Transparent Pricing - At Last!

This is a breath of fresh air. Thanks Adyen! "Adyen is a Payment Service Provider (PSP) offering outsourced payment and fraud control services for the (sub-)corporate market. Its services include payment processing, payment routing, real-time fraud control and full reconciliation. Credit card payments are processed on Interchange Plus basis, where the merchant can see for every transaction the exact cost price (interchange fee) attracted from the credit card networks."

HABBO's CEO Interview in BusinessWeek

HABBO is immune to a US recession says CEO Timo Soininen: "Timo Soininen, CEO of Sulake, the Finnish company behind the wildly popular virtual world/social networking site Habbo, dropped by BusinessWeek HQ today. He gave my colleague Reena Jana and I an update on the quirky-but-compelling isometrically rendered site’s progress. As of January 2008, the site has generated some pretty impressive numbers: 8.3 million unique visitors a month with some 86 million registered users. What’s more, about 90% of Habbo’s users are in that jeunesse doree “demo” chased after by advertisers, 13 to 18 year olds. More interestingly, Soininen had some insight into what brands should really be looking for with their forays in web 2.0 projects, either in Habbo or on other sites like MySpace or Facebook. “Brands in virtual worlds and social networking sites have to be unobtrusive,” he said. “The idea is less to be about a specific location or room, and more to become a topic of conversation, something users can take with them.” In Habbo that takes the form of digital items pruchased via micro-transactions, the millenial version of that Guns’N’Roses poster on your bedroom wall… For its part, Habbo has a vital interest in not bombarding users with advertising messages according to Soininen. “A lot of users say, please don’t turn this into advertising Hell,” he joked. “We have to ration, not overwhelm, users with commercial messages. In effect, we vet the brands.” And that, it seems, works both ways since advertisers are also looking for clear, un-crowded places to setup shop and be noticed. “The reel beef for advertisers online,” he said, “is in community activities. If you want to get meaningful reach, that’s where it is.” We also briefly discussed the potential of a U.S. recession (“Our types of services won’t be affected.”) and the temptation to feature creep or use the Habbo site’s success as a driver for a broader portal (“History has show: keep it simple, keep it stupid.”). All in all, an intersting if quick conversation."www.businessweek.com/innovate/gamesinc/archives/2008/01/habbo_86_millio.html

ClickandBuy Loses American Management Team

PaymentGuy cannot help but notice the executive rotation at Click&Buy (WebPay, Firtsgate AG). In the last year at least 7 top execs and managers have transitioned including;

David Hunter European MD for C&B now CEO Paysafecard UK


Eli Entin former VP Product Development at C&B now an Independent Consultant


Michael Holdman former VP eCommerce Solutions at C&B now self-emloyed


Jamy Nigri former VP New Media at ClickandBuy LLC now VP Biz Dev at Stealth Mode


John Baross former VP Global Sales & Strategic Development at Click&Buy LLC now Sales Director at Amdocs


Stuart Ginsberg former Public Relations Manager at ClickandBuy now self employed


Ann Whitener former VP eCommerce Sales at ClickandBuy now Director, Business Sales at Internet Payment Solutions, Inc "PayByCash"

During this period the German Management and Board has stayed pretty much intact. I thought Germans got along with Americans and Daimler Chrysler was a one-off thing: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5isqJJz7pMClHGzmWV23eUx1COyOQ

Americans Are Sooooooooooooooo Creative!

According to Deloitte's 2008 State of the Media Democracy Survey, nearly one-half of all American consumers create their own online content. (Does this include MySpace crap?) Fourty-five percent of the survey respondents develop, contribute to or maintain web sites, online photo albums and blogs. This figure is up 12 percent from the 2007 survey. Ed Moran, director of product innovation for Deloitte's Technology, Media and Telecommunications group, said, "Mass digitization has created unheralded choice and desire for American consumers. Now, more than ever, consumers have the independence to enjoy what they want, when they want it, and where they want it - but increasingly, they are also choosing to create content themselves, or re-working other people's content." Additionally, 35 percent of the survey respondents view their cell phones as entertainment devices, a 24 percent rise from last year's survey. The findings of this survey are significant to all forms of media as they point to a trend of this rapid increase in the personalization of media production will likely have long reaching, and potentially devastating, effects on the traditional entertainment business model-from publishing to film. With the rise of customizable virtual worlds such as Second Life and upcoming community game platforms like Raph Koster's MetaPlace, the videogame industry is bound to feel the impact as well. More information on the State of the Media Democracy Survey can be found on Deloitte's web site. Deloitte will be releasing these, and other survey, findings at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on January 7 and 8.

The Germans Grill Rosedale in Der Speigel

Hats off to Philip if he is still smiling after ths interview with Christian Stöcker entitled; "Making it Crash Less Is our Number One Mission'"... here it is below (edited) full version here www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-531700,00.html

"The hype has evaporated for virtual world Second Life. But founder Philip Rosedale is far from discouraged. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, he spoke about the backlash, the future of virtual worlds, and traveling the world via the keyboard.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The hype for Second Life was huge in 2006 and 2007. Now, one hears little about it. Is the party over?

Philip Rosedale: With any new medium like this -- and it was also true of the Internet itself -- there is a predictable cycle of media hype followed by a backlash. We had major attention in the first two quarters of 2007, then some negative media attention after that. New tools, like the use of voice, or business applications, like collaboration and education, will slowly drive more positive media in the next couple of quarters. But it's a bit of a rollercoaster.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The growth of Second Life, though, has subsided dramatically. Firms are pulling out ...

Rosedale: The real business use of Second Life centers around collaboration and that is continuing to grow quite rapidly. There are more than 400 universities in Second Life and there are more than 4,000 teachers on our education mailing list. There might have been more enthusiasm and stronger growth in the first two quarters of 2007, but I think that the core growth in utility and in applications is still very strong. There's been a media focus on marketing ...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But marketing has really proven to be a flop in Second Life, hasn't it?

Rosedale: I believe it's too early to say that. We are still a system with 200,000 different users each day. And though that's impressive and creates a million-dollar-a-day economy for people to make money in, it's not enough people to market many real-world products.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: There's a whole host of competitors now, like Sony's Playstation Home, Raph Kosters Metaplace, a German start-up called Twinity and many others ...

Rosedale: Sony's Home does not allow user created content, and is therefore, I believe, not in the category. I don't think their goal is to compete with Second Life, but with Xbox live. It's just the visuals that appear similar to those in Second Life. The others, if they enabled content creation, might be more similar to Second Life. It does concern me that they might learn from our mistakes -- but we'll learn from what they're doing as well. You'll see us able to follow these changes very rapidly.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: One thing you haven't managed yet is to make people pay to use Second Life on a large scale. Online games like "World of Warcraft" that offer mission and reward schemes make huge amounts of money through subscription fees. Do you need to reconsider your model?

Rosedale: Our strategy is that other people need to build that on top of us, and they are doing that. We have to make sure the platform offers the right kind of features to make that stuff easy -- and that is a challenge for us. It is similar to Facebook, where they've created an API to allow people to build little social applications. But we are not going to make Second Life into a game to improve its retention.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: For Second Life to run smoothly, users need increasingly high-end hardware. A fast Internet connection and a premium graphics card are a must.

