Gear VR adds new social features for you and your friends

Hang out with friends and watch more 360-degree videos on Samsung Gear VR
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New content is added almost every week to the Oculus Store for Samsung Gear VR users, and now there's even more you can experience especially if you're a social butterfly.

According to the Oculus blog, starting today you and your friends will be able to create profiles and search for each other by your real name or Oculus username.

After finding each other in the virtual space, why not play a few games or hang out? Social Trivia lets you go up against four friends (or randos from all over the world) to test your wits while Oculus has added virtual rooms where you can watch Twitch or Vimeo streams together.

Read next: This first person shooter proves VR is better played with friends

Multiplayer adventure game Herobound: Gladiators is also available now in the Oculus Store. Again, take along four friends to fight off bad guys in arena battlefields. You can even strategize over voice chat in real time.

Gear VR adds new social features for you and your friends

Facebook gears up for VR

We're surprised it's taken so long for some sort of Facebook element to pop up on the Gear VR. Announced during MWC 2016, Facebook Videos will appear as a tab under the Oculus Video section.

Starting next week, you'll have the option to connect your Facebook account to get a personalized video feed from pages and people you follow. After that, Oculus will be implementing the ability to like and share 360 vids from the app.

It's great to see the companies following through on their plans to bring forth social aspects to VR - but only time will tell how well they'll work.

Expect even more content in the coming weeks and months as Oculus will be releasing new tools for developers to create more social VR games and apps.

TAGGED Samsung VR

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Lily is a writer and editor specializing in tech, video games, marketing, education, travel writing, and creative fiction. 

She has over 10 years of experience covering the technology beat.

Lily has a passion for VR and AR technologies and was associate wearables editor at TechRadar US, before joining Wareable as US editor in 2016.

Lily will graduate in 2023 with an MFA in Creative Writing.

In her spare time, Lily can be found knee-deep in zine collaborations, novel writing, playing Dungeons & Dragons or hiking and foraging for mushrooms.


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