Comments on: Business Opportunities in the “Virtual” World

By: jeux r4 ds

jeux r4 ds — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:56:49 +0000

too true………half of the modern world depends on Internet for most of the works…….my job is also based on internet………

By: eve online isk

eve online isk — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:59:04 +0000

This is exciting!

By: Gabriel Giordano

Gabriel Giordano — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:14:00 +0000

There are definitely near-term virtual world opportunities for businesses (that should not be ignored). In the following executive summary, Forrester points out four key advantages of virtual world marketing, identified by managers at global firms:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/12/prweb1692204.htm

By: Tommy Donnelly

Tommy Donnelly — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:52:34 +0000

I would have to agree with the comments above- I think that the only hope for really profitable virtual worlds exist within the realm (at least for the present time) of massively multiplayer games and RPGs.
The advertising that social media sites (like Facebook and MySpace) currently employ is not at all successful, at least according to what I’ve read and seen. I highly doubt that it will continue except under the current trend of very cheap banner ads on a cost per thousand impressions basis.
People using social media sites just aren’t looking to buy anything- the same with second life and really any other virtual world. They go there to meet people, or even perhaps, to GET AWAY from advertising that’s now so prominent in the REAL world!
The future of advertising lies more in subliminal product placement type strategies. Consumers are far more savvy than in the past, and traditional campaigns are not nearly effective as they once were.

By: Abdul Bijur Vallarkodath

Abdul Bijur Vallarkodath — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:55:42 +0000

I agree there about the limitless opportunities at Second life especially ‘cos of the plugins that can be installed and freely developed.
Its a good trend we see here of social media/online RPGs opening up to developer content. Facebook clearly did it well in terms of having open api’s for creating applications, a fact that orkut (google) is still struggling with and yahoo (360 who?) has none of!!

By: Gabriel Giordano

Gabriel Giordano — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:05:32 +0000

You are right that many lessons can be learned about users’ behavior in these games. However, the business opportunities in these gaming worlds are limited, since they are tightly controlled by their developers. However, gaming worlds do present opportunities for experimentation, and they have limited marketing opportunities, although developers have not totally opened up to this idea yet.

By: Marcelo Manta

Marcelo Manta — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:20:39 +0000

Today profitable “Virtual” worlds exist in the way of computer games. There is a whole industry with some clearly business leaders such as the Blizzard division of Vivendi.
Blizzard is not alone in this market, and different models of people to people interaction exist on different games. I think that these gaming worlds have much more to teach us than Second Life because of the underlying success and the raw number of users that those games have.