Virtual-world news update

A lot of news about virtual worlds has crossed my laptop lately, so – since this is a big growth sector of cyberspace (with the global VW population growing from 186.5 million now to 638 million by 2015, according to Strategy Analytics) – I thought I'd package it up for you....

1. Avatar PR

Now (if not yesterday or last year) is a good time to fold avatars into family discussion about reputations and self-representation online. Even if your child's favorite avatar is waddling around in Club Penguin, it would be good to ask to see the penguin, if you haven't already, talk about that penguin's favorite activities in-world, how many friends it has, and what sorts of things they do together. Why am I telling you all this? Early lessons in social Web spin control – not to mention early prep for the business world.

By the end of 2013, 70% of businesses will have behavior and dress code policies for employees whose online avatars represent their organization," Virtual World News reports. Gartner recently published "Avatars in the Enterprise: Six Guidelines to Enable Success," CNET reports.

As for the littlest VW citizens, Virtual Worlds News recently reported that, at 27% growth between now and 2015, children aged 5-9 are the biggest growth sector of a global virtual world population (which itself will grow from 186 million to 640 million by 2015). VW News was citing Strategy Analytics figures. For insights into day-to-day life in a teen virtual world, check out this YPulse interview with Gaia Online's Joe Hyrkin.

2. Two new arrivals

Israel-based Shidonni.com where kids 4-10 draw and animate their own animal avatars, which can then be turned into real stuffed animals! There's a bit of a Webkinz model, but this is much more appealing to kids because they're the producers. Here's coverage at Virtual Worlds News.

Omaha, Nebraska-based KidCommand.com for 7-to-12-year-olds is a virtual world that aims to teach kids and tweens about the real world so they can help make it better. The company, Green Bein' Productions, Inc., wants to team up with other organizations that work to empower kids (e.g., schools, after-school programs, scouting). Here's Virtual Worlds News.

3. Second Life's booming economy

On average, users of virtual world Second Life spend 100 minutes in-world per visit, adding up to more than 1 billion hours so far, PC World reports. Even more interesting, though, is the virtual world's very real economy. "The equivalent of more than US$1 billion has been transacted between residents in Second Life, who purchase virtual goods and services from one another." The in-world economy grew 54% year-over-year (between third quarter 2008 and third quarter this year), Virtual Worlds News reported more recently. This is a multinational economy: "Users from the United States accounted for 37% of the economy, followed by Germany and Italy at 8% each, France at 7%, and the UK at 5%." Here's a list of dozens of businesses that have a presence in Second Life – in retail, manufacturing, technology, travel, real estate, finance, communications, etc. (I couldn't find anything more recent than this, but I doubt the number has gone down.)

4. Avatars in MySpace

MySpace, which has always been as much a self-expression tool as a social utility is expanding those self-expression features. In an arrangement with the newly profitable teen virtual world Meez Nation, MySpace users can now create avatars, Ad Week reports (CNET mentioned Meez's profitable status).

Meez and MySpace have music and other media sharing in common, Meez CEO John Cahill said in an interview with YPulse. "Our users watch popular videos together, listen and dance to music together, and we're always offering new virtual goods and "Roomz" tied to events like Halloween, for example. See YPulse for more.

5. Virtual worlds in the movies

Hollywood's all over it – not so much making money in virtual worlds as telling stories about them, the San Jose Mercury News reports. There's Second Skin (which I blogged about here), recently released Gamer and Surrogate, James Cameron's Avatar in December, and next year's Tron Legacy from Disney and Christopher Nolan's Inception. [See also "'Red-light district' makes virtual world safer."]

Related link

KZERO, a virtual worlds research and consulting firm in the UK, has a slide show showing more than 10 dozen companies marketing in virtual worlds (with screen shots of their locations) here. [They put out great resources but are not great at returning press calls.]

My avatar, my self

Neuroscientists are looking into the relationship between self and avatar. A study of World of Warcraft players in their 20s (14 men and 1 woman) who spend an average of 23 hours a week in the game/world was recently presented at the Society of Neuroscience, NewScientist.com reports. From fMRI scans of the players' brains, the study found "next to no difference" in activity in the areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgment at times when the players were thinking about their virtual selves vs. times when they were thinking about their actual selves. "Disentangling how the brain regards avatars versus real individuals may help explain why some people spend large chunks of their life playing immersive online games," the study's lead author, Kristina Caudle, a social neuroscientist at Dartmouth University, said. In future, she wants "to study volunteers who spend less time playing World of Warcraft to see if there are differences in how their brains discriminate between real and virtual worlds."

