Posted in Business, Design, Virtual Communities on Sep 18th, 2007
Novamente has announced it will be showing a “teachable virtual companion” (virtual pet) in conjunction with the Electric Sheep Company at the Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose in October 2007. These virtual pets are being designed to interact with avatars in virtual worlds such as Second Life. The pets are designed with certain goals […]
Posted in Business, Design, Dolls, Plush Pets, Virtual Communities on Aug 17th, 2007
Recent times have been very good for Mattel. A 16 August 2007 Associated Press story points out sales of their Transformer and Spider man toys have been boosted by movies, plus they are still reaping sales from Pixar Animation Studio’s “Cars” movie. Barbie sales are anticipated to pick up with the new MP3 player. Earlier, […]
Posted in Business, Dating, Design, People, Virtual Communities on Aug 15th, 2007
A 30 August 2007 Wall Street Journal article titled, “Is This Man Cheating on His Wife” discusses the real life challenges of a 53 year old man and his wife resulting from his actions in Second Life. There (in Second Life) he has a wife, owns a mall, strip club, a dance club, and a […]
Posted in Business, Virtual Communities on Aug 6th, 2007
A 1 August 2007 press release from Walt Disney Company reports Disney has acquired Club Penguin which now has over 700,000 paid subscribers and over 12 million activated users. Launched in October 2005, it grew very rapidly with little marketing effort. Club Penguin targets children 6 to 14 and features animated avatar penguins in a […]
Posted in Business, Design, People, Virtual Communities on Aug 3rd, 2007
The ability to speak (voice) is now part of the main Second Life viewer per “The Second Life Voice Viewer is Live!” a 2 August 2007 post in the Second Life Blog. 45,000 plus viewers have downloaded and tested it. Voice is an optional feature and is turned off by default. It is available everywhere, […]
Posted in Business, People, Virtual Communities on Aug 2nd, 2007
The opportunity to save real souls by saving their virtual souls first is being recognized by an academic with ties to the Catholic Church. A 27 July 2007 Reuters report in Red Herring titled, Spreading the Gospel in Second Life. La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal published from Rome recently carried a message from Antonio […]
Posted in Business, Plush Pets, Virtual Communities on Jul 26th, 2007
Back in the early days we thought caring for a virtual pet could be a training ground for caring for a “real” pet. Now we see things have gone one step further down the ladder. A bookstore in Fairhope Alabama is now offering a workshop on how to care for a virtual pet, more specifically, […]
Posted in Business, Dolls, Virtual Communities on Jul 24th, 2007
A 23 July 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal titled, Online Popularity Contest Next in Barbie-Bratz Brawl, reports MGA will be releasing their own online social networking site, Be-Bratz, on August 1st. MGA’s Bratz has been gaining ground on Mattel’s Barbie the last several years, but Mattel’s new online world, Barbie Girls, has been […]
Posted in Business, Dolls, People, Virtual Communities on Jul 17th, 2007
Launched with a press release back on 26 April 2007, Mattel’s Barbie Girls is taking the world by storm. Girls can create their own character, design a room, shop, play games, listen to music and communicate with other girls. Although Barbie is facing tough competition from Bratz in the stores, she’s winning strong online. In […]
Posted in Business, Virtual Communities on Jun 30th, 2007
Back on 15 May 2007, Lauren Moores wrote a nice piece, Kids Toy Crazes Go Virtual, on Compete using data from the 2 million plus users of their toolbar to estimate total U.S. traffic levels over the past year at Neopets, Webkinz, and Clubpenguin. They indicate about a tie of 2.75 million unique individuals visiting […]