Rosedale: Making it crash less on everybody's computers is our number one mission right now. Our mission is to make Second Life very accessible. But the immersive nature of the virtual world does require a certain level of computer performance.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What's second on your wish list?

Rosedale: Making it more usable. The user interface is still difficult, we need to make that better. Beyond that, what want to make it possible to browse the Web perfectly from within Second Life.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is the user base changing? The option for voice chat, for example, seems to clash with many of the early uses that had to do with adopting a different identity.

Rosedale: People do use it more seriously nowadays. But on 25 percent of the land area, people have decided to turn off the voice option. And I think that's great. There's room for both types of applications. New media always move through a phase of initial use for novelty and play, and then they graduate to other uses like collaboration, education and business. This happened with television, with the Web and I think it will happen here. But I don't want any of the historical uses to go away, and I don't think they will.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the early Web wasn't owned by a single company...

Rosedale: We have to profoundly open up the system. We've opened up the client, and we'll continue to open up formats, protocols, standards, and code. I think we can serve a function as a company that coordinates the activities of many companies and individuals within this system and by doing that allow Second Life to grow by two or three orders of magnitude. Ultimately, the use of virtual worlds will be greater than the use of the Web. Because the Web imposes a language barrier that a virtual world -- once it's perfect -- will not impose. I'll be able to travel to Tokyo in Second Life -- I'll never be able to travel to Tokyo on the Web.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You might be able to travel to Tokyo in Google Earth before you can in Second Life though.

Rosedale: That's right. But the question is: What are you going to do when you get there? If you want a cultural and physical simulation of a place, you need the appropriate features and an economy. In Second Life, people build content because they're paid to, either by love or by money. Someone has to own the buildings -- if Google owns them, it's going to be a desert.

Virtual Worlds Inspiring A Push For Electronic Currency

ZDNet has an interesting report from a Gartner Symposium last November, where it was discussed that virtual worlds are actually driving overall e-commerce growth - and blogged about by Payment Guy before (just re-emphasizing this point!). Gartner VP Andy Kyte led the discussion, and noted that the cost of processing cash in Asian countries like Singapore is ever on the rise, sometimes tacking up to five percent more onto the cost of goods simply to fund those processing and payment systems.
A solution in this case is electronic currency, and virtual economies have been following this model for some time. Singapore actually decided to create its own electronic currency, to be called Singapore Electronic Legal Tender (Selt), and according to Kyte, this will go live by the end of 2008. And like the microtransactions trend in online gaming that originated in Asia before finding broader success globally, the adoption of Selt could have big implications for the rest of the world, too. "Lots of countries in the world are looking very, very closely at what is happening in Singapore," said Kyte. The general success of concepts like Second Life's Linden Dollar are helping demonstrate that electronic currency is possible, thereby driving the push for electronic currency adoption, said Kyte -- though he notes that not all the kinks have been worked out, such as the security and taxation issues that surround online currencies. But once these are worked out, said Kyte, "it will only be a matter of convincing consumers of the technology." Kyte expects many further ideas to solidify out of the current climate of new ideas and experimentation in the virtual worlds space, and notes that banks might lose out unless they find a way to get in step with the trend.

Here Come The Germans! (With a Second Life Knock-off...)

"Metaversum’s second product, the virtual world Twinity, will be launched soon. Twinity is a virtual world that is closely entangled with the real world. Twinity will enhance your real life instead of helping you escape from it. Twinity mashes up the real with the virtual world. In Twinity you can create your virtual self, meet real people and make new friends. Create your own apartment or build your dream home anywhere in the world. Drop in on your friends and go out and have fun!" "Closely entangled with the real world"... "mashes up the real with the virtual" ... They sound like Californians to me. And they are hiring! http://www.metaversum.com/company.php

Nortel: Virtual worlds to replace the office

Smart Canadian Nortel is 100% right - a vision of virtual work's future from Nortel:
The company believes Web 2.0 tech and virtual worlds will eventually make work something that is done, rather than somewhere people go to. Nortel Networks is looking to the next generation of employees to shape the workplace of tomorrow, and high on its agenda is exploring the role of Web 2.0 technologies and virtual worlds such as Linden Lab's Second Life. Nortel enterprise chief technology officer Phil Edholm told ZDNet.co.uk sister site silicon.com: "A lot of businesses have set up a virtual presence [in Second Life] and what they find is: what's the point?" "But, if in fact I could walk up to the virtual support desk and meet the avatar of the virtual support person which would then find somebody in the company that has the right skills to actually help me, that could become of great value," Edholm continued. Edholm said Nortel has been doing some "demos and trials" with Second Life and contact-centre applications. It has also been working with universities and students to learn how they use communications technology, with the aim of understanding how to translate the likes of thriving online social networks, such as Facebook, into a business environment.

All this is with a view to then building these next-generation functions into the company's products. Edholm said: "If you get these students coming out of university and they're used to doing their homework with their friends on IM, they're used to Facebook, they're used to virtual worlds — how do you recreate that environment in the work world?" Edholm said he believes the answer isn't so much about a workplace of the future, but rather about the potential of "true mobile broadband" offered by future 4G networks to mean work becomes thought of as something that is done, not necessarily a place you go to. Eventually, Edholm predicted, bandwidth across different types of networks will converge so that the type of network being used does not impact on the experience of the user, be it Wi-Fi, cellular or wired. This prediction has been dubbed "Edholm's Law". In an enterprise context, says Edholm, this would mean "application transparency", or "that all of a sudden, regardless of where I am, I can have the same applications, whether I'm in a nomadic location or not". Edholm told silicon.com: "In the enterprise world, the big reason [or] driver why we'll go to WiMax is this application transparency... and that has huge impact on business because, all of a sudden, where you do business is no longer constrained."
However, while being able to push work beyond the four walls of the office will offer enterprises new — and potentially lucrative — opportunities for doing business, it does present other challenges. As Edholm pointed out: "As people become less and less tethered to a location, finding the right person at the right time to do a business function is going to become critical." Bringing communications and applications together to give an intelligent view — including factors such as a person's availability, location and even their velocity — of the status of a disparate workforce will therefore be increasingly important. For instance, Edholm pointed out, if you're driving a car, you probably don't want to get a video call. Edholm added: "Information and interaction are coming together, and it's not going to be information technology — it's going to be information and interaction technology in a few years." Gazing a little closer into the future, the next generation of wireless LAN technology — 802.11n — may be able to cut dependency on cables within buildings. Edholm said: "We think we can actually generate by 2010/11, the capacity of building buildings without wires, which means, regardless of where you are within the building, you're going to get the same experience." Edholm added: "The interesting question is when does the 4G network provide you with the same experience virtually everywhere?" And that's a question of infrastructure investment, which is, of course, the biggest challenge. here; http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39292545,00.htm

A Parent on Webkinz

"(By the way, the coolest thing about this is that she can call up her friends and meet them online with their Webkinz®! She knows it's them because she knows their pets' names. There is no personal information anywhere on the site, and with the structured 'chat' format, there's no way anyone can ask for it or give it.) Kids can easily spend hours getting lost in this world, redecorating their room, adding on to their room, playing in the arcade, even visiting the doctor when the pet 'feels sick.' As a parent, I feel pretty good about allowing my kids to use their computer time (30 minutes a day max.) on Webkinz®. I may shake my head at the waste of it all, but the bottom line is, they're occupied, they're communicating, learning about science, math, etc. at some of the arcade games, learning that things cost money ... even virtual things, and most of all, they're safe." www.petoskeynews.com

Kim Pallister on Personalized Games

This is a Gamasutra article where Kim explores personalizing an object ala Build a Bear with personalized gaming in a virtual kiddie world; "My thinking was that if Webkinz is more compelling than Club Penguin because of the plush toy that acts as a physical connection to the experience (not to mention moving the financial transaction back to a parentally-comfortable retail channel); then Build-A-Bear is more compelling because the plush toy is now personalized. Of course the thing with good ideas is that other people have the same ones – usually before I do! So it is in this case, as lo and behold, there already exists a BuildABearVille. Now the key point is this: With Webkinz, you enter your product code, and the online animal matches the physical product you bought at the store - which for kids, is COOL. With BuildABear, you enter a unique ID number off the birth certificate, and you get an online version that is identical to your one-of-a-kind, custom bear that you built. Of course the "one of a kind" bear is only one of given number of permutations of options, but still, to a kid, this is MAGIC!"

