I spent much of mid-2000s working on virtual worlds and virtual economies. I got to work on fascinating problems with wonderfully creative people (shout out to you Electric Sheep alumni!). Brief tangent: here’s a few of the colorful characters I got to know, from a photo book I published back in 2007 called Avatar Expression: By 2010, I had moved …
I have been studying the “entertainment” of shopping for five years now. At Electric Sheep, we focused on the virtual side, studying places like Second Life, Stardoll, and Polyvore, and advising large brands and ad agencies on the topic. We embedded ourselves within the vibrant Second Life design and fashion community. We designed and built many virtual entertainment experiences. For …
Bo Peabody wrote a thought-provoking article for Business Insider called “Facebook And Twitter Will Always Be Crappy Businesses“. I had to respond to a few things: It is still too early to tell what brand managers are going to do, particularly on Facebook. You’re talking about a group of businesses (brands and agencies) with highly engrained habits and beliefs after …
Virtual goods have been used extensively in Asia for years, but are now coming into their own as a business model in the U.S. With that growth comes media attention — including articles like today’s piece in the New York Times, “Virtual Goods Start Bringing Real Paydays“. The entire thing isn’t awful, but I have to take the journalists to …
Virtual goods have finally been legitimized as a revenue model, rather than a niche (even weird) activity ignored in favor of advertising. Now the concept is spreading beyond its game / virtual world roots, and we’re seeing large numbers of companies trying to figure out a “virtual goods” strategy. While I believe very strongly in virtual goods as an effective …
David Pakman has an excellent post up called “Confusing Traction with Value“, pointing to the “distressed exit of iLike” and then pointing out a few Web 2.0 aberrations in valuation. For those of you who experienced Web 1.0’s up and down, this is a bit “been there, done that”. Web 1.0 was about startups far outstripping the available audience. Web …
Casual Connect just took place in Seattle and Dean Takahashi over at GamesBeat has done a great job capturing some of the trends in this part of the games world: Part 1 and Part 2. Some of the most interesting quotes: Social games might hit a half billion in revenues this year. In 2007, before a price war began, casual …
A few months ago, I listened to a panel organized by Battery Ventures called “Monetizing Social Media”. Perhaps not surprisingly for a New York-based event, the panel spent 99% of the time talking about advertising. Still, I was surprised to see both the Facebook and MySpace representatives brush off microtransaction business models as niche and not worth discussing. The total …