If we learned anything about Mark Zuckerberg during his two month paternity leave, it's that he really, really likes Virtual Reality (VR) video.
And is throwing Facebook's considerable resources behind it, to ensure the rest of us do too.
Social VR
At the Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event in Barcelona, Zuckerberg announced Facebook 360 video will now be available on the Samsung Gear, that company's headset.
In a hint towards broader goals, Facebook posted an accompanying blog post outlining its vision for "Social VR".
"We’ve already helped people connect in a wide variety of ways on mobile devices — ranging from Facebook and Instagram to Messenger and WhatsApp — and now we want to apply that same approach to the new medium of VR.
"In the future, VR will enable even more types of connection — like the ability for friends who live in different parts of the world to spend time together and feel like they’re really there with each other."
Reach out and (virtually) touch someone
Facebook revealed that over 1 million hours of mobile VR has been watched so far, and it even has a dedicated Social VR team looking at how the technology can be integrated with its existing offering.
While video has been a runaway hit on Facebook over the past two years, expect to hear a lot more about Social VR in 2016.
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