[Kim Pallister is Content Director for Intel’s Visual Computing Group. He recently re-joined Intel after a few years at Microsoft working on casual games for MSN and Xbox Live Arcade. He’s been around the game industry for 15 years. When not migrating between large technology companies in the Pacific Northwest, he finds time to blog at www.kimpallister.com - from which this article was adapted and expanded - and at www.vgvc.net.]

PBS Begins Testing Subscription-based, Ad-free Virtual World Aimed At Toddlers

PBS has entered the childrens’ virtual world space with its own subscription-based “online neighborhood.” Dubbed PBS Kids Play, the site is ad-free and is aimed at ages 3 to 6. It’s currently in beta. PBS is offering free trials and claims to offer a pre-school and kindergarten curriculum along with PBS characters such as Curious George and Bob the Builder. The free trails will end before spring. Subscription fees are $9.95 a month, or $79 a year, while local PBS TV affiliates will be able to provide discounts or free access for donors, USAT reports. While charging for such web services are a new thing for PBS, which doesn’t run traditional ads on its network, it does feature messages from “sponsors.” PaymentGuy thinks I’d say it’s not much of a virtual worlds play. It’s just a portal to a collection of educational mini-games with, it seems, no interaction between users. From the USAT article: “In development since 2006, Kids Play! is not a social networking site. There’s ‘no chat between kids or to kids,’ says Benjamin Grimley, PBS’ senior director of interactive businesses. “=’Everything we’re doing is centered on safety.’”

Ex-Linden Lab CTO Ondrejka Reviews Raph Koster's MetaPlace

"Cory Ondrejka, who was a cofounder of Linden Lab, makers of Second Life, and is now a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, in Annenberg, has been testing Metaplace's system in its early stages. He says that Metaplace is betting that the Web will continue to evolve increasingly better capabilities for real-time interaction, such as 3-D capabilities for Flash, that will allow it to continue improving its system. At heart, Ondrejka says, Metaplace is a lightweight protocol for lightweight communication through the Web, and one of the ways that he sees designers using Metaplace is as a way of letting users experience each other's presence online. "Anything that causes the two of us to know we're both on the Web together makes the Web a better place," Ondrejka says. "A big part of what makes interaction in virtual worlds so compelling compared to the Web is the fact that we both know we're there. It isn't the same as leaving bread crumbs on a blog to show that you were there." Ondrejka says that at this point, Metaplace gives users far simpler capabilities than those in worlds like Second Life. "But simple doesn't mean bad," he notes. "Simple can mean approachable." While Ondrejka says that Second Life gives users far more design power, he also says that Metaplace could allow a great deal of flexibility: Metaplace worlds can be anywhere on the Web, or even within Second Life." http://tech1207.blogspot.com/2008/01/creating-web-of-worlds.html

Forrester on "Marketing On Second Life: Think $100K Plus Per Year"

January 9, 2008
Marketing On Second Life: Think $100K Plus Per Year
A Second Life For Marketers?
by Brian Haven, Jaap Favier
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
"Many firms have purchased an island in Second Life and built a venue to engage a target audience, raise funds, test products, educate users, or sell virtual or digital goods. High initial investments, short life cycles, and the need to keep a constant watch add up to tangible experiments with hard-to-measure returns." Forrester is doing SL no favors...

Create a Virtual Office With Qwaq

This seems very cool. But weird name ... And they are hirin', not firin'!"About Qwaq; Qwaq, Inc. is creating virtual spaces for the enterprise that enable collaboration in ways that weren’t possible before. Qwaq Forums, the company’s first product, is a secure virtual workspace application that significantly increases the productivity of distributed teams by bringing critical resources together in virtual places, as if they were in an actual physical location. A highly interactive and persistent environment, Qwaq Forums enables users to work, collaborate with others, and identify and solve problems."

Second Life: Euro reaches All-Time-High of over 400 Linden dollars per Euro

The continued weakness of the US dollar versus the Euro helped push the Euro higher versus the Linden Dollar as well: At 12 noon, the mid-price (i.e. the average of bid and ask prices) of the EUR/SLL cross on the euroSLEX pushed through resistance at 400 and reached 403.4. This is the highest level since euroSLEX opened december last year. The Swiss Franc also reached a new high at 248 Linden Dollars. "This means that Second Life gets cheaper for our customers, because they can get more Linden Dollars for their Euros" said Iliana Suppan, managing director of Virtual World Services GmbH, the company behind euroSLEX.

Mobilians International Partners With PaymentOne to Provide Phone-Based Payment Solution

Mobilians International, the online and mobile payments innovator, announced that it has signed an agreement with PaymentOne Corporation, one of the world's fastest growing online payment service providers (PSPs) and a leader in alternative payments, to provide PaymentOne’s PhoneBill™ payment service to Mobilians’ merchants. Through this new partnership, Mobilians International’s merchants can reach over 150 million U.S. consumers, providing them the option to conveniently charge digital goods and services to their existing broadband and landline phone accounts. “Mobilians is excited to offer this new payment offering to our merchants as we continue to expand our U.S. operations,” said Pragnesh Shah, president and chief executive officer of Mobilians International. “This represents the first phase in launching our payment platform in the U.S. and fully commercializes the core infrastructure of our alternative payments gateway.” “This unique partnership opens new doors for PaymentOne as we seek to expand our base of merchants using the PhoneBill™ product,” said Joe Lynam, chief executive officer and founder of PaymentOne. “Mobilians International, and its majority investor Mobilians Co. Ltd. of South Korea, bring proven success and expertise in phone-based alternative payments and merchant acquisition. This agreement represents opportunities for future partnerships to develop a global payment gateway alliance between our companies.”

An Intro to Neopets Premium

Some info about Neopets Premium: It's cheap. Only $8.00 a month! And less if you pay for it yearly. If you use a credit/debit card, it is conveniently deducted every month without you having to do anything. There is also a FREE 15 day trial. If you don't like it, just cancel by the time the trial is up. Canceling is easy...but who would want to? Every Friday, you will receive a FREE space faerie scratch card after you sign up. And it isn't like the other scratch cards, you'll ALWAYS win. You also get 1000 neopoints for every month that you keep the service. You can also refer people to Neopets Premium to receive prizes such as neopoints, paint brushes, codestones, avatars, and many other amazing things.. You also get the Super Shop Wizard! If you like to buy things DIRT CHEAP, this is perfect for you. The SSW shows you the cheapest things on the site. For example, if you type in "White Paint Brush" the s.s. wizard will show you the cheapest ones on the entire website, instead of searching through parts of the site, like the traditional shop wizard does. These are not the only cool things you get with Premium, there are many more... of course!

