Virtual world "There.com"

Another post on Virtual World Summit 2007.

80% of active internet users will participate in the virtual world by 2011 according to Gartner,
and there are other statistics that states that the virtual world will prevail.

Virtual world enables "immersiveness" or active customer engagement,
and what companies needs to think about is to
"REDEFINE YOUR BRAND" in order "TO ENGAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS"
according to Ben Richardson, VP of Business Development at Makena Technologies (There).

But not all the virtual world has engaging customers,
not all the contents in the virtual world is engaging.

Virtual world has no ends, no goals, and that's a big differentiation towards games.
It is a community, it is about communication.

You need to choose the right virtual world with the right audience you want to reach,
you need to create contents that reaches the community and communicates with them.



Photo CC-BY-NC-SA Fumi Yamazaki




Makena Technologies operates "There.com",
which is one of the virtual worlds (like Second Life).

There.com created a virtual world for MTV,
they have 1 million members, their user base is quite unique in that
average is 22 years old (whereas SecondLife is 32 years old) and 70% are between 13 and 26,
50% are female, average user uses There.com 20 hours per month.

There.com did a case study with Capitol Music Group:
They created a virtual night club with video, audio, and commerce.
They did live events with MIMS, Korn and the Beastie Boys,
and the artists interacted with their fans for 1-2 hours which is impossible in the real world.

42,774  visits at commerce kiosk
17,463  visits to the club
4,363    visits to the live event
2,616    hours spent   (10 min / visit)

I was able to interview Ben a bit :)

-What is unique about There.com compared to other virtual worlds?

It enables full self expression and emotional engagement,
you can have facial expressions (which SecondLife etc doesn't have).

-How did they create this user base which is basically young female teenagers,
and there's 1 million of them.

The answer is word of mouth.Learn from Myspace he says.
The other thing is that there.com is "safe".
98% of the contents that exists in the world of There.com are
created by the users. And yet, ALL of the contents are checked by their staffs
and unless they say OK, it won't be uploaded.

Also, 9 people are engaged in user support, and they have 24/7 support.
If you want to get rid of stalkers, you can ask the user support to do it.

FYI, Linden Lab always releases their key metrics, and the newest one is for August, 2007
so you can compare some of the metrics here:



皆さんはThere.comを使ったことがありますか？

There.comはマケナテクノロジーズが運営しているvirtual worldで、MTVもthere.comを使ったことで有名。
SLと比べての特徴としては、顔の表情まで作ることができること。

Virtual Worldの特徴を、immersiveであるとしており、
お客さんを密接に巻き込めるということを強くメッセージとした講演を行いました。

There.comのユーザは100万人にのぼり、
平均年齢22歳（SecondLife は 32 歳)
50% が女性、 70%が13 歳から26歳の間。
月に平均20時間利用している。

100万人いて、若い女の子が多い。。。というユーザ層は
企業によっては非常にマーケティング対象に近い。
どうやって集めたかというとクチコミのみとのこと。
Myspaceから学べ、と。

また、もう一つの特徴は「安全」。
98%のコンテンツはユーザが作成した物だが、必ずスタッフが眼でチェックしてから
アップされている。5人体制でチェックを行っているとのこと。
更に、9人が24時間体制のユーザサポートに従事しており、
ストーカーに追いかけられてもサポートに連絡すれば大丈夫。