Wednesday, October 10, 2007

At the Virtual Worlds conference in San Jose

more people but much bigger space - less claustrophic than in March in NYC

So many more companies are here as presenters and exhibitors. I wish i was 2 or 3 people because at some time slots there are multiple presentations that sound great. I'm going to stick with the entertainment and marketing track today i think and tomorrow hop around to different tracks. Fun fun fun.

opening keynote from Sidney Vebleck of ESC -
more than 30 wv, 100 speakers, 25 exhibitors, 1100 participants from around the world

preteen/kids VW market - doing well, very established and financially successful
ex: webkinz and club penguin with interesting business models
nicktropolis and barbie world - set up by estab lishe brands with all their marketing weight behind them
he expects probably 40 kid oriented virtual worlds - tons of brutal competition and lots of failures to be expected - scary time but lots of innovation driven by the competition so gotta keep a close eye on this part of hte market - he expects lots of new sutt in enhanced user experiences, different business models and marketing, new ways to make cool world without downloads and on lowerend ocmputers

teen vw - gaia and imvu are examples
they combo communication tools and vw components - added value from teh combination to increase entertainment - the comm tools are things they're used to from other platforms with social networking
- MTV has been really successful in this market - branded worlds
he predicts more in this area with more use of hte comm tools like profile pages, synch and asynch comm tools

braod market VW - still developing, not as successful as the kid worlds
business models not strong yet
should do more in the shopping-ecommerce realm because vw could totally enhance the shopping experience over shopping on a website

No comments: