[info] [wta-talk] SF Chronicle: "More Internet users getting a virtual life" by Ellen Lee

Tue Oct 9 18:54:44 UTC 2007

----- Forwarded message from Michael LaTorra <mlatorra at gmail.com> -----

From: Michael LaTorra <mlatorra at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 12:51:11 -0600
To: WTA Talk <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>, metaverse at ieet.org
Subject: [wta-talk] SF Chronicle: "More Internet users getting a virtual
	life" by Ellen Lee
Reply-To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>

   SF Gate
   [1]http://tinyurl.com/2yrkhu

   More Internet users getting a virtual life
   Ellen Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer

   Monday, October 8, 2007

   The online universe is brimming with dozens of virtual worlds vying to
   build sustainable life.

   From Gaia, a Japanese anime-inspired site, to vSide, a hip nightclub
   scene, they represent the latest way people are interacting through
   the Internet. Users create alter-ego avatars to navigate these online
   worlds, where they meet and hang out with other people, go shopping,
   watch movies, even start a business.

   And they're live: Day and night, they change as people join in.

   Though the idea is not new, the technology and the business to support
   these virtual worlds are starting to catch up. And now a new
   generation, inspired in part by Linden Lab of San Francisco's Second
   Life, is starting to evolve.

   "We call it the avatar age," said Reuben Steiger, CEO of Millions of
   Us, a Sausalito startup that helps create in-world communities and
   promotions for advertisers. "We're able to connect with each other in
   real time and represent ourselves as we want to be seen."

   For some, virtual worlds could become a means of social networking,
   replacing static pages with live ones as destinations for people to
   spend time.

   "The first generation of virtual words is a step in the right
   direction," said Scott Raney, a partner with Redpoint Ventures and an
   investor in Gaia.

   Estimates vary on how popular the virtual worlds will become.
   Technology research firm Gartner forecast this year that by 2011, 80
   percent of active Internet users will have a "second life" in some
   sort of virtual world. Another research company, eMarketer, predicted
   last month that more than half of U.S. children and teens who use the
   Internet - about 20 million people - will visit virtual worlds by
   2011.

   About 8.2 million young Internet users, or 24 percent, already are
   checking out a virtual world once a month, eMarketer estimated.

   In the past year, investors have put $1 billion in 35 virtual-world
   companies, according to a report advancing the Virtual Worlds
   Conference, being held Wednesday and Thursday in San Jose.

   Some companies included in the report are more game-oriented than
   virtual world-oriented, and therein lies one of the debates for the
   nascent industry. Some draw the line between virtual worlds and games
   such as World of Warcraft, in which millions of players pillage and
   battle each other to advance. Others contend that the massive
   multi-player games nevertheless take place in an online world where
   participants don't necessarily have to follow the arc of the story and
   can create an avatar just to go inside and meet other people - or
   orcs.

   "It's definitely a changing landscape," said Chris Sherman, executive
   director for Virtual Worlds Management, which conducted the study.

   The virtual worlds are taking all kinds of shapes.

   San Jose's Gaia had 2.5 million users last month, including 100,000
   logged in at the same time. It was created by comic book artists, with
   two-dimensional avatars that resemble Japanese anime characters.

   In vSide, which began about two months ago and has about 200,000
   registered users, the online world is more about the music scene, with
   nightclubs where groups such as All-American Rejects drop in.

   "You have something to come back to every week," said Tim Stevens, CEO
   of Doppelganger, the San Francisco company behind vSide. "If you're a
   fan, you want to get the rush you get from going to a concert or a
   music festival or finding that new song."

   One of the criticisms, however, is that each is its own little world,
   disconnected from other virtual worlds. To join another one, users
   have to create new avatars and find new friends.

   Metaplace is testing a service that would allow people to create
   virtual worlds that they can share with friends and publish on their
   blogs and social-networking profiles.

   "Our goal is to democratize virtual worlds, to put them in the hands
   of everybody," said Raph Koster, founder of Metaplace.

   The reality, though, is that while the virtual world is essentially
   limitless, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution still applies. Some
   aren't easy to use, discouraging participants from returning, or they
   don't have enough activities or people in them at one time to make it
   fun.

   "It's inevitable there will be too many," said Raney, the partner with
   Redpoint Ventures. "We know there's going to be tremendous activity in
   this space. There's no shortage of places competing for people's
   attention."

   And with most virtual worlds still attracting a large population, it
   isn't clear how users will react.

   "My biggest worry is it's going to get so fragmented that people are
   going to be discouraged," said Michael Wilson, CEO of Makena
   Technologies, which runs [2]There.com and also helped MTV build a
   series of virtual worlds for its television shows, including "Laguna
   Beach" and "The Hills."

   Tiffany Stoddard, a 19-year-old psychology and sociology student at
   Macalester College in Minnesota, uses Zwinky and IMVU.

   In Zwinky, part of InterActiveCorp, she and her friends dressed up as
   security officers and bugged other players in a virtual shopping mall.
   In another instance, she acted as a minister to "marry" her friends.

   "You can't do all that stuff in real life, so it's an opportunity to
   do things you can't normally do," she said.

   Stoddard, who is black, also experimented with race, creating avatars
   with different-color skins and testing how others reacted to her. She
   found that she received different responses as she looked for a
   virtual boyfriend, getting, for instance, responses only from white
   men when her avatar was white.

   "It's a break away from reality," she said. "You can dress up your
   avatar. It doesn't have to look like you, and you can interact with
   people all over the world instead of interacting with someone right
   next to you in the real world."

   A galaxy of virtual worlds
   Gaia: [3]gaiaonline.com
   Habbo: [4]habbo.com
   IMVU: [5]imvu.com
   Kaneva: [6]kaneva.com
   Metaplace: [7]metaplace.com
   MTV: [8]vmtv.com
   Second Life: [9]secondlife.com
   There: [10]there.com
   vSide: [11]vside.com
   Zwinky: [12]zwinky.com

References

   1. http://tinyurl.com/2yrkhu
   2. http://There.com/
   3. http://gaiaonline.com/
   4. http://habbo.com/
   5. http://imvu.com/
   6. http://kaneva.com/
   7. http://metaplace.com/
   8. http://vmtv.com/
   9. http://secondlife.com/
  10. http://there.com/
  11. http://vside.com/
  12. http://zwinky.com/

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