Sunday, February 3, 2008

Gartner's Top 3 Trends in Virtual Worlds 08

Steve Prentice of Gartner cites his Top 3 trend predictions for 2008;
1. As social networking converges with virtual worlds to support rapidly growing virtual communities, a “lightweight” social-networking/entertainment-oriented virtual world will emerge, successfully targeting the MySpace/Facebook teen generation with an emphasis on having fun rather than content creation, and building a user base in excess of five million within the year.
2. Avatar-enabled corporate collaboration environments (intraverses) will become the focus of enterprise attention, replacing the focus on largely unsuccessful forays into public virtual islands that have failed to attract or retain customers.
3. Education and training will emerge as the killer application, as establishments compete for students and tap into the familiarity and high acceptance of online gaming and social networking communities of generation V.

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