Want to Launch a Mobile Virtual World?

MoiPal's CEO Joakim Achren tells you how and why you should! www.worldsinmotion.biz/2007/10/virtual_worlds_conference_iron.php "It seems that mobile connectivity to virtual worlds is right on the horizon. But what about a virtual world actually self-contained in a mobile phone? At the 2007 Virtual Worlds Conference, Ironstar Helsinki CEO Joakim Achren demonstrated and discussed MoiPal, his company's mobile virtual world that works on basic Java handsets. "The idea was like, your friend in the phone," Achren said. "It’s an avatar that lives in your cellphone." The mobile pal is controlled like a Sim, or a Tamagotchi. Achren explained that he got the idea from thinking of how adults have facebook and kids and 'tweens have Club Penguin -- but what about teens? "They are usually not at home, but they always have a mobile phone with them," Achren noted. "And they usually have the best phones. It is a means of self-expression, like ringtones. But self expression should be more than just ringtones." Achren did say that, as it happens only during idle time, gaming and social networking on a mobile platform still have to integrate with a website, especially since mobile phones have such restrictive memory. "Concentrate on using the mobile to do something simple and realistic," he advised. "You can’t just take Second Life and put it on a mobile -- except for Japan, maybe,” he joked. “It has to be a personality extension... and it has to be free,” Achren continued, noting it's not generally a good idea to aim a subscription-based service to kids, since they probably won't even try it. Incentivizing free content is a much better method, he said. Moreover, there are a lot of possibilities for the mobile platform. Achren highlights simple 2 or 3-dimensional content items that can be created on a phone without challenging the memory restrictions. There's also social networking. "You’ve seen Facebook on a mobile. It works pretty well," Achren said. “Mobile gaming is here to stay, so why not think of mobile when it comes to virtual worlds?” He added.
Successful apps have to be client apps. For Western countries the handsets really allow for just text, but Java handsets can be adopted by just about all phones. Achren noted that Flash is becoming more prevalent on handsets, so it may be handy in the future, but for now, "Java is the way to go," especially since Java code translates easily between a mobile phone and a PC. It also needs to use very little wireless data -- less than 1 megabyte, according to Achren. "It can't be a 100 dollar phone bill every month," he noted. Achren described his company's own experience. In 2005, they had developed their own mobile game engine, and they wanted to do something special with it. The pet aspect was a good fit, because it was simple -- you feed the avatar and play games with it, without the need for a network connection. Users can stream their stats to the server, but it's not required. There are also elements of adventure gaming involved. "That’s how we thought of the world, a world with a lot of things to do, not just standing around and talking.” So MoiPal incorporated missions, pre-scripted events, and a narrative.
Most notably, MoiPal is persistent. "Even when you’re sleeping, your pal is doing something," Achren says. The avatar can travel on its own to a virtual city, and upon returning will report to the user about its adventures. "When you wake up in the morning, on the bus you can see what your pal has done and send him or her to do something else while you’re at school," Achren explains.
The website acts as an extension of the world. "It gives you a godlike view of what's happening," Achren explains. Through the website, users can see what others are doing with their pals, their decorations, clothing choices and other game elements. There's even a version of the mobile game available on the website in a pop-up window, for those users who can't play the game on their phones. The content is monetized directly, through virtual goods that can be obtained through a variety of payment options like SMS, PayPal or a credit card. Users can buy gaming extensions, decorative items and other content bonuses that provide better equipment and resources. There are also indirect monetization models, like sponsorships, advertising and product placement. "Ringtones and wallpapers are old news," Achren says. "Having brands give items and missions is a better incentive."

Is This Blog Useful?

The average blog has one reader, or so I’m told (I’d heard earlier it was about 7). So that means I have about 30 times the normal daily blog traffic! WOW! Anyway, professional journalists seem threatened by the blogosphere, perhaps for good reason. Given that Technorati tracks 112.5 million blogs right now, it’s a mathematical certainty that most are either crap, or niche. I have two blogs. This one and a silly gaming one I am working on. But here’s the great thing about blogging: Who cares if they are popular? Google, Technorati and other search engines have it set up so that these irrelevant blogs are, well, irrelevant. They are unlikely to show up in many search results, be cited by a journalist, or change anyone’s life. But if you’re buying a new cell phone and not checking enGadget, you’re nuts. Blogs are just websites, people, and like all types of websites, they vary in value. Finally, there are not enough corporate interests out there to crank out all the niche information people are searching for, and blogs do that. Blogs are one of the main reasons that you can find pretty much anything on Google. If you don’t get that, well, I can’t help you. Q, Is this blog useful Dear Reader?

Virtual Worlds & Toys

Barbie (barbiegirl + mp3 player), Bratz (be-bratz + doll/USB key), Littlest Pet Shop (VW + stuffed animal code), Webkinz (VW + stuffed animal code), Bella Sera (VW + trading cards), Zibbies (VW + stuffed animal code), Shining Stars (VW + stuffed animal code), Build-A-Bear (VW + stuffed animal code), myepet (bratz pets + stuffed animal code), Moshi Monster (VW + cell phone accessory), Ty Girls (Stuffed Doll + Code), etc…Of that group, only Barbiegirl, Buildabearville, Bella Sera and Moshi Monsters allow you to roam as a free member w/o buying the product yet.

Moshi Monster's GamePlan

Moshi Monsters, a UK based social networking site aimed at children between the ages of 7 and 12 years old, might become Club Penguins biggest competitor “Tweens” can adopt and customize their very own pet monsters. The more they play with their monsters, the “happier” the monsters will be. At the same time playing games on the site earns points, which can be used to buy items for the pet monster. Parents might like this site, because the games and puzzles “created” by the monster teach vocabulary, math and logic. But players can also interact with each other, typing in speech bubbles and leave messages for one another. There is no charge, since the companies hopes to successfully sell Mosh Monster merchandise.

In a twist on the Webkinz model -- pairing a password-tagged toy with an online world -- Moshi Monsters (www.moshimonsters .com) are a family of six monsters that live in a light-up cell phone charm and, virtually, in an online home you create.
The charms, called MoPods, were marketed last year in Britain. They contain a receiver that detects the faint signal emitted when cell phones send or receive messages, even when the ringer is silenced. They respond with a 15-second burst of LED fireworks, while the monster spins inside the plastic bubble.
This feature works only with GSM phones like those used on the AT&T and T-Mobile networks, and miscues are frequent -- a test unit was also activated by microwave ovens and walkie-talkies. The charms are $10 from Firebox.com and other retailers.
The companion Web site offers limited content, but the puzzles, which need to be solved so you can feed your monster or buy furniture, have a welcome educational twist to them. Teachers may also find an unexpected use for the MoPods: monitoring illicit in-class cell phone use. from Monsters mesh with phone BY WARREN BUCKLEITNER NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

Neoptes Does The Plush Toy Thing ... "Who Isn't?"

