Saturday, October 28, 2006

Canadian Schools Open Campus In Second Life



This is cool. The University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr Institute and BCIT will collaborate to create a 'Masters of Digital Media' program scheduled to open in September 2007. The virtual campus will be paired with a new $40 million dollar 'real world' equivalent for the lucky first 35 selected to participate.

From Press Display

Personalities: Anshe Chung



The stories of individuals making good in Second Life are popping up with surprising frequency these days, and one has to wonder how many are fact and how many fiction. The quintessential case in point appears to be Second Life real estate tycoon Anshe Chung (SL name) who along with her husband has successfully created a business that would be envied by most realtors in the 'real world.'

At the time of writing Wikipedia summarizes Chung's accomplishments as:
she has built an online business that engages in development, brokerage and arbitrage of virtual land, items and currencies

While impressive, it warrants reading further to understand the actual power this conveys in a world like Second Life. Business Week speaks to the restrictions she's able to place on those purchasing her land:
Players also wanted neighborhoods that amounted to more than drab slabs of virtual turf, and they wanted some order. So she began creating the equivalent of gated communities, complete with zoning rules. She doesn't allow malls or clubs in certain regions, for instance, and limits the heights of buildings. "She is the government," Rosedale says.

Enough talk, check out the opportunities for yourself at Anshe Chung Studios.

Second Life Registrations, Searches, Visits Spike

Ah, the joys of word-of-mouth referrals and frequent press mentions.
Hitwise writes that:
last week the share of US Internet searches for 'second life' shot up 73% compared to the previous week (week ending 10/21/06 vs. week ending 10/14/06), and visits to the Second Life website more than doubled in the two weeks between the weeks ending 10/7/06 and 10/21/06.

On the surface this sounds pretty positive for the future prospects of SL, but the blog goes on to quote anectodal mention that there seem to be more business and newbies prospecting for business opportunities. If this is true, I wonder whether the added interest might not serve to upset the existing Second Life community.

The blog also mentions that the age of new users has moved upward in recent weeks. While this seems to agree with the statements in the previous paragraph I'd take it with a grain of salt as one of the benefits of these 'virtual worlds' is that users can be whoever they care to be. As there is no identify verification of registrants there is nothing to stop a 20-something user from declaring an age of 67 while registering... not to mention the older users who in the past may have pretended to be younger than they are (for innocent or not-so-innocent purposes)... a practice that may be changing as the media recognize and publicize the abuses carried out by some of these individuals in communities like Second Life and MySpace.

As mentioned in a previous post, I wouldn't get too hung up in registration numbers for a free community like this one. Curiosity and active participation are two very different things... with the second being the measure more interesting to me as a guage of the product's present and future prospects. Let me also slip in a quick note of concern around accounts potentially being created in this high growth period for later malicious purpose... there, I'll end my conspiracy talk now :)

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Lots Of Users Means Lots Of Opportunity - For All

Another question that comes up when a company registers millions (or even hundreds of thousands) of users is, when will the spammers arrive en masse. When an online effort reaches a registration tipping point where the new users move away from tech savvy early adopter and tend more toward Aunt Mabel they become ideal targets for the spammers/fraudsters. You can bet than any spam/fraud artist worth his or her salt has a number of accounts on SL and other virtual communities as you read this and is testing the hell out of every one of them. Further you can bet that on average these individuals are smarter, more driven and better incented in their pursuit than the gamers they're preparing to target.

I'd love to hear from anyone who's spent time looking for these individuals in SL, or any other virtual world for that matter. Surely some of the asian games that have been around for a while are experiencing some of this (I mean come on, Cyworld claims that one third of South Koreans are residents of that world) - if you've heard about it please share!

Hang on, cause its only a matter of time before they stop testing and start hunting.

A Virtual Travelocity - Synthravels



So you want to check out a new virtual world but you don't want to spend time learning the ropes and 'earning' your way across the landscape? What's a lazy, yet curious individual to do?

Contact Synthravels and have them organize a virtual world tour for you. I have my doubts about this one, but who knows... I've been wrong many, many (many, many, many) times before.

More Mainstream Second Life - NPR This Time.



Pffffft. Why do I hear about these things the day after they happen?
Apparently NPR's "Talk of the Nation" did a spot on Second Life yesterday that would have been great to listen to... hopefully there will be something accessible in the archives.

I'm told that there wasn't a lot of information about life in the game itself, but rather it focused on the commercial application of the world - not surprising given the program's target audience, but kind of disappointing nonetheless.

Update: Sweet, they posted the program which is accessible here. Enjoy and let me know what you think!

When 1 Million Isn't Always 1 Million.

Clearly as Second Life recently topped 1 million registered users and is still growing strong. At this point in a registration cycle I always get curious re: what percentage of those are legitimate users vs. not. Of the 1 million, how many are active in any 3 month period? That's a stat I'd be more interested to know.

Virtual Worldvertizing - Nissan In Second Life.



I'm not sure that the Nissan Sentra is the car that would scream 'virtual worlds' to me, but apparently someone or some research group backed it enough for it to happen. Nissan has taken the plunge into Second Life with a promo that allows residents to secure virtual Sentras in various colours that can be driven in SL. The sim for this endeavour was created by Electric Sheep, a name you should be familiar with by now.

I'm not exactly sure how you get a car in SL... something about having to find the 'Toast Alicious' avatar (wtf does this have to do with Nissan?) in order to secure a PIN that will let you get your wheels when you find the Nissan sim.

Happy hunting.

Reuters Shows Its Face In Second Life.



Clearly virtual worlds are no longer a secret. Either that or Reuters accidentally hired someone who has a clue about where things are going with technology these days.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or bad one. It clearly signifies that something significant is going on. It also signifies that many cool things are likely to end. What happened when the mainstream media began to 'get' what was going on with music on the internet? Lawsuits. What happened when they began to understand how bittorrent could be 'misused?' Lawsuits.

I hope that the extended publicizing of virtual worlds and the fact that they are meaningful not just as simple entertainment but also represent economic opportunity and venues to influence/understand culture doesn't attract the wrong kind of people to the table.

Low Budget Virtuality - Potted Plant For Ghetto Virtuality.



Taking a step back from the cutting edge virtual worlds and you'll find some folks kickin it tamagotchi style in France. Why the hell anyone with VR skills would spend time on something tamagotchi-esque is beyond me but it's underway.

If you're interested have a look at the tamagotchi plant project. Apparently they're planning to sell people on growning a digital plant on their mobile phones to eventually 'give' to a significant other somewhere. I don't know about your significant other, but my wife will in no way be impressed by a pixel flower.

If by any chance your significant other thinks differently, here's the link.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Kicking It Off With Something Familiar - Taxes!



With all the talk about virtual worlds, virtual culture, virtual economies and their effects on the 'real' world I suppose we all saw this coming. Particularly when so many of the goings-on began to be externalized by the likes of Second Life and their realtime tally of USD$ spent in the last 24 hours, not to mention Reuters' exposure of a Second Life Linden Dollar / USD exchange rate graph.

With all of this being touted in the media these days Congress has finally taken notice. Recently it was announced that they would begin looking into such virtual economies and evaluating how they and their users should be considered from a taxation perspective.

As stated in the Washington Post:
The increasing size and public profile of virtual economies, the largest of which have millions of users and gross domestic products that rival those of small countries, have made them increasingly difficult for lawmakers and regulators to ignore.

Why do I have a feeling that this will get messy?