Interview: Koinup's Pierluigi Casolari On Social Networks for Virtual Worlds
We first covered Brescia, Italy-based Koinup just over a year ago, and since then we've been keeping up with the unusual, "meta" social network, dedicated entirely to its users virtual (rather than real-world) lives.
The company recently announced plans to expand its presences in Second Life, and so we took the opportunity to talk to co-founder and CEO of Koinup, Pierluigi Casolari, and grill him on the reasons for a social network for virtual world users to exist!
Why create a social network for virtual world users?
Pierluigi Casolari: The first reason is about interoperability. More and more people are managing multiple virtual worlds accounts, and more users are seeing the utility of "virtual world cross plaftorms" or "meta-aggregators" for virtual worlds users.
The second reason is to create a new web-portal for virtual worlds. We started to work on this some months ago. Not all the internet behaviors are easily deployed within 3d interfaces. For example, gathering information is a process that is quite difficult in 3d environments, but at the same time it is quite trivial by browsing web pages.
Following this and other ideas we have start to building a web 2.0 portal for all virtual world locations. Presently, only Second Life is supported, but we are actively working for expanding the list. The goal of the project is to give Koinup visitors a preview of what virtual worlds are, what the most popular hotspots are and where you could find your friends online.
Doesn't it miss the point? After all, aren't people already happy socializing in the individual virtual worlds, and outside of that happy to socialize using Facebook, etc.?
PC: The syncronous communication and the immersivity of virtual worlds make them excellent for some aspects, but not for all. "Metaverse" citizens need web hangouts for sharing their content, their opinions, to build their network of friends, for uploading artwork.
Mainstream social networks are restrictive with virtual world content and people. Facebook bans people that are suspected of using "fantasy" or virtual names, and Flickr, in the past, has tried to ghettoize photos created within virtual worlds.
If virtual life and what happen in virtual worlds are to make sense, they need proper and specific tools, which we are creating for Koinup.
So what are the benefits of Koinup?
PC: Users can find the opportunity to create a gallery of their virtual content, find friends, and invite existing friends from other social network to join over Koinup.
If you are from Second Life, for example, you can send an invite to your in-world friends, without opening the client. People that are already using blogs, or other social network as Facebook, Flickr and Youtube can find support to manage their multiple accounts, by using Koinup widgets, crosspost options, and other utilities.
More casual users can also preview what virtual worlds exactly are, by using the portal feature. (http://www.koinup.com/places/ ) What excite us about this feature is that what casual users can see is not a branded, official representation, but a community-based representation of what virtual worlds are.
How popular has the service been so far?
PC: We exceeded 10,000 members some months ago. We get almost 1 million pages view monthly, and the average time on the website is more than 20 minutes.
The site is growing. The community is active. We are building the platform together with the community. We are learning a lot from the people who use Koinup.
What are the demographics?
PC: One third of visitors come from United States. The remaining are from Europe and only a minor part from Asia. If we look at the content on the website, the most from Second Life, but if you look at the people registered, the most represented is the IMVU community.
In general, though, we are aiming at people that have accounts in more than one virtual worlds, as well as the "hardcore" users that produce, create and develop content in virtual worlds.
How are you monetizing the site?
PC: Advertising. Up to the present we've been using Google Adsense, but what we see in the future is a better advertising system tailored not only to real worlds brands, but also to the microbrands operating in virtual worlds. In the long run, we see also the chance to deploy premium accounts.
What else does the future hold?
PC: We are working on some big upgrades for the website. The social features of Koinup will be the most involved. In the roadmap there is also the enhancement of the places directory to include other virtual worlds.