People may talk about World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Lord of the Rings Online and Star Wars Galaxies, but flying under many hardcore gamers' radar is another MMO, one whose community is 100 million strong and still growing. Oh, and it's shedding, too. Neopets is going on 12 years of online play, and in February it will release its first plushie tie-in for kids: the Neopets Limited Edition Plushie Series. With a community of Neopet owners that numbers more than 100 million, we know you love your Neopets!

Forrester on Virtual Worlds for Work

January 7, 2008
Getting Real Work Done In Virtual Worlds
by Erica Driver, Paul Jackson
From the Forrester site
Virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, and more business-focused offerings are on the brink of becoming valuable work tools. Major companies and public-sector organizations — such as BP, IBM, Intel, and the US Army — are investing heavily in virtual world technologies. But it's still early, pioneering days. You've practically got to be a gamer to use most of these tools — setup can be arduous, navigating in a 3-D environment takes practice, and processing and bandwidth requirements remain high. But within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today. Information and knowledge management professionals should begin to investigate and experiment with virtual worlds. Use them to try to replicate the experience of working physically alongside others; allow people to work with and share digital 3-D models of physical or theoretical objects; and make remote training and counseling more realistic by incorporating nonverbal communication into same-time, different-place interactions.

Virtual worlds will soon be as important as Web to companies
Forrester says 3-D Internet will vastly improve collaboration and corporate training
January 9, 2008 from Computerworld
While virtual worlds like Second Life have come under fire for failing to provide enough value to businesses with established storefront operations, a new Forrester Research Inc. report argues that the 3-D Internet will be as important to companies in five years as the Web is today. The "Getting Work Done in Virtual Worlds" report released by the IT research firm this week concludes that executives should begin investigating and experimenting with virtual worlds soon because of their promise for remote collaboration, training and the ability to build and share 3-D models. The report said that today's collaboration tools offer far more limited benefits to companies. For example, the inability to see the gestures of fellow meeting goers causes problems for attendees in different offices, the report noted. In a virtual world, people can have their name, job title and business unit associated with an avatar that can attend meetings and have access to virtual buildings, rooms, equipment and people, Forrester said. The avatar is controlled by information in an enterprise directory and access control system, it said.

"You can easily direct your avatar to express gestures and emotions … plus you can leave behind real-world unpleasantness such as the poor heat in your cubicle while your next door neighbor is burning or the loud guy talking the phone next to you," according to the report. "[In meetings] you always know who is talking and who's anxious to jump into conversation because they are waving their hand or jumping up and down in the corner of the room. "In a virtual meeting room, you can see who is present, and more importantly, who is multi-tasking, who has raised a hand or who has been away from their keyboard so long that their avatar has fallen asleep," the report said.

Sun's Virtual World "Project Wonderland"

Excellent look at Sun's Virtual World by CIO Magazine;
Inside Sun's Virtual World for Internal Collaboration - C.G. Lynch, CIO January 11, 2008 "During the past couple of years, virtual worlds have received a lot of media attention, especially Second Life, the virtual environment created by Linden Lab that 1.3 million people actively use to play games, do business and live alter egos via their avatar stand-ins. But when Sun Microsystems thought about how it could use a virtual world to improve internal collaboration and facilitate social interactions among its 33,000 employees, spread out across offices around the world and in numerous home telecommuting sites, it began to think about building its own virtual world behind the firewall. Thus, Project Wonderland was born. Started about a year ago as a collaborative effort between Sun and the open-source community, Wonderland is a virtual, 3-D website that allows people to build virtual worlds based on Java programming. Sun’s internal world, MPK20, was built on this platform and started in June 2007. The name stems from the company’s Menlo Park, Calif., corporate campus, which has 19 buildings (MPK1 to MPK19), making MPK20 the virtual world extension. While the group building and developing MPK20 spends the most time in it, Sun hopes to start bringing in more user groups in the coming months. CIO.com’s C.G. Lynch visited Sun’s labs in Burlington, Mass., to see MPK20 for his own eyes and talked with Nicole Yankelovich, who works as the primary investigator at the company’s collaborative environments group.

CIO.com: What led Sun to start building a virtual world for its employees? Was there a tipping point that spurred it?

Nicole Yankelovich: About a year ago, we informally did a study by interviewing a bunch of our employees who work from home. Meanwhile, we tracked the statistics of how many people badge into our facilities each day. We found that many people worked from home full time, and some at least part time. This isn’t bad. [Without the commute] they often work longer hours and are very productive. Meanwhile, we also have a lot of people traveling to visit with our customers.

In the end, what we found was on any given day, more than half of our employees are working remotely. There are a lot of good benefits of a distributed workforce, but there are also some drawbacks. What they’re missing is the social interaction. We know, from business literature, that social interaction is very key to good business outcomes. You need to be able to trust people in order to get work done effectively or negotiate in business. Virtual worlds seemed like a great opportunity to address this problem.

What makes virtual worlds more compelling for that social interaction than existing technologies, such as phone and video conference?

Up until now, Sun, like most companies, has used audio conferencing. We’ve used a little bit of video conferencing too, but a lot people working at home don’t have video because that’s their personal space. So we mostly use audio conferences. The problem with this is we’re not getting the social interaction and the informal brainstorming you’d get in person. We figured [we] can create a virtual world where you can begin to re-create that social interaction, and then we could really create a wonderful place to bounce ideas off each other, both as a group or just between two people.

The consumer virtual worlds, like Second Life, have seen pretty significant user adoption. With that comes the need to scale. When you think about Sun's virtual world and getting thousands of employees on it, how will you plan for scale?

Second Life and other online games use this process called sharding. This means pieces of the virtual world are hosted on specific servers. So servers will have their capacity, and when it fills up, it fills up. For example, if a bunch of people decide to visit an island in Second Life, and that island begins to fill up with avatars, so does the server assigned to it. Meanwhile, you have all of these other unused servers. This is a huge problem in almost all the multiplayer games.

So at Sun we decided we’d use Darkstar, our game server. It’s a scalable platform that doesn’t do sharding. Instead, the [virtual world] developers write their applications as if they’re on one giant server. Then the underpinnings of the Darkstar servers allocate resources as they're needed. If one server starts to fill up and get near capacity, it goes to another one.

When will something like this become available for large enterprises?

Right now, Project Wonderland is open source and people are free to use it. But this whole project has been more popular with people initially than we thought it might be. So we have started to work with business development to see what Sun could do for customers. Maybe we could provide hosted services, or even manage the service (and server) for them behind the firewall. There are a lot of different models to explore. But for right now, we want to get more people using it here internally.
From www.cio.com

USB Pay - Cool!

Shinhan Card rolled out Korea’s first ever USB type credit card on December 27. The USB credit card provides the online and contactless payment function and works the post-paid transportation card as well. The built-in IC chip includes the public authorization and the internet credit payment programs. During the online payment, users do not need to insert the credit card number. Rather, they can pay by connecting the USB to the slot. At the franchise stores with the IC card reader, it enables the no-touch payment. The card also supports the information inquiry and the automatic log-in service using the public authorization and the built-in internet payment programs. However, it is limited for users to delete or save data so that the USB itself cannot be used as a portable storage device. Shinhan Card plans to issue the existing plastic credit card, Shinhan Love Card, as well until the IC chip readers become popular among the franchise stores. The company said, “It provides the online and contactless payment functions. And the card itself can be an accessory as well. We think those young customers familiar with the online and mobile payment will prefer the USB type credit card.”

