Martin Szugat gives us an overview on which concepts of virtual worlds and Second Life we see in the 2d Web.
Avatars are now a common feature of communities and the social character of 3d worlds are also emulated by the web. Websites try to create a sense of immersion that is the major characteristic of VWs.
With applications like MS Photosynth you create virtual-world-like 3d models of real environments. Online shops try to create a 3d experience when shopping, like the Otto Shop.
The real time aspect of 3d environments play a role in live shopping environments like Woot or Gimmahot. There are also real time quiz formats like 'Wie weit wirst du gehen?'.
While in former times attention was measured in page impressons but rather in the time people spend in a web environment.
MySpace is interesting here: People clicked 10 times less ads in 2007 than in 2006, in the last quarter of 2007 they lost 3 million visitors and the usage time per month went down from 222 Minutes (Dec 2006) to 179 minutes (Dec 2007).
Web 1.0 was content oriented, web 2.0 is people oriented, entertainment is missing - and provided by the 3d-web and game sites.
Social gaming is attracting quite some venture capital at the moment. Kids are socialized by games right now. The entertainment sector has a big.
Virtual goods have advantages:
- they can have functions (a mighty sword in WoW)
- they can be exclusive (identity through exclusiveness, "Where do I find this?")
- they can show up in other places on the web (e.g. virtual gifts in the Facebook minifeed)
- see also: whatsyourplace.com: virtual real land.
The market for paid content and virtual goods is supposed to grob by the factor 2-10 between 2007 and 2011.
White contnt is attached to a medium (computer) virtual goods are usually attached to a platform (World of Warcraft). Content is usually unlimited while virtual goods are often limited. Content ist often easily copyable which virtual goods are often not. Content resale is usually prohibited or there is no market - but you can usually resell virtual goods.
DRM prevents that e.g. audio books can be given away as a gift.
Summary: There are new coasts to discover in this area - journey on!
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