Here we are standing on the edge of the future, with a quick glance behind us you can see the road of various social networking sites that have risen and fallen in the wake. We've gone from MySpace to Facebook and Napster to Spotify. What once was a social website you would visit after your school was done or after dinner on the family computer has grown to the point that it is virtually at our sides keeping us in constant contact and helping guide our decisions on a daily basis. So where do we go from here? Where can we go from is a more important question. I believe I have the answer, augmented reality. If you’re not sure what augmented reality is don’t feel bad, it hasn't exactly caught on in a big way yet but is gaining steam constantly. Augmented reality is a fusion of reality and technology at its most basic level. Remember those SciFi movies you used to watch where the heroes would have a computer in their brain that would interface through their vision or eyes in some sort of a way? That’s what augmented reality is in a sense, currently you can find a lot of great smart phone apps that are utilizing augmented reality to allow you to view real time GPS through the camera that will pick out hot spots and display information such as reviews. Yet other apps use augmented reality to play real time games such as Ingress (http://www.ingress.com/) a game that allows users to walk around town capturing and closing portals.
It can be hard to wrap your mind around it sometimes, and for that I’m going to apologize because before you read any further you have to go watch this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAXTQL3jPFk) of Google’s Project Glass and if you were having trouble gasping it before this is going to blow your mind. It’s one thing to use the camera of your phone to see real time information on a screen, but to have it all directly through a small pair of glasses directly in front of your eyes is all together another mind boggling thing. Social media is all about sharing, connecting, and interfacing with each other; I believe that augmented reality is the next logical step in that direction allowing us even faster access to share the world around us. Another important key I believe will play a huge role in the future of social media is interactivity. Social media tycoons such as Facebook and Twitter have a well-established foothold in the game at the moment, but as more companies begin to provide new services it will be the ones that interface well with each other that will have the best chance. How will this future affect us? Some might be thinking “Oh great I can see now already, I’m going to get pop-ups directly in my field of vision!”, and to be honest that’s a completely rational fear that has a real possibility. It’s possible this could be a huge step for consumers, allowing us to simply look at a product we’re interested in purchasing and seeing what the last ten people thought of the product or even better the last five that specifically bought that product from the exact same location you’re at right then. Marketers and corporations will have another opportunity to advertise to us, and in some cases it might be alright to know what sort of deals the five similar stores in front of me are offering so I can choose the best one. There is no way to tell exactly how it will play out, but to me the combination of reality and social media technology seems inevitable and the only next logical step towards the future.
TechAppNews (09/26/2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAXTQL3jPFk
NinticLabs Google, Ingress (12/02/2012) http://www.ingress.com/Zeman, Eric, Smartphones
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