Facebook 360, New User Experience, And Opportunities For Brands

From static photos to explorable panoramas for a 360-degree user experience.

Since its launch last September, Facebook 360 has already become an exciting storytelling tool for publishers and an engaging content fruition tool for social media users with videos. From awareness videos for schools in Ghana to instant videos of winter storms in Times Square, through the extraordinary ones of National Geographic and the themes of the most famous films and television series.

But not just videos; a few days ago, there was the release of Facebook 360 Photo. Because if the video is considered the most compelling of the new means of promoting companies, photos are still the means through which people share their experiences more with their friends and with the world. Hundreds of millions of photos are shared on Facebook every day, from fun snaps to the most important milestones in their lives, including everything in between.

And it is precisely to make the experience of using these contents more engaging, complete, and “immersive” that Facebook has introduced this new feature. Or rather, he extended it to photos.

New “immersive” experiences for users and new opportunities for companies.

For the first time, companies, people, and ordinary users can share 360-degree photos on social networks.

How? Simply by taking a panoramic photo with your smartphones, special apps, or cameras (as it already happened with videos), and then post it as if it were a normal photo. A photo that, however, will turn into a 360 ° interactive experience, with the possibility of exploring it in every corner.

The compass icon will identify the images, and however remote, every corner or a glimpse of the world will become an interactive experience by clicking and scrolling from the desktop or, even more experientially, from mobile directly by moving the mobile phone. Walking in a park, visiting a museum, celebrating a party, looking out from a peak, it will be exactly like being there. Your friends on Facebook will see that photo, and they will live those moments at 360 degrees just as if they were present.

The new opportunities of Facebook 360 for Brands

Companies, celebrities, public figures, publicists, and all those who use social media as a communication channel to reach their audience and interact with their customers (or potential customers) have new opportunities in their hands. And between the News Feed.

Immortalize a concert with everyone, absolutely everyone, the fans, as Paul McCartney did, visit a space station, as NASA did, reveal the “behind the scenes” of the Supreme Court, as the New York Times did.

A medium that offers new opportunities for

• Creativity, integrating the editorial plan with original posts and unpublished glimpses;
• The engagement of the users, called in first person to click and explore the image;
• A new and more complete integration between what is offline and online for the multitude of companies that use digital and yearn for the perfect synergy of these two dimensions.

Imagine being able to offer a virtual tour in your real store but not on your institutional site, where the user, in one way or another, is either attracted and channeled or already knows your product or service. An interactive tour of your company or store or new perspectives on your products. All on Facebook. And without ever leaving the platform. In short, an interactive, fast and non-invasive means on a channel with a vast reach.

On the other side, that of the user-explorer, imagine that you scroll down the News Feed and find yourself in the immense pasture of a dairy product company, being captured by the green of the meadows, by the freedom of the livestock and almost hearing the scent of fresh grass. All the value of a direct supply chain in a single photo, in all its essence. A communicative power and inspirational force that no stamp, certification, or text alone can express but can only wisely accompany.

An interactive window on the corporate world, which is not only valid in the case of an agri-food product company. Being able to explore the inside of a company, the backend of an agency, the production office, as well as for the Supreme Court. Unhinge the virtual doors with a photo and invite all users to come in for a ride, among real people, and at work—the concept of humanization and personalization of the experience together in a single photo (360).

A sort of exploration like the one that Google Maps Business View already offers, to visit the interiors of the businesses. We could say that it is the same interactivity, which, however, is not limited to being a showcase for commercial activities and, above all, it is not offered only to those who land on their website or are directly interested in exploring that place, that company, or that. Corner of the world (of business). In this case, the interactive window is “transplanted” into a News Feed, accompanied by good copy and a good dose of creativity, and becomes available to everyone. In the easiest, fastest, and most welcome way, social-ly.

In short, Facebook 360 can be considered a means through which to give a new and stronger digital echo to reality. A way of saying, “take and explore them all.”

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