Business in Virtual Worlds News Roundup - Oct 6-12 2008

Headlines about virtual worlds just from the past week.

What a week. I actually went this entire week without posting a single blog post, which is very rare for me. Kind of nice to be able to sit down and bring myself up to date.

I did little to no editing of the roundup this week. It’s Thanksgiving in Canada, and I have guests. Result: it’s a longer list of articles than usual, and my sarcasm comes through a little more often than I’d normally allow. Sorry.

Past weeks:

Disclaimer: As with everything on my blog, the opinions expressed here are mine and do not reflect on Clever Zebra, the vBusiness Expo, my friends, my family, the Little Drummer Boy, etc etc etc… k here we go:

Business

Masterpieces of the universe
“RMB City” launches in Second Life, with a plan to sell buildings for prices ranging from $80,000 to $200,000. It feels like an error though, doesn’t it? Could they mean L$?

Al Hathboor Informatics launches Second Life Consulting Practice
Press Release. Welcome to the fray folks.

Visitoons Announces Launch Of Virtual World Platform And Consumer Virtual Chat
Press Release. Another 2.5D world launches into the rapidly saturating market.

iLemon Developing 5 Niche Worlds
Press Release. Well no, not really, but pretty close. It’s like a pre-press release. To be honest I’m thinking of deleting this entry before publishing as it’s not “news” as much as “guess what I heard”… well we’ll see if I remember to when I’m done an hour from now.

Notes from Virtual Goods Summit: Yoville Statshot
Short blurb worth noting - gives a quick look at how giant worlds you’ve never even heard of can get. To be honest, I smell some cooking of the stats here but hey, let’s just buy that it’s successful…

TwoFish Gets $4.5M Triplepoint Capital, Rustic Canyon, and Venrock
There’s gold in them thar hills! The money will go towards developing Twofish Elements, its toolset for virtual banking, inventory, and commerce systems

UPDATED: Redpoint Ventures Invested in WelloHorld
More money flying about, this time in Jerry Paffendorf’s direction. WelloHorld is some kind of 3D web app nobody knows anything about yet but everyone is excited about because of the micro-celebrities behind it.

Wix.com Gets $3.5 from Mangrove and Bessemer
Mo’ money. Wix.com is a great product actually: drag-n-drop flash websites. Now, I ended up reading this because it was on Virtual Worlds News, but it has absolutely nothing at all to do with virtual worlds. Let’s be clear about that, I don’t want to confuse you. I decided to include it, however, because genuinely they have a really great app.

IBM and Fashion Research Institute Partner for PLM
IBM and the Fashion Research Institute (FRI) engage in a joint venture to create a product life-cycle management system. In other news: there’s such a thing as a Fashion Research Institute.

Retail! Retail! Retail!: Boulanger Opens Store in SL with IBM; VirtualEShopping Launches 3D Mall
Ah, here we go, the proof of concept we’ve been waiting for. What’s up with that title though…

MindFuse Raises $1M from Keiretsu Forum
Mo’ money mo’ money mo’ money. This time for a world developer.

Training and Education

‘Treating cancer’ in a virtual world
3D goggles and £300,000 in equipment are used in radiotherapy training.

Virtual Reality Breathes Second Life Into Language Teaching
Sort of a repeater of the same kind of stuff from previous weeks, but included here for ease of later research.

Virtual campus creates global ties
Illinois State’s daily covers their virtual world efforts.

Government and Military

Kirk Out to Protect Kids Online
Man who knows nothing about Second Life strongly against it. In other news, the Internet is a series of tubes.

With help from the feds, a Denver scientist helps Second Life go nuclear
Painfully newbish, but not without merit.

Ontario Public Service woos young recruits with Second Life
Nice overview, with non-embeddable streaming video that I’ve hacked to appear here anyhow:

Marketing

Stardoll Partners with Elle Magazine
Whoops, I think Elle just tipped their hands on who their target demographic is…

Analyst: Half of ’social media campaigns’ will flop
Half is an EXCELLENT success rate considering the cost/benefit ratio!

Hangin’ in Habbo
(Darth Vader voice)Don’t underestimate the power of Habbo!

Gaming

Google Launches In-Game Ads for Flash
Well we saw this coming: AdSense for Games. Check out the video overview:

Microsoft Ups Japan Xbox Sales Forecast; Details Virtual World
Neither Microsoft nor Sony have shown us that they can produce here, but we’ll see. Guys… just hire some consultants.

Sony to Take All MMOs to Consoles
Again, I remain in wait-n-see mode.

Nerds Only

Notes from Virtual Goods Summit: Branded and User-Generated Virtual Goods
There are lots of interesting thoughts here that you might never have considered about virtual goods. You’ll see dollar signs in every corner of the web after reading this, to be honest. It’s not all gold though - at one point I found myself saying: “Branding can be used by people now! Wow, I’ve only heard that in a billion other places before!” Still, worth a read.

Just Leap In Adds Avatars to Browser-Based World
Avatars in a virtual space are kind of essential… odd they tried to launch without them. Sweet graphics in Just Leap In, worth a quick look despite having to download/install a plugin. (Ug!)

Newbs Only

Virtual worlds carve out new path
BBC re-explains the concept of virtual worlds in an effort to explain why they’re reporting on Myrl elsewhere.

Second Life Faces Otherworldly Competition
Virtual spaces other than Second Life? Outrageous!

Boom in virtual playgrounds for kids
I’m starting to really love the Sydney Morning Herald, they write some great stuff.

Virtually, money makes the worlds go round
A follow-up story on the same topic with a closer look at the money behind everything.

Social Research Foundation Survey Shows Increase in Professional Use for Second Life
In other news, they have Internet on computers now.

Sociological Oddities

BM and Palace Museum Announce Opening of The Forbidden City
Press Release. Wasn’t sure what other category to put this under, but figured I’d better mention it. The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is kind of a big deal.

Legislating The Virtual World
Highlighting the oddness of these issues nicely.

Worshiping online: Is it really church?
Also see my previous coverage of a virtual funeral.

The joystick of sex
…and the prize for this week’s most eye-catching title goes to… the one that used the word “sex” of course!

Posted on October 12th, 2008 under new media. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.

Caleb Booker