California Lawyers on Virtual World Law

California Lawyer Magazine has been putting together a piece on law in virtual worlds for a little while, including some research at Virtual Worlds Fall 2007. It's a good rundown on a lot of the legal and government activities in virtual worlds and offers a lot of background for lawyers not already involved in virtual worlds as well as an exhortation to get involved. Or, as Beth Simone Noveck, a professor at New York Law School, put it "People are appearing with new visual identities and likenesses, trademarked brands are appearing in virtual shop windows, and ownership of avatars [is] being settled in divorce and probate proceedings. The law is having to grapple with questions that are similar to, but not all the same as, what we've confronted in two-dimensional cyberspace." Read the full article here http://californialawyermagazine.com/story.cfm?eid=890855&evid=1]

Gaia Trawls Bebo

Gaia Online received a burst of funding from Time Warner after an investment from Sony just last month. Both Sony and Time Warner's Warner Bros. have also signed deals to distribute their film catalogs to Gaia's 3 million monthly users. Apparently a large part of those users are coming from social networking site Bebo, which claims 40 million users. Gaia launched its Gaia OMG app on Bebo last month. The social networking app, which allows basic functionality in the virtual world has gone from Gaia's 430th largest traffic referrer to in the virtual world's top 10.

Project Outback Kaput

Outback Online, the virtual world project from Yoick, is finished according to a post on Yoick CEO Rand Leeb-du Toit's blog where he mentioned "the demise of the virtual world I was working on." In February it was reported on the stealth mode virtual world based on peer-to-peer technology and aimed at teenagers. Then in May sources reported that Warb, who had been providing the front end, would be splitting off to go in its own direction, now focusing on user-created virtual worlds. At that time we were told by sources close to the company that it was having trouble raising funding. "Partly because of the dynamic nature of the space…there have been some fundamental shifts over the Summer of Facebook, hugely positive trends that have validated my decision not to continue with Project Outback," explained Leeb-du Toit.

Virtual World Payments "Paynova and Entropia Expand Cooperation"

Paynova, an Internet payment service, has been in Entropia since 2004, allowing users to use Paynova both in the virtual world and the real world. Now Paynova is expanding in Entropia to allow users more payment options, including debit card, Internet bank and a number of local payment methods in Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany. Entropia will also implement Paynova's one2one service, which allows users to use the same transaction service for subscriptions or microtransactions. "We have worked hard on preparing our new offer for online gaming. The payment service has only been in place a short time, and it is, therefore, particularly valuable to be able to implement it fully with a significant player within the segment. We view the expanded cooperation with MindArk as proof of the competitiveness of our new payment service and as an important basis for continued success in the growing online gaming segment," said Karl Alberts, Marketing Manager at Paynova.

Gartner's Take on Virtual Worlds and Payments

"All consumers pay between three to five percent more on goods purely to fund payment systems," said Gartner vice president Andy Kyte at the Gartner Symposium last week.
This is not only due to the money that credit and debit card systems cost retailers, it also comes from processing the cash in everyone's pockets. "Cash processing is unbelievably expensive," said Kyte. Singapore long ago decided it was too expensive to process cash, according to Kyte. In 1998, the Board of Commissioners of Currency in Singapore proposed to create an electronic currency — Singapore Electronic Legal Tender (Selt) — which Kyte said will go live at the end of next year. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's 2002 publication The Future of Money, Selt will be issued in Singaporean dollars. Banks could then draw Selt from the Board of Commissioners of Currency and load it onto their computers.

Any person requiring money could then draw electronic funds onto devices including mobile phones or smartcards. Last year, Singapore unveiled a standard — Contactless e-Purse Application (Cepas) — which allows merchants to only have one system to deal with multiple cards. The implications for the rest of the world are huge, said Kyte: "Lots of countries in the world are looking very, very closely at what is happening in Singapore." E-payments also cost both shoppers and retailers money, Kyte said, but the amounts are typically lower than existing payment systems. The e-payment push is not only coming from the price of payment processing: virtual worlds are contributing to the drive to use electronic currencies, such as Second Life's Linden Dollar, with some unwanted consequences. Virtual worlds with e-currencies create phenomenal opportunities for money laundering and tax evasion, said Kyte. "Most of the issues [of electronic money] are around the idea of security," said Kyte. Once this is worked out, it will only be a matter of convincing consumers of the technology. Consumers are wary of currencies like Linden Dollars because they are unsure of their permanence, Kyte said. He likened the current e-money situation to a "primal soup" — a lot of ideas floating around that will eventually consolidate into the type of services consumers want to use. Banks, he said, are likely to be the losers unless they jump on the trend. "Smart banks will buy into it and overwhelm," he said, advising banks to "go and get a few teenagers" and run a research project.

Smart2Pay

Smart2PayTM is a Payment Service Provider specializing in internet payments since 2002. They have an HQ in Amsterdam and strategic alliances with partners in the US, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Romania and Germany. Good source of state of the art payment solutions for internet merchants.

Telekurs

Good swiss know-how for payment processing.

Ogone's Payment Network

This Belgian company has an excellent system and network.

Just Jealous?

Valleywag Duudes are at it again with their constant unfair SL-bashing. While admittedly hilarious, Paymentguy cannot wonder if these Bloggers at "Silicon Valley's Gossip Tech Rag" are just plain jealous. Even San Francisco's mayor Gavin Newsom raves about SL and how it mirrors his home city; "Gavin Newsom, San Francisco's freshly reelected god-mayor, descended into the bowels of Second Life for a quaint fireside chat with Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab. What lofty matters could a city mayor and the chieftain of a seamy virtual world possibly have to discuss? Why, the parallels between the "two famously diverse and tech-savvy communities with global profiles," of course. As Newsom said during their discourse, "We're all geeks." But the comparisons don't stop there. San Francisco is exactly like Second Life.

A surfeit of self-expression: San Francisco may not have furries actively roaming its streets, but you'd be hard pressed to find another community so accepting of trannies, facial piercings, fauxhawks, and assless chaps. Oh wait -- this June, San Francisco will have furries actively roaming its streets. See? Just like Second Life.

Toleration for public sex: Second Life has always been plagued by a seedy, fornicating underbelly. San Franciscans simply need visit SoMa.

City of lost souls: Anyone who visits San Francisco's Civic Center has witnessed the crazies, drug addicts, alcoholics and other afflicted. On Second Life, they just don't stink.

Statistical self-delusion: San Franciscans believe they're the center of the universe, though the city they live in isn't even the largest in the Bay Area. The same can be said of Second Lifers, who can't believe that the other 99.7 percent of the world doesn't want to join their party.

A plague of wantrepreneurs: When Anshe Chung became the first Second Life millionaire, she started a gold rush, though one mostly without the gold. People have flocked to the virtual world in the hopes of striking it rich, just as countless misguided startuppers race to South Park in hopes of running into a venture capitalist.

A ghost town much of the time: With a population of 744,000, it's hard to argue that San Francisco is a big empty, but if you've tried to find a restaurant open after 10 p.m., you might start to believe it. Much like Second Life, whose residents are all too fleeting in their visits.

