The YOUniverse

The latest issue of Trendwatching is a good overview of some of the opportunities in personalization and personal avatar creation as fundamental to the emerging next version of the web.
It also covers the roles of alternate realities in the world (such as the Second Life Library) and how these “communities” are developing.
To quote (lots more in the newsletter):
“But first: numbers! Since we know most hard-nosed execs don’t want to believe what’s happening right in front of them unless they’re shown the ‘numerical evidence’ (if only they would sign up for an online game instead!), here are some quick and completely random snippets from our RSS feeds on what’s doing in the YOUNIVERSE (stats, percentages, and hundred million dollar figures included).
Yankee Group expects the in-game advertising market to reach USD 732 mln by 2010 (in 2005, advertisers spent approximately USD 56 mln placing ads in video games, up from USD 34 mln in 2004).
More than 100 million people worldwide log on every month to play interactive computer games (source: NYT, December 2005).
In the USA, over 70 percent of males in the 18 to 34 demographic play video games, according to NPD Group. Young men play 12.5 hours of video games a week, while they watch television 9.8 hours, and three-quarters of households with a male member age 8 through 34 own a video game system, according to Nielsen Entertainment (source: MediaLife January 2006).
An average European gamer will play for 10.9 hours a week, 87% have played in the last week, and 72% play at least three times a week. To put this into perspective: gaming is, for gamers, the third-most-popular use of media entertainment in the last week, after watching TV (96%) and listening to music (94%) (source: Mediaedge:cia, December 2005).
Sixty percent of trendsetters and 33% of mainstream 14-34 year-olds have a social networking page (source: TrendCentral, May 2006).
Synthetic worlds are popular: currently, these new worlds have around 10 to 20 million inhabitants (source: Edward Catronova) and the total number of players is expected to reach 40 million by 2020 (source: Swansey University).
More on the popularity of YOUNIVERSE-style sites (source: Betsy Book, May 2006):
Habbo Hotel: 50 million members
Neopets: 70 million+ virtual pet owners
Coke Studios: 8+ million registered users
Virtual Magic Kingdom: 1+ million registered users
Goonzu: (Korea): 3 million members
Guild Wars: 2 million members
Project Entropia: 400,000 members
Ragnarok Online: 17 million members
Second Life: 290,000 members
World of Warcraft: 5.5 million members
And let’s not forget about semi-YOUNIVERSES, such as:
MySpace: 68 million members
MSN Spaces: 30+ million members
Cyworld: 17 million members in Korea (= 33% of population). In China, Cyworld acquired 1.3 million subscribers in only eight months.
Lunarstorm: 1.2+ million members in Sweden (= 10% of population)
Hyves: 1.6 million members in NL (=10% of population); 400,000+ members in Latin America (mainly Peru!)
MSN Messenger: 100+ million users
Yahoo! Messenger: 63+ million users
QQ Messenger: 150+ million users in China
AOL Messenger: 43 million users in the USA”
Anyway, I think there’s something here for us to learn. We have to get our portal acts in order first to play but these virtual social networked worlds will become part of the user expectation far quicker than we may be comfortable with. Play with them a little – it won’t hurt and you might have some fun.
Stephen