Hi5’s virtual entertainment plans could hit a virtual jackpot » VentureBeat. Because Facebook is the largest, fastest-growing network in the world, a big question is what other social networks are going to do to compete. Hi5, with approximately 60 million monthly unique visitors, is in the process of making itself an “immersive social environment” that includes virtual goods, avatars, games, instant messaging and a 3-D world geared at older teens worldwide.
The company plans to make money off of virtual goods — not traditional online advertising. This means hi5 is pitting itself not so much against Facebook — that site’s fastest-growing user group is older than 30 — but against larger rival MySpace, as well as Friendster, Orkut and a range of local competitors. It’s targeting the “15 to 24 year old demographic,” chief executive Ramu Yalamanchi says, through a set of services designed to provide what he calls “social entertainment.” As it does so, hi5 may also come into competition with an assortment of established virtual world companies. Lego and user generated content. Noise is slowly starting to come from Lego about their planned virtual world Lego Universe, led by Mark Hansen, director of Business Development. Now, it’s not difficult to imagine the basis for Lego Universe not to mention the likely popularity, after all, everyone knows Lego and understands what their proposition is – user generated content (see a video of Lego Universe here) Often cited as the holy-grail for engaging virtual environments, UGC is something that Lego has facilitated from day one.
The Experience Economy blog has an insightful article giving an overview of a presentation given by Hansen. In his talk, the three main audiences for Lego were laid out: The young kidsThe mature community of almost exclusively male enthusiastsParents/mothers as gift givers What a valuable fusion of demographics and strategically, an upper-hand for Lego in the battle for virtual world sign-ups. Michel Bauwens goes on to explain in the article how Lego unvisages the universe to operate:
Eight Ways to Get Users to Fill Out Their Profiles - ReadWriteWeb. "Hi, my name is MrCucumber69, I have a gray blob for a face and that's all I care to share about myself - will you be my friend? " Silly as that sounds, this is the way users of many social web applications greet each other. It's not very useful or inspiring. Communication works better when you have a good idea who it is you're talking to.
How can new online services get users to describe themselves, though? Bellow, we discuss some of our favorite ways it's being done well. LinkedIn = Boring but Effective One of the most well known ways to get people to fill out their profiles is the way LinkedIn does it. It's much better than nothing, but let's look at some more creative and fun solutions. What's Your Most Common Username Elsewhere? Personal search engine Lijit does a great job of making it easy to associate your account with them with all kinds of other accounts you own around the web. It's the first step new users take when they click the button to register on the site.
Did You Know...? Chat | Chat Rooms | Paltalk. Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities (9780875847597): John Hagel III, Arthur G. Armstrong. Nine Principles for Making Virtual Communities Work. Nine Principles for Making Virtual Communities Work By Mike Godwin To get an idea of how fast the move to cyberspace is occurring, compare it to the growth in suburban housing in postwar America. David Halberstam writes in The Fifties that "In 1944 there had been only 114,000 new single houses started; by 1946 that figure had jumped to 937,000; to 1,118,000 in 1948; and to 1.7 million in 1950.
" Halberstam attributes the growth to Bill Levitt's innovations in mass-produced housing, coupled with the immense postwar demand for such housing. Over the last decade and a half a similar boom has occurred in "the Matrix" - the term John Quarterman, of Matrix Information and Directory Services (MIDS), uses for the global web of connected computer networks and conferencing systems whose largest component is the Internet. Of course, not everyone with an e-mail address actually spends much time online. Use software that promotes good discussions. OK, it's hard to stage-manage crises. Welcome to Second London. Business Networking Group & Club - Ecademy Belgium. 1.0 - Citizen Journalism. December 2006 Time Magazine , not a celebrity on the cover but a screen and one word ‘You’ are the man/woman of the year. And why? For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game.
Time’s Person of the Year is you (Lev Grossman, 2006) . With this choice Time pinned down what cannot longer be ignored. Over the last couple of years traditional media has tried to formulate an answer to this development in finding a balance between print – and online information, in keeping track with the newest technological trends to present their information and in figuring out how to integrate citizen journalism within their (online) information channels. In what way technological developments will influence the way we deal with news and information. These issues will be discussed more deeply during a Meeting of Minds and will be challenged afterwards by the future scenarios presented. Waarom de meeste online communities falen. Why people participate in online communities. My dear friend Yaniv Golan, CTO of Yedda, had given a brilliant presentation regarding Incentives In Online Social Communities a few weeks ago at The Marker COM.vention and since it’s unfortunately in Hebrew, I wanted to translate it, include some of my own additions, and share it with you.