A sense of impending doom: There's no escaping it. Some day all those Second Lifers will wake up from their bad dream and realize the whole experience is just some terrible pyramid scheme. It will crumble into ruin -- just like San Francisco after the Big One strikes. http://valleywag.com/342845/san-francisco-is-just-like-second-life

Pretty Crap?

SL Brand presence "pretty crap"? The brand guys at the Blake Project Blog think so; "It all sounds pretty amazing, until you visit Second Life. Having spent last weekend walking around its virtual universe, I have to report that the whole thing is pretty crap - a bit like Milton Keynes with a very bad hangover. The branded locations that sounded so impressive in the pages of BusinessWeek are very basic and virtually devoid of visitors. Despite Second Life's bold claims of 8m residents, the limited server space means that locations can handle only 70 avatars at a time. Once you leave the congested entry portal, however, this is hardly a problem as most of the site is eerily quiet and deserted. I grew so bored and lonely in Second Life that I resorted to removing my trousers and shouting at the occasional avatars that passed by in a desperate attempt to make contact." www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2008/01/second-guessing.html

Second Life Cable Network to Broadcast A Panel on Financial Policy Changes in Second Life

SLCN.TV will provide a live broadcast of a panel discussion on the recent changes to the financial services policy in Second Life on January 10, 2007 from 11am to 12 pm SLT. The panel discussion is a special Metanomics presentation to be hosted by Professor Robert Bloomfield, of Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management. According to Bloomfield, "Many people anticipated that Linden Lab would eventually crack down on unregulated financial services in Second Life. However, the financial community was clearly taken by surprise today, when Linden announced that they were banning all banking activity, absent evidence that the financial institution was submitting to real-world regulation from an appropriate body."
"The announcement seems sure to eliminate virtually every bank currently operating in Second Life. Already, banks are experiencing runs, stock prices are falling and some land has been seen listed at fire-sale prices. However, several questions remain. It isn't clear whether this banking crisis will affect the Second Life economy, or the experiences of users who have found the financial sector of Second Life to be a source of interest and entertainment (if not profit). It also isn't clear how the policy affects the dozens of firms that issue equity securities on exchanges (all of which are tied to banks)", says Bloomfield. Bloomfield says that those tuning into this Metanomics session will get a better insight into the history behind this change in policy, and its likely short- and long-term implications. Current guests on the panel are:
• Travis Ristow, BCX
• Intlibber Brautigan, Ancapistan Capital Exchange
• Ben Duranske, Virtually Blind
Catch the live coverage exclusively on SLCN.TV

Chicago Tribune on Kiddie Virtual Worlds

"Toys increasingly tied to online worlds created for children to explore"; " A growing number of online tie-ins to toys such as Barbie, collectible trading card games and even stuffed animals are joining established kids-geared online communities to create what will soon become hundreds of social networks and virtual worlds for children. No one expects Web-enabled toys such as Webkinz stuffed animals or the online world devoted to Bratz dolls (Be-bratz.com) to completely supplant Lincoln Logs and Play-Doh. But in a relentlessly wired world, toymakers and those who specialize in kids' entertainment are finding children are already online and looking for virtual playscapes to explore. In a recent study, a senior analyst at consulting company eMarketer Inc. estimated that about 20 million U.S. children and teen Internet users will visit online virtual worlds at least once a month by 2011. Some of the most popular toy and game sites geared toward kids -- including Neopets.com, where kids can care for virtual pets, or the Antarctic-themed, Disney-owned ClubPenguin.com -- already have millions of players, and many more online communities such as these are on the way. Many toys manufactured by companies such as Mattel Inc. now routinely include an online component allowing kids to take their play online. Webkins and Barbie Girls toys, for instance, are playthings that include a large online component: Kids can buy virtual goods for their Webkinz or play dress-up with their Barbie Girls on a Web site.

4Kids Entertainment, the company behind the popular Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh franchises, is launching a collectible trading card game that will include a way for players to battle one another online. The game is based on a popular Saturday morning cartoon, "Chaotic," which runs on Fox affiliates. Eventually, kids will be able to chat with one another while playing with their trading cards online -- each purchased card has a unique code that can be entered on a Web site, chaoticgame.com, for free online play. Carlin West, executive vice president of acquisitions and development at 4Kids, said "Chaotic" has been in the works for three years and is the foundation for other online games and virtual worlds that will target young players. "Kids are spending more time online," West said. "Therefore entertainment truly has to migrate online if it's going to have any presence with children. If online play is essential, then toymakers have to adapt to that position." The trading card game and its online equivalent keep kids invested enough to tune in to the TV show, she said.
www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0101digital_toys_subjan01,1,4938536.story

Pokemon Guys to Start Virtual World

4Kids Entertainment, the company behind the popular Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh franchises, is launching a collectible trading card game that will include a way for players to battle one another online.

CIO Mag on Webkinz "Webkink Just Too Successful"

Good "Techmical Look" at Webkinz from CIO Mag and Bernard Golden; Every "Web 2.0" site dreads being too successful, and for Webkinz, that unhappy situation arrived December 26. Webkinz, if you're not familiar with them, are furry stuffed animals that have a Web 2.0 social media site that accompanies them. My kids are crazy for Webkinz, rifling all the local stores (and the San Jose Tech Museum) for them. Every Webkinz comes with a numbered tag. You enter the tag number at the Webkinz site and "adopt" your pet. By playing games, you earn KinzCash, with which you can buy stuff for your pet. There is a social media element to the site, in that you can interact with other people signed in by choosing from a number of available statements (e.g., "How are you today" and the like); limiting the interaction to Webkinz-provided statements precludes unacceptable language and the like. You can learn more about Webkinz at wikipedia. Wikepedia's entry on the little furry beasties seems to imply that Webkinz has passed its popularity peak, but, based on December 26, I'm not so sure. That's when my sons, eager to register their new pets, found the Webkinz site down. I think the site pooped out under the load of a zillion kids all wanting to get up and running with their new pet. I asked one of my sons to walk me through Webkinz world. It seems like you complete various tasks to earn money to decorate your pet's house and keep it fed, happy, and healthy. Frankly, it all seemed a bit too much like work for me to generate much enthusiasm for it. However, for kids of a certain age, Webkinz is catnip.

During the tour, one of the pages faulted and displayed an SQL error. I didn't get a chance to look at it in detail, but from a cursory look it sure seemed like a MySQL error. It certainly makes sense Webkinz world is open source-based. Open source powers most of the highly-scaled Web 2.0 offerings, since their businesses need significant scalability without increased software license fees every time they need to add new servers to keep up with the usage. Overall, I'd say Webkinz is a particularly brilliant offering. By tying participation to a physical good, the company can fund the technology without having to rely on ads, which many parents (myself included) find unacceptable. Certainly the company extracts a premium price for the animals, giving it better margins in a (forgive me) dog-eat-dog toy market. And using open source (assuming they do, which is a pretty safe bet) means their social site, which offers a more engaging experience than a mere stuffed animal, is affordable to build at scale.
http://advice.cio.com/bernard_golden/webkinz_scales_a_wall_of_little_users

Banks Banned in Second Life

Linden Lab has announced that virtual banking within Second Life is to be banned effective January 22 after receiving multiple complaints by Second Life residents scammed by bank operators. Banking and associated services have become popular in Second Life over the last two years, with many offering ponzi style interest schemes that usually sounded too good to be true. Ginko Financial was the best known failure amongst Second Life banks, owing 200 million Linden ($750,000) to depositors when it declared itself insolvent in August 2007. In a post on the Second Life blog, Ken Linden said that as well as not being able to provide protection to Second Life users with these banks running, their legality under law is also questionable. The decision is unlikely to affect virtual stock exchanges but may affect groups such as Second Life credit card provider Metacard, who also previously offered bank services as well. Second Life banks are experiencing a run on their funds as customers seek to get their money before the ban comes in place. Companies such as JT Financial have been inundated by customers wanting to know what is going on. Screen shot of the JT Financial crisis meeting below. Banking joins bestiality and gambling on the banned in Second Life list.

