For websites we had Google. For videos, YouTube. For products, Amazon. For general reference, Wikipedia. For Gifs, Giphy. Well when VR and AR devices become..
For websites we had Google. For videos, YouTube. For products, Amazon. For general reference, Wikipedia. For Gifs, Giphy. Well when VR and AR devices become mainstream, i magine all the new types of content that will be out there to explore. How will we find what we’re looking for in a brave, new, 3D world?
In an interview for Flux , I sat down with Sophia Dominguez, co-founder and chief executive of SVRF , a search engine for VR content, which just launched in open beta.
Sophia discussed why consumers are scared of VR and how she’s planning to knock down the barriers, why the nausea factor is critical in search rankings, how Snapchat will help bridge to the gap to AR, and why Facebook’s VR privacy policy is pretty alarming. Sophia also revealed the challenges of being a woman in the industry, why building a company in New York is a better reality check than building in the Silicon Valley bubble, why VR zombies are a great alternative to coffee, and why trippy VR art is so amazing.
So let’s talk about your company SVRF — you just launched a new product so this is exciting timing. You’ve said that your goal is to bring VR to the masses, and you’re indexing and curating all content on the web, meaning 360 ° photos, 360 ° videos, and 3D experiences. What does it mean to build a search engine for VR?
SD: So right now we have to index content. We look at specific sites that we know are hosting virtual reality content and either integrate with APIs or do other custom stuff in order to get that content. It’s just a matter of knowing what sites have VR content and eventually one day having enough data around what this type of content is and what it looks like on the developer side in order to crawl the internet for it.
One thing we didn’t realize when we first started was how much bad content there was. There’s all these weird things you have to think about. If you look at content that’s on the web and are like oh this is interesting, but you put it in a headset, it could make someone sick. The way that our ranking works is, would somebody feel comfortable in a headset —
AMLG: So if it’s going to make you vom, indexing goes way down, ranking goes down?
SD: Yes.
