Virtual Worlds Projected to Mushroom to Nearly One Billion Users :: $8 Billion Market Value Projected for User Services

Boston, MA - 29 May 2008 - Strategy Analytics today released its forecast of virtual world adoption, which shows that over the next ten years some 22 percent of global broadband users will have registered for one or more virtual worlds resulting in a market approaching one billion registrants and an eight billion dollar services opportunity. The study, "Market Forecasts for Virtual World Experiences," projects a diversified global market with services targeted at children, teens and adults across a wide range of applications.

Sex and the City

The movie was fabulous! I wouldn't change a thing.

More laughs than tears. Trendy, flashy, sugar-coated goodness. Just enough of what we wanted (Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha) and very little of what we could have cared less about (their kids).

The girls were true to form, BIG was awesome... everything was like it always was - except - there were no more of the struggling writer woes for Carrie. She redecorated her apartment, shopped, even hired a personal assistant.

Things change. And I think maybe I've changed too. Whereas Carrie and sometimes Miranda spoke to me earlier in my life, it was now Charlotte. She stole the show.

Am I the only one who fell in love with Charlotte?

Summer Vacation in the Southeast

It's Friday so let's keep it fun, relaxing and light.

What are you doing this weekend?

Well... Here's a great weekend roadtrip. Jump in the car and head to Logan Martin Lake, Alabama. This is the most beautiful lake! It's about 90 min from Atlanta. It's been a great kept secret until now - the NY Times just recognized it's potential. We love Pell City for boating, fishing and great antiques. If you find this is the place for you there are plenty of great vacation home choices. Here's the best,


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POPULATION The lakeside towns of Pell City, Lincoln and Riverside have a combined population of 18,780.

SIZE The 17,000-acre lake is 48 miles long by a mile at its widest.

WHERE Logan Martin Lake is about 30 miles east of Birmingham, and 90 miles west of Atlanta.

WHO’S BUYING Second-home owners and retirees from Alabama and Georgia and full-time residents moving there for work, some of whom commute to Birmingham or Anniston.

WHILE YOU’RE LOOKING The Hampton Inn (220 Vaughn Lane, Pell City; 205-814-3000; www.hamptoninn.com) has rooms starting at $109 a night.

See you on the lake. :)

The Glade® Wisp® Flameless Candle

Most of you know that I'm a BzzAgent. It's a great program. For those of you not familiar with the concept, BzzAgent is a word-of-mouth agency where consumers can discover, recommend (or not) and then share new products and services with their family and friends.
I just finished reviewing the The Glade® Wisp® Flameless Candle.

Let me preface this by saying I love candles but have really disliked any of the scented electric-outlet air fresheners, really air fresheners in general. They were always so overpowering and fake smelling. I was skeptical.

When the package arrived I hesitated putting it in the living room because I expected it to stink up the house. I planned to put it in the basement or bathroom, but we had baby kittens and momma cat was litter box training them. Maybe now was a good time to scent up the house.

After reading the package I realized (and love the fact that) you can control the amount of fragrance that comes out. On the bottom of the candle there's a setting where you can adjust it to be a little or a lot of fragrance that 'puffs' out of the candle - no overpowering fake smell.

Another great feature is the automatic shut off. The candle will run for a 3 hour time period and then automatically shut itself off.

The Glade® Wisp® Flameless Candle combines continuous puffs of fragrance with a warm, flickering glow, letting you enhance the mood in any setting. Looks so real, you'd never know it wasn't a real candle. This was a real bonus!

I find this idea to be genius. Especially for those with younger kids. You get the great scent of a candle, the great look of a candle, without the dangerous flame.

I really love this product, and definitely will be purchasing more. If your a mom, this is a great item for you. If you have pets, I recommend it highly.

Enjoy.

3-D the future of the Internet

This is from Xerox innovation chief Sophie Vandebroek – taken from a recent Q&A interview in Computerworld,

“In my mind, the 3-D virtual world is the future of the Internet. In the future, you don't need to be in the same room to look each other in the eye and understand the issues and collaborate on projects.”

So here are a few of my favorite 3-D virtual places that you should be watching. They will shape the future of the Internet,

SecondLife
Kaneva
There

Kaneva also offers a great description of how the 3-D Internet will come to be on their platform web site.

So how can you capitalize on having seen the future today? I would contend that these are the Top Opportunities in Virtual Worlds,

1. Access Pass/Cover Charge (aka Subscriptions)
2. Professional Collaboration
3. Entertainment & Event Planning
4. Instruction & Education
   
5. Building/Designing
6. Professional Services
7. Web & World Integration
8. Trade/Exchange Rate platforms

They include opportunities for creators, for users, and for new secondary markets. I don't know about you but I plan to be a part of the wave as the next big powerhouse in online marketing.

Access Pass/Cover Charge (aka subscriptions)

At the current time, this is the opportunity that most of the existing players have been mining the most. The basic model is simple: charge a cover for users to access your environment.

Professional Collaboration

Business Week recently reported that Rivers Run Red saved $175,000 last year by holding meetings in SecondLife. This is no small amount of money for a small business and, in this age of increasing security checklines at airports and gas prices over $4 a gallon, virtual worlds may be the best collaboration platform yet.

Entertainment & Event Planning

Increasingly music stars are moving into virtual reality. The BBC, MTV, and Fox have already held events. Organizing events, preparing the space, publicizing, booking and training speakers are all jobs that require some level of expertise and there are dollars associated with providing that expertise.

Instruction & Education

There are opportunities around teaching classes in building virtual assets. In Kaneva, you can find people teaching how to create and program the basics. One can envision people getting paid for this type of work in the not so distant future. Harvard has already created virtual training grounds to explore virtual reality.

Professional Services

Virtual worlds, or the Metaverse as it is also referred to, have created an eco-system where professional journalists, DJs, ad agencies, and other types of services (some of the more risque ones involving the sex trade) are interacting on a daily basis. Economies are being created that mirror traditional world equivalents in the virtual realm.

Building/Designing

Love fashion? Home decor? Creating new digital goods and selling them in the virtual space may be for you. Most goods from the real world can have a digital equivalent and companies like American Apparel have noticed the space, and sub-contracted the development of those goods to a third party. More exciting is the popularity of a new breed of digital fashion designers. Their work realized only in the virtual world as highly sought after pixels.

Web & World Integration

Virtual Worlds are generally closed spaces. Some, like SecondLife, have started opening up to the wider net. For example, users can now visit Amazon.com in SecondLife, thanks to the Amazon API and SecondLife’s ability to call on it from inside its virtual world. Those opportunities represent a new space and integration houses with expertise in both the virtual world and the wider web will be well positioned to take advantage of those opportunities.

Trade/Exchange Rate platforms

Another portion of the secondary market is surrounding the thin link between the trade that happens in those virtual worlds and real dollars. Companies or individuals who manage to create a platform that offers a way to trade from one of the virtual worlds into another might find themselves as the new middle-men in a space that is bound to grow economically and profit from making a small percentage on every inter-virtual world transaction.