DeoVR has been the best VR video sharing platform in Internet. There is no doubt about it. Tremendous resources have poured in to store all those large size videos, and the crazy bandwidth requirement to stream those videos is also unimaginable. Many kudos to DeoVR team for keeping the platform up and running in the current state.
However, one thing that doesn't require any bandwidth or storage, yet vital to any website's survival, the social aspect, or the messaging system, was done in such a bad way that it seems it is an afterthought for DeoVR. Like something good to have, but can do without.
I have been puzzled by DeoVR's decision like this for a long time. Isn't a website's most important feature is socializing? Isn't the best way to keep people hanging around your website is the interaction between the creators and the fans? It works well for Facebook and made it the gigantic portal today. It works well for youtube and all other video sharing websites, there are so many examples to get the idea from, but why DeoVR didn't want to do a decent messaging system?
Right now, when I watch a video and like it, I can post a message to the video and that's all DeoVR can offer. My name will turn into something weird like gokka-1234. No one knows who I actually am. If the creator replies me, I won't get a notification. I cannot get update or follow up on what I said before. This is from a viewer's perspective.
From a creator's perspective, after I upload a video. The viewers might say something but then there is no point to reply them, because they will not know anyway. Also I cannot tell all my subscribers I have a new video that they might like. The creator-viewer interaction, which is so important in other websites, is mostly out of the window.
I understand that DeoVR player is a fixed design with Unity. It's hard to add more features to it. The Hyper, on the other hand, it's just a website player. It should have a much more flexible and easily implemented socializing mechanism, right? Well, Hyper today still have no messaging system. Hyper's web design seems to just give the viewer a list of the video, nothing more.
This lack of communication makes the new feature "watch party" looks like a joke. We can't even do the basic messaging right. How do anyone do "watch party"? Like in real life, if you cannot talk to your friends, how do you arrange a party? The only parties might be just DeoVR's official parties, which will only have a limited engagement.
Of course you'll find my words pretty harsh, because I really want to make my point. The VR industry is at a low tide, any VR website needs to do much more to survive. I hope DeoVR can do better and thrive. Improvement on socializing, IMOH, is vital and can go a long way.
