been gaining huge positive feedback by users.

In July 2017, another social VR platform named Sansar was developed by Linden Lab which is the creator of online social world called Second Life where users can interact and alter the online environment. Sansar allows users to build their own virtual worlds. In a short while after the beta launch, Sansar achieved 1,700 creations from 2,000 users. Sansar creates a monetizing feature in which users can sell their virtual assets using Sansar Dollar, which can be cashed out on PayPal. The beta is available for free to any user, but additional creation capacity and customer support is available at a monthly subscription fee of US$9.99.

High Fidelity was founded by CEO of Second Life who stepped down when Second Life platform failed in 2008. High Fidelity provides VR platform like VRChat to create virtual worlds, explore, and interact with friends. It raised US$2.4 million in early 2013 mainly by True Ventures and Google Ventures. In 2015, it raised another US$11 million from Vulcan Capital. The last round of investment raised US$22 million, by IDG Capital and Breyer Capital.

Despite VR companies’ effort on driving social VR applications in the consumer space, adoption seems to be still slow. However, there is a possibility of enterprise use of social VR to take off faster than in consumer space. VR companies such as WorldViz and HyperFair have launched enterprise social VR services where organizations can create a virtual place for communicating and interacting with clients or staff located in different regions. Altspace social VR platform is likely to be incorporated into recently announced Windows 10 VR headsets and mixed reality ecosystems. Although Microsoft is keeping Altspace social VR platform as it is for now, it could add enterprise market to sell the social VR services in future. Social VR platform in enterprise space can be used for communication, sales and marketing, or for training purposes. More businesses are aware of advantages of VR technology which saves travelling time and cost and enables effective tools for business operations with immersive experience. The interest of using VR as an enterprise communication platform is increasing, which can create social VR companies a good opportunity to provide their services.