Online community participation Yaniv Golan Let’s start with the obvious question….Why? Why do users comment? Why do they write blogs? Why do they upload pics to Flickr? Why do they send links to friends? What are the motives behind user participation in social communities? Membership life cycle for online communities Amy Jo Kim was the first to propose the idea of a member’s life cycle in an online community (2000). Peripheral (i.e. Power Law of Participation According to Ross Mayfield: “The vast majority of users will not have a high level of engagement with a given group, and most tend to be free riders upon community value. Participation Inequality Social Platforms – the 1% rule So now you ask… Interview with clay shirky, a social platform thinker. Clay Shirky is an influential writer, consultant, and teacher focused on the Internet as a social platform.
He's one of the smartest thinkers I know about how people live, love, and work online. His new book, Here Comes Everybody:The Power of Organizing without Organizations, was just published by The Penguin Press. As an intro to Chapter 11, on "Promise, Tool, and Bargain," he says "There is not recipe for the successful use of social tools. Instead, every working system is a mix of social and technological factors. " Jon Lebkowsky: My first very general question for you is about how the web started changing around 2000. Clay Shirky: This is the sort of ancient history that got me doing the book. In fact, I got pulled into the web, too. I think that the change that started in 2000 came about for a couple of reasons.
The second thing is so many people were online by 2000, that you could actually start to get real social density, you didn't have to do everything just point to point. Del.icio.us links for online communities. Best practices for running an online community. I’ve been presenting in public at conferences or webinars my high level findings from my recent research on Online Community Best Practices, the detailed version is on the Forrester site.
I interviewed 17 companies and leaned on my experience launching the social media programs at previous companies. You can view the powerpoint on Slideshare. The next time I’m presenting this is in Mountain View on March 25 (yes it’s open to men too), discount code for $50 off for Web Strategy readers is SNC325. It seems counter-intuitive for me to share these presentations on the web as I’m often hired to present these to clients or at conferences, or hired for advisory, but in today’s social media world, my presentation has already been filmed, blogged, and talked about around the industry. The real value comes from the explanations and and insight from a researcher presenting their findings. Update: I forgot to include “Forum One Networks” as one of the companies included in the report.
Cyberpsychology. Why do some people opt for a sex change in virtual worlds? Is an obsession with Facebook a sign that you're unusually sociable - or unusually lonely? Such questions never troubled Sigmund Freud. But the internet, and its impact on our everyday lives, is about to be put on the couch with the launch of Britain's first Masters degree in 'cyberpsychology'. The course, starting at Nottingham Trent University in the new academic year, will cover topics ranging from online gambling and gaming to relationships and sexuality, along with cyber-crime, education and health issues, social networking and artificial intelligence. It follows a surge of interest in how websites such as Friends Reunited, MySpace and Facebook have altered the ways in which people interact. Technology has been credited with transforming the lives of interest groups and lonely hearts, but accused of presenting opportunities for paedophilia and sexual harassment.
Social websites, esc. Virtual world for teen business education. Near announced last week a partnership with Be Broadband to offer subscribers a sneak peak into its upcoming mirror world, Near London, when it heads to private beta in January. Near will eventually work as a platform for multiple partners to co-develop content on. More in-depth activities are planned, but Be will begin with a multiplayer mini-game for its users set in the virtual London. Other partners for the beta include the New West End Company, a trade group that promotes retail and hospitality services in central London, the Evening Standard and TrustedPlaces.com. The beta will be opened to a limited number of Be subscribers and gradually expanded through the year to a target cap of 10,000 users before the launch in Q3 2009 tied the 200th anniversary of London's West End.
"We'll be using the Beta process to refine the product and engage further channel partners and businesses prior to public launch in September. The virtual self. The self exists at the intersection of our internal neural networks and our external social networks. Anyone who has read my blog post, R, will recognize that as coming from a keynote at the AGPA annual meeting and will know how I’ve been mulling it around. Yesterday, I went to a talk on Augmentation and Immersion in Second Life.
I left the talk feeling very unclear about what people were trying to say or why they thought it mattered, but it seemed something like this: The Immersionists view Second Life as some sort of ‘other world’, a fictional environment. Their avatars a creations like characters in a story. They are acted out, role played, perhaps even some sort of fan fiction. The augumentists view Second Life as just another communications medium that helps, or augments, our ability to communicate. Their avatars are extensions of themselves.
It sounds an awful lot like discussions about MOOs fifteen years ago about how real or not the communications in MOOs were.