Thin avatar, thinner self?

Virtual world "residents" and their parents know what avatars are: An in-world representative of you. In Second Life, though some users have more than one avatar, most avatars are quite human-looking versions of users. It depends on the world quite a bit. In ClubPenguin, they're, well, penguins. In a lot of kids' virtual worlds, the avatars are cartoon-y humans with big eyes and heads. In videogames, there's a huge range of virtual selves, from human-like to fantasy creatures with special powers.

I'm telling you all this because a new study indicates that people's avatars can be aspirational or motivational, at least in terms of appearance. It found that "creating a thin and physically fit online avatar may encourage people to become healthier and more physically fit in real life," Triangle Business Journal reports. The study, by RTI International, found that that "80% of respondents who reported high levels of physical activity for their avatars also reported participating in high levels of physical activity in their real lives." The article appeared in the August issue of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

What does increase teen girls' risk online

A new study in the medical journal Pediatrics found that "a history of childhood abuse and use of a provocative online identity increase the risk that girls will be victimized by someone they meet on the Internet," CNN reports, and a key factor in reducing risk is "the presence and influence of caregivers." and a key factor in reducing risk is "the presence and influence of caregivers." Nothing unprecedented about these findings, but they confirm what the full body of online-safety research, gathered by last year's Internet Safety Technical Task Force, shows. This study, led by Jennie G. Noll of the Cincinnati, Ohio, Children's Hospital Medical Center, is one of the first I've seen to add avatar appearance to screennames as a way people can intentionally or inadvertently indicate sexual interest to people they "meet" online. As CNN put it, "girls are more likely to experience online sexual advances or have offline encounters if they have previously been abused or have a provocative avatar." The study "looked at 104 abused [those who had suffered neglect, physical abuse or sexual abuse] and 69 non-abused girls ages 14 to 17," 54% white and 46% minorities. Among these girls, 40% "reported experiencing sexual advances online" and 26% "reported meeting someone offline after getting to know the person on the Internet. Abused girls were much more likely to have experienced both, the authors found." Pew/Internet senior researcher Amanda Lenhart later commented that the study in Pediatrics confirmed previous research but left out some other risk trouble spots we need to be aware of - that kids with histories of mental illness and family conflict are equally at risk online. Thanks to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for pointing this study out.

Xbox Live as virtual world?

Seems everybody can get an avatar now - Zuis, penguins, fairies, and urban vinyl for kids and human-like ones in Second Life (teen and adult), Google's Lively, Sony Home, and now the Xbox gaming community. Microsoft is giving demos but says it won't be releasing the new "Xbox Live Experience" till "before Christmas," CNET game blogger Daniel Terdiman reports. But hardcore gamers for whom "Xbox Live is nearly as much a home as where they actually live" needn't worry, he says. The service is not becoming "a place for purely casual players" as they feared. He says casual gamers will like the "deeply customizable avatars," but there's also "all kinds of new functionality that will actually reward the dedication of the hard-core Xbox player." See the review for examples.

Avatar chat's downside

For some teens it's harmless fun, for others IMVU.com's chat-by-avatar (an animated character that represents you online) can be pretty explicit. How good or bad the experience is depends on the user, and there are some sexually exploratory teens in the site mixing it up with adult users (there has been a lot of discussion about this in our ConnectSafely.org forum). Here's the first news story I've seen about its darkside for teens, a pretty grainy, local story at TheDay.com in Connecticut in which a police investigator logged into a teen user's account and found links to avatars engaged simulating sex. Here's a review of IMVU at the IMSafer blog, which also mentions the risqué clothing on many female avatars, most of which seem to have body shapes that even Barbie would fantasize about. [IMVU is the second site reviewed in the IMSafer post; the first is another site with a definite downside for teens: Webcam site Stickam.com.]

Social networking for avatars

If people feel like a little extra layer of anonymity in their social networking, they can always have their avatars socialize for them. "Koinup.com is a social-networking site akin to MySpace, but for virtual worlds such as SL, IMVU, and The Sims," reports SecondLifeInsider.com. "There are a few such sites, but most of them are devoted to a particular platform, rather than the all-inclusive Koinup." Meanwhile, CNN has the big picture on social-networking niches.