News I’m Following (Virtual World edition)

Whyville Has an Older Sibling: Numedeon, the company behind the kids virtual world Whyville, has launched its first world aimed at grownups. Called SportsBlox, it caters to, as the name would suggest, sports fans of all flavors (and nationalities) who want to talk sports with other avatars. Numedeon has several new virtual worlds in the works, according to News.com, including one for older adults.

An Intelligent Virtual World? From Forbes comes word that the US government is funding a VW application “to let uncommunicative U.S. intelligence agencies interact with each other more efficiently and with more trust.” Yes, according to the report, agents and counter-terrorism officials may eventually use the technology to sit in a virtual meeting room and “have personal interactions in cyberspace.” The companies behind the application are IBM and Forterra Systems, a California startup. There’s even a way for secret agents to identify themselves using the same authentication they use to log on to their own computer networks. Weird that it would take a virtual world to get intelligence agencies to actually start talking to each other.

Second Life To Get a New Leader

Philip Rosedale, the brains behind Second Life, is stepping down as CEO of Linden Lab (Second Life’s parent company). It’s a move typical to a lot of tech companies — a founding CEO moves up to chairman to allow an exec with more operating experience to come in.

What I found interesting is that the company “has a very nice business that is a lot larger than virtually everybody thinks,” as current SL chairman (and investor) Mitch Kapor put it in The Wall Street Journal today. Since the virtual-world marketing idea didn’t pan out (at least not with traditional marketers) I’d love to know more.

News I’m Following

Some news tidbits I’m following:

Gaia Online gets $12mm venture round. Investors this time include Sony (a previous investor) and Time Warner. What intrigues me the most about Gaia these days is that the teen-oriented VW has been building its audience by using a widget on Bebo. Bebo members can sign on to Gaia and play a trimmed-down version of Gaia right from Bebo (via VentureBeat).

MTV extends its video syndication play. New artners include iMeem, Veoh and Dailymotion, joining existing partners AOL, Bebo, Joost, MSN and Comcast’s Fancast. MTV will handle ad sales, giving a cut of revenue to the video sites. And because MTV will allow its video clips to be widgetized, it will also gain revenue when its content is picked up by individuals and placed on their blogs, social network profile pages, etc. (via MediaPost)

Usage of video sites growing exponentially among young adults. According to a new Pew Internet & American Life Project survey (conducted in October-December 2007), 48% of US adult Internet users have ever visited a video site such as YouTube, up from 33% a year ago. 15% did so “yesterday” - i.e., the day before they were surveyed. That’s up from 8% a year ago.

Among people ages 18-29, 70% had ever visited a video site, up from 55% a year ago. And 30% said they had done so yesterday, double the 15% from a year ago.

As video proliferates across the Web (thanks to syndication deals such as MTV’s and the ease of spreading video virally by using widget technology) these figures will continue to rise.

Virtual Worlds for Kids “Exploding”

Now that the marketing community has firmly given the heave-ho to Second Life, is virtual world marketing dead?

Not a chance.

In fact, 2008 will see a ton of activity. With major media companies such as Disney, Viacom and Turner betting big bucks on virtual worlds for kids and young people, the market will continue to grow.

As Sibley Verbeck of Electric Sheep Co. told ClickZ, “The kid’s space is exploding.” Good for him, since his company’s SL business has foundered.

Virtual worlds operate at the sweet spot between gaming (hugely popular with children and tweens) and social networking (teens and young adults). They have the potential to draw huge audiences from both demographics.

Now, if only Webkinz would let my kid log in and register her new pet. Yesterday the site’s servers were down.