MTV's Jeff Yapp chatted about the media giant's future musings on virtual worlds at the recent Under the Radar Digital Entertainment and Media Conference in Mountain View, CA. "The scale and the scope of this thing is absolutely immense; we have fairly ambitious plans," Yapp said, amid footage of Doppelganger's Virtual Lower East Side and MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach being synthesized as mobile, web, and TV content. "We believe in 'one avatar, one world'; the ability to take your avatar-- that personality, that 3D representation of who you are-- anywhere you want to go." Check out the video at CNet (for all you gamers, there's Rock Band stuff, too!).
Yapp's presentation was a keynote separate from the virtual worlds group presentations at Under the Radar, where Doppelganger and Kaneva were the highlights. During the panel, Doppelganger (Virtual LES) CEO Tim Stevens said their service currently has 150,000 users, growing at a rate of 10% weekly. Kaneva, whose 3D social networking site just went public beta in April, said that despite its resemblance to MySpace and its ilk, it sees its primary competitor as television and movies-- go figure. Both of these companies glean their primary income from sponsorship and the sale of virtual goods.
Another participant in the group was Meez, an avatar specialist. Through Meez's website, users can design custom avatars that can then be exported to other services. Photobucket members, through a recent partnership with Meez, can now export and store their 3D avatars on Meez. Despite having 2 million registered users (and 425,000 newcomers each month) to Photobucket's considerably larger estimated 40 million, Meez apparently gets enough revenue from sponsorship, virtual goods, and their associated promo partnerships to be able to pull it off.
Finally, founder Corey Bridges discussed Multiverse, an MMO development platform that runs in a "world browser" (according to Bridges, that's like a web browser) and can be used by anyone to make their own online games. Multiverse is the platform University of Indiana prof Ted Castronova is using to build Arden, his MacArthur-funded Shakespearean world. In a round of fundraising led by hedge fund Sterling Stamos Capital Management, Multiverse recently snagged $4.175 million.
[Via Webware.com]
