WeEveWorld Online
Alternative title: Wee’s in Space
What the heck! WeeWorld and Eve Online! Maybe they’ve been reading this post…
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KZero services:
Strategy
Business Planning
Marketing/Media
Product Development
Alternative title: Wee’s in Space
What the heck! WeeWorld and Eve Online! Maybe they’ve been reading this post…
.
KZero services:
Strategy
Business Planning
Marketing/Media
Product Development
A little while ago we started tracking brands in virtual worlds. Here’s our latest take on this activity – screenshots of brands and companies inside virtual worlds. Of course, Second Life plays a major role here, but we’ve now got some more recent examples from WeeWorld, Playstation Home, Football Superstars, Stardoll and a few more (and we’ll be adding in some more examples pretty soon). Click-away…
KZero services:
Strategy
Business Planning
Marketing/Media
Product Development
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KZero services:
Strategy
Business Planning
Marketing/Media
Product Development
In the first KZero post on Lifelogging, I indicated that in a way Lifelogging was a natural evolution of how we publish ‘personal information’.
The argument used is the first real mainstream form of persona data capture was (and is) blogging. People sitting down at their computer and writing a blog post (text and image based). From here came microblogging (Twitter). Short, near instant, short message text updates (with links of course). So, as this theory goes, Lifelogging is the next evolution of personal data publishing.
The pivotal aspect that drives the evolution theory is ‘Ease’. Ease of publishing .Blogging takes time. You think of a topic, sit down, write it, format the post and publish it. Microblogging is easier, simply because the message is shorter. So, using this argument, Lifelogging is an evolution using ease as the metric because you don’t think about what you’re publishing or capturing – you just do it (live your life) and it’s recorded.
However, there’s a second axis or consideration to take into account – the level of information captured or recorded. This is shown in the diagram right. As indicated, factoring ease and amount of data capture/creation shows it’s not strictly speaking an evolution.
As shown, ranking these three types of personal data on an ease basis has Lifelogging easiest, then microblogging and blogging. Whereas, on an ‘amount’ of data captured/created basis the order differs, with microblogging having the lowest amount of data, then blogging and then Lifelogging.
And, it’s the amount of data captured by Lifelogging and how we access it which will be a focus on upcoming KZero posts. Recording our lives is the easy part. How we interact and manage our data, well, that’s a whole other story.
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KZero services:
Strategy
Business Planning
Marketing/Media
Product Development
This is KZero entry number one about Lifelogging – and will definitely not be the last.
Over recent weeks I’ve noticed a surge in tweets and media articles about this concept and it’s one that’s been on our radar for a while. Time to start peeling back the layers and examining what Lifelogging is and how it will impact our lives in the future.
Lifelogging is essentially using technology to capture, record and store our lives, as we live them. These means the people we meet (what we see), the things we say and listen to (what we hear) and the places we visit (where we go). So far so good. Think of Lifelogging as a digital personal diary, without having to write it.
Pulling Lifelogging back to existing technologies and applications, in a straight-forward sense it’s simply the next evolution of ‘personal information’. First we had blogging, then micro-blogging (a la Twitter) and next up Lifelogging. The key difference here though is that ‘information’ captured by Lifelogging may not always neccessarily be published…..I’ll come back to this point in a later post.
So how is information captured?
This is the easy part (storage and access is for another time). It’s video cameras (for what we see), microphones (for what we say and hear) and mobile devices (for where we are). And it’s already happening. Here’s a link to a recent Business Week article on Lifelogging. And here’s the video…
So as a concept, Lifelogging as shown in the video, is a pretty straightforward idea. But, with most good ideas, it’s the applications and uses that are facilitated by the concept that creates the value.
But why, I hear you ask is Lifelogging being written about on the KZero blog. It’s not related to Virtual Worlds. Well, at least not at first thought. Pulling Augmented Reality into the discussion helps to position Lifelogging. AR is about using mobile devices to ‘add’ digital content into our personal experience. Inversely, Lifelogging is the inverse – it’s about using devices (a combination of mobile and recording) to ‘extract’ information – to record and store it. And that’s why Lifelogging is important in the content of the Immersive Internet.
That’s the initial overview done with. Welcome to Lifelogging. Time to move onto the juice…….
We’re excited about the growth in virtual worlds, very excited in fact. As we release our forecasts for the sector, perhaps it’s time to have a quick look back over a frantic few years…
In an unfortunate way, the global credit crunch got in the way a little (the understatement of the year – not just for VWs of course). Late 2006 was the start of things. Sure, worlds like Habbo, There and Second Life were around pre-2006, but it wasn’t until brands started moving into SL that media awareness grew and, of course, users began to notice the metaverse.
Without a doubt, 2007 was the year of Second Life, with over 100 brands setting up islands. This created major attention, good and bad. And nevertheless, while No Brand is and Island, this marketing surge took virtual worlds mainstream. Linden Lab has a lot to be thanked for – Virtual Worlds were on the map in 2007. Additionally, we can’t forget about the Disney acquisition of Club Penguin – the catalyst for Kids, Tweens and Teens (KT&T) related business plans to pop up at an astonishing rate, ‘Chasing the Penguin’ as we call it.
2008? This was growth across many segments. Mirror Worlds came into play, more KT&T worlds were launched and suddenly the sector was rocking. The longer established worlds continued to grow their multi-million registered user bases and the new worlds started to battle it out.
Then we moved into 2009. Everything was looking rosy until the economy stepped in and slowed the launch of new worlds due to lack or drop-off in funding. Interestingly, ARPPU’s didn’t really take a hit, as users continued to spend money in-world. However, generally the growth and momentum seen in the sector upto the end of 2008 was impacted. But, as we start to move towards 2010, what does the future have in store? One thing’s a dead cert – we’ll be producing lots more charts – you can see them all here.
Lot’s of brand-new concepts in the VW space is one area that’s really exciting. More KT&T worlds? Absolutely – we think this age segment will continue to drive growth. And we’re optimistic about older worlds catered towards adults (in an ‘adult’ sense as well as propositions aimed at more mature audiences), with learning and education plus gambling being key genres to watch.
Here’s our forecast for the growth in the number of virtual worlds. By the end of this year we’ll be at the 150 mark for total worlds. We forecast this number to double by the end of 2010.
A rapid increase, driven largely by media sector companies creating IP-driven platforms for the toys, TV programmes, films and other properties. Just as almost every KT&T property has a website, we expect them to have a VW or at least presence in virtual worlds – along the ‘Theme-Park’ approach discussed in the past.
We expect growth past 2010 onwards to come from multiple areas. Education and older age ranges will supplement KT&T growth. Also socnet extension from ‘pages to places‘ is a natural movement. Combine all of this and we get to our 2012 forecast of 900 virtual worlds.
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