Future Now
The IFTF Blog
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Facebook Credits and Blended Reality
In 2009 IFTF’s Technology Horizons program published the blended reality report. Based upon the ethnographic research that we conducted we found that people are pioneering new ways of living in the blended reality world: a new kind of reality in which physical and digital media, environments and interactions are tightly integrated to create a new seamless experience. Cyberspace is not a place out there, it is not a destination, but it is tightly integrated into the world around us.
The report is public, and it can be accessed here.
In the last two years we have seen several signals of blended reality becoming a reality. The newest being Facebook credits (a virtual currency) that enables Facebook users to pay for both virtual goods (virtual gifts for facebook friends) and real world items (like roses delivered to your girlfriends doorsteps on Valentine's day).
Times reporter Dan Flecther wrote about his experience of experimenting with Facebook credits to buy real gifts for his mother, ex-girlfriend and country star Taylor Swift. Yes you guessed it right, his ex-girlfriend and Taylor Swift did not accept the bouquet of roses from him. Here is how Fletcher describes Facebook credits:
"In August the social-networking giant started rolling out the ability to send real-life gifts by going to the same digital wall on which a member would jot a note to a friend. (First-time users have to input credit- or debit-card info to obtain Facebook credits. Think of them as Chuck E. Cheese tokens for a digital generation.) Once the purchase is complete, the recipient gets a notification on her wall to show off to all her friends, and if she provides her address to the third-party vendor, the gift shows up on her doorstep a few days later."
As more and more of us are going to spend more of our time online, it would be interesting to watch this space to see what kinds of virtual currencies will develop and what will they be used to buy and sell. It still needs to be seen how value will evolve in the digital world: will it be a replica of the real world in which everything is valued in cash or alternate sources of value like social capital will hold water. It still needs to be seen how and whether virtual money will be exchanged for real money, how will virtual wealth be taxed (if at all), and if digital flows of virtual money will alter international flows of money.