Suing For Fun and Profit: Worlds.com’s Answer to Recession

Suppose you have a business that is sucking. Then suppose a recession comes along and makes it suck more. What do you do? Well, one solution to sue as many people as you can based on some vague patent from ten years ago.
Welcome to Worlds.com’s new strategy!
Anyone with access to the Internet (and that includes [...]

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Sony Introduces Virtual World Home Censors

Banning words in a virtual world is so gay. Why, I wouldn’t even allowed to talk to my virtual friends about my lesbian daughter unless I referred to her as “my man-hating daughter” or “women-preferring little treasure.” As for mentioning that you can have a gay old time at a virtual dance, that would be [...]

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Sony’s “Playstation Home” Shows Sales

Disaffected Second Lifer, Eric Kranky Krangel reports that sales of virtual goods in Sony’s new Home world are looking strong. Following an exclusive interview with Sony’s Senior Director of the Playstation Network, Susan Panico, Krangel said that, “virtual goods priced from 49 cents to $4.99 have generated more revenue for Sony than PS3 movies and [...]

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$500 Million in Venture Capital for Virtual Worlds and Games

During 2008, over $500 million has been spent on investments in games and virtual worlds. This includes $11 million for Gaia Online who have just reduced staffing by 13%. There’s a good chance that the majority of these will run into difficulties considering the current state of the global economy, but it is an indicator [...]

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Extreme Virtual Life: Addiction or Social Disorder?

For some people, spending time in a virtual world becomes a real problem. It can disrupt their real life and relationships. There are many stories about the perils of online gaming and online relationships.  But is it an addiction?
Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants is based in the Netherlands and was founded by Keith Bakker, who [...]

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Are Virtual Worlds Better Than Videoconferencing?

In an article at ReadWriteWeb.com, Richard MacManus releases some details of a report shortly to be published by Forterra Systems, a consultancy firm who are “the leading provider of private virtual world environments that enable you to rapidly create your own secure, high fidelity 3D Internet solution,” according to their website.
According to MacManus, “one of [...]

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Virtual Image Management: Whose Looking At Your Social Networks?

It’s one thing to post those hilarious pics of you and your drunken mates holding the generous breasts of a rented stripper at a bachelor party but it’s another when your potential employer checks out your MySpace before the interview. And peppering your FaceBook with profanities that would make a marine blush doesn’t help your [...]

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Over Half of UK Internet Friends Meet In Person

A recent study by the group TNS Global reveals that 58% of UK Internet users have met face-to-face with people they first contacted online. 45% had made telephone calls. The sample of 2,500 specific to the UK was a subset from a 27,522 person sample of 18-55-year-olds from 16 countries.
However, despite the apparent ease of [...]

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Gore Verbinski To Make Second Life™ Movie

Movie maker Gore Verbinski (The Mexican, The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean) is slated to make a fiction about a fiction based on an article about a fantasy. Confused? Welcome to the world of Virtual Worlds.
Alexandra Alter wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal entitled Is This Man Cheating on His Wife? back in [...]

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Virtual World Gaia Online Makes Job Cuts

Gaia Online is a virtual community founded in 2003 and based in San Jose, California, USA. It has just announced the cutting of 36 staff members, of which 16 were full time and the rest worked on a contract basis.
The following comment appears in a post on their blog site: “Given the huge downturn in [...]

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