Related issues arose in a 1-1 between a Linden Exec and a Cornell Economics Professor where Linden repeatedly characterized SL as a software "service" or "product" and distanced SL from economic nomenclature; "Yoon dodged Bloomfield's questions about Linden Lab managing a monetary policy in-world by repeating his mantra about the metaphor being a distraction from Linden's business of offering a service to customers. Yoon likened Linden's business offering Second Life as “software as service” and drew parallels to both an Internet Service Provider offering e-mail services and a company like eBay offering a platform where customers can transact business amongst themselves. I found it fascinating that Ginsu dispenses with the usual metaphors like thinking of in-world activity as an 'economy,' Lindens as 'money,' or sims as 'land'....or anything that would interfere with his preferred metaphor of 'SL as product,' said Bloomfield after the panel. “This very pragmatic perspective does a nice job of making what seems novel and complex - World of Warcraft with real money? - seem familiar and straightforward (such as) E-bay and e-mail with great visuals.”

Bloomfield wondered what Yoon might be “throwing away” by eliminating the metaphors. He pointed to the fact that Second Life does have an economy and believes that Yoon should be thinking about “the supply and demand of product features that are traded freely among customers.” Regardless of Yoon's perspective, the “product” is still novel and complicated, Bloomfield said. At the start of the panel, Yoon admitted that he tends to see things in “black or white” terms and that his views do not always reflect the universally accepted views within Linden Lab. Said Yoon, "Give people what they want from a product perspective – Linden Lab has a responsibility and opportunity to satisfy user demand, to give them the product functionality they want.”" www.slnn.com/article/metanomics-ginsu-linden/

Here Come the Pandas! (In German)!

www.panfu.de And here they are on YOUTUBE www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlcCOuqjdpM
Their payment partner is a new Dutch processor www.adyen.com that has ex-BiBit people.

Mobile Virtual Worlds

Great blog post by HABBO Genius and Sulake Owner Sampo Karjalainen (aka Chief Creative Officer) at the Sulake Blog. Sampo, along with his HABBO partner Aappo Kyrola, is one of the true virtual world visionaries PaymentGuy ranks right up there with Philip Rosedale, Raph Koster, Howard Ganz and the Club Penguin Trio. From the post; "Tens of millions of people use virtual worlds on PCs. World of Warcraft, Habbo, Second Life, Club Penguin and other virtual worlds have made them mainstream online entertainment. And it doesn't stop there. Some analysts and experts believe virtual worlds to be the next major phase in the development of the Web. Gartner predicted in April: “By the end of 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a ‘second life’, but not necessarily in Second Life.” On the other hand, another future prediction is the rise of mobile Internet. Internet use is currently being detached from the PC environment and expanded to various mobile devices. In the crossroads of these trends is a vast uncharted territory: virtual worlds on mobile devices. And I have a tickling feeling that we'll see something interesting development in this field soon :) We at Sulake started thinking, designing and prototyping mobile Habbo Hotel already some years ago. In 2004 we developed two mobile Habbo prototypes, but the time wasn't right for a commercial product. It worked only on high-end phones that teens didn't have and data traffic costs for users were just too high...

WebKinz Mom Trashes Webkinz For Stuffed Ponies Wearinig Rhinestone Studded Jeans ...

From the Webkinz mom blog on the commercialization of kiddie worlds: "Of course, Web services are businesses, and many of them are very big businesses. I do not object to paid services, but I am very concerned about the rampant commercialism that is built into many entry-level Web activities for kids. My 8-year-old doesn't yet know that she is "supposed" to covet a flat-screen TV, but on Club Penguin, kids are taught that it's really cool to buy one for their avatar penguin's igloo. Webkinz has a virtual world/real world upsell strategy. You buy a stuffed animal that has an online counterpart who socializes in the online world. Then you are encouraged to buy KinzStyle outfits for your stuffed animal, and those outfits show up on your avatar as well. To get into the online KinzStyle shop, where you can buy virtual clothes with KinzCash, you have to have bought a real-world outfit for cold, hard cash. So the $15 stuffed animal turns into a major investment, and your little kid who wasn't worried about fashion turns into Paris Hilton. OK, that's over the top, but the concept of a stuffed pony wearing rhinestone-studded jeans, in real life or online, just about blows my mind."

UKash Partners With Vodafone

Really cool and useful service offered from UKash via Vodafone - mobile prepaid codes for cash... "Digital cash outfit Ukash is partnering with Vodafone to offer its debit and credit card alternative via mobile phones. Ukash is aimed at people who don't have credit or debit cards or do not want to use them online. Users purchase vouchers at retailers and then enter the unique and secure number at Web sites that accept Ukash. Through the Vodafone partnership customers can now purchase vouchers by visiting the Ukash Mobile Web page using their phone's Internet browser. The user is charged £11 for a £10 voucher, which is paid for by 'pre-pay' mobile phone credit. The customer then receives a SMS text message containing a 19 digit Ukash number which can be used to make payments on Web site and mobile Internet sites that accept the system. The service is powered by the AirPayment mobile platform from wireless Internet service provider Hybyte. Mark Chirnside, CEO, Ukash, says: "This new service makes getting Ukash even more convenient for mobile users, meaning they can get a voucher straight to their phone 24/7." www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=17826

Digital River Buys Netgiro

Netgiro is great so smart aquisition by Digital River. Good luck guys
http://corporate.digitalriver.com/store/driv/PressReleases/sectionName.company/subSectionName.newsEvents/pr.81408500

Avatar Rip-Off

David Talbot of MIT Technology Review (no that's not him in the pic ... but a RL person named Stephanie Roberts who got ripped off in SL) in "The Fleecing of the Avatars" discusses the mercenary world of ecommerce in SL and profiles the Ginko scandal: Ginko--operated by an avatar called Nicholas Portocarrero, whose real identity is not clear--persuaded hundreds of people to deposit their Linden dollars. The reasons for what happened next are murky, but the results were clear enough: the "bank" vanished, and depositors say their money did, too. In July 2007, residents began clustering around machines to try to recover their money after Ginko began restricting withdrawal amounts. Then Ginko announced that deposits were now in "Ginko perpetual bonds" rather than Linden dollars. Those bonds soon plunged in value, and in October, they ceased to exist. The reported losses may have totaled $700,000, according to Ben Duranske, a lawyer based in Idaho who writes a blog on virtual legal issues. Some Second Lifers have reported losing thousands of dollars in Ginko. Roberts is among the luckier ones: she says she lost only her $144 in savings. But the point isn't just that somebody other than Roberts ended up with her money. What may be most significant is that nothing happened to whoever may have taken it. Her money disappeared into the 3-D ether" http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19844/?a=f