June 28, 2007
New world orders take shape online
Second Life is not the life for everyone. There are plenty of internet universes to inhabit and companies are beginning to market their products in other virtual worlds.
There.com, with nearly 1m members, average age 22, announced a partnership with Capitol Music Group today to bring its artists into specially created nightclubs in the virtual world.
Rap artist MIMS, Yellowcard, Korn, the Beastie Boys and Lily Allen will make appearances, answering fans’ questions and talking about tours and albums. Interactive kiosks, placed throughout There.com, will sell both real and virtual world merchandise.
This could bring in substantial revenues. A Virtual Goods Summit at Stanford University last week was told that people are spending more than $1.5bn a year on virtual items, with sites such as Habbo Hotel and China’s Tencent leading the way in revenues.
There.com’s business model is different from Second Life, which has been the subject of some negative articles recently about the corporate sector tiring of experimenting inside a fairly lawless environment and starting to pull out.
While Second Life has allowed itself to be a 3D canvas for third-party design firms to create islands and buildings for their corporate customers, There.com plays a more pro-active role with virtual-world designers to offer its clients a complete package.
“The [virtual world] pie is growing continually, it’s going to be interesting, we’ve so much further to go,” Michael Wilson, chief executive of There’s owner - Makena Techologies - told me.
“We are all for companies starting small and working their way up.”
This means going from in-world advertising and promotion to building a zone, a dedicated region and then a custom world.
MTV, the teen lifestyle channel, has already used There to create a virtual Laguna Beach, The Hills and Pimp My Ride, based on its TV programmes.
Other worlds are also getting in on the act. Millions of Us, a developer dedicated to Second Life until now, has announced it will partner with Gaia Online, a virtual world with more than 2m users per month, in order to offer integrated campaigns spanning worlds.
With so many of them out there, selling across different virtual geographies represents a new challenge for marketers.
