Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held another public Q&A yesterday and discussed, among other topics, what he believes the future looks like for social networking.
An audience member asked Zuckerberg what Facebook would look like in 10 years, to which he answered by speaking about three key trends he seeks happening in social media:
- Zuckerberg predicts that there will be a lot more people on the Internet in 10 years, which is not necessarily a bold prediction.
- He predicts that SMS and photo messaging will largely replace other forms of web communication.
- Finally, Zuckerberg predicts augmented reality, i.e. distraction-free, heads-up communication, will be the future of computing.
Zuckerberg expanded on his prediction about web communication by saying:
“The diversity of the ways in which people want to share, the moments that people want to communicate, and the tools that people need to stay connected are going to keep growing,”
Keeping up with growing number of ways in which people communicate is going to be a source of competition for Facebook, the CEO adds.
The most bold of all of his predictions is the one about augmented reality, which he expands on by saying:
“I think it’s pretty easy to imagine that in the future we will have something that we can either wear — and it’ll look like normal glasses (so it won’t look weird like some of the stuff that exists today). And you’ll just be able to have context with what’s going on around you in the world and communicate with people and not have to disrupt your conversations by looking down.”
Sounds kind of like the world depicted in the movie Her. You also can’t help but notice Zuckerberg’s dig at Google Glass looking weird. Zuckerberg’s belief that the future lies in augmented reality certainly helps explain why he valued virtual reality startup Oculus at $2 billion.
For more from Mark Zuckerberg’s Q&A, you can view the full video here.
