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Virtual World Population: 50 million by 2011

When technology analyst group Gartner recently asserted that “80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 companies) will have a ‘second life’, but not necessarily in Second Life” by 2011, a lot of people jumped the gun and assumed 8 out of 10 of all Net users would be in a virtual world in four short years. Not exactly, Gartner Chief of Research Steve Prentice tells us. “Firstly,” says Prentice, “this statement refers to ‘active’ Internet users– a subtlety missed in much of the subsequent reporting.”

Their actual estimate, as it turns out, is decidedly less expansive, but about as impressive, and that’s by conscious choice. The statement was meant, says Prentice, as “a wake-up call to the CIO and CEOS out there that this is not a game, just sort of messing around. It’s interesting [and] we think it’s going to big.” By “active”, Gartner is referring to “people who are heavyweight Net users.” And by their definition, all of them are broadband users. “They’re my kids, to be honest, back from school, right onto MySpace.” That in mind, the estimate is actually that 50-60 million Net users will participate in a virtual world by 2011. “Doesn’t seem totally outrageous to me,” says Prentice.

Considering the largest existing worlds, including South Korea’s Cyworld, and its 20 million uniques, World of Warcraft with its 8 million subscribers, and Europe’s Habbo Hotel with its own 7 million regular users, that guess is actually on the conservative side. (While researching another story, Lisa Cosmas Hanson of Chinese game market analyst Niko Partners estimates 26 million online world users by 2011 in China alone.)

To arrive at that figure, Prentice considered numerous variables, chief among them these five:

• Upward growth rates of existing worlds and social networks like MySpace.
• Usage patterns of current online world users (“Especially in the teen and young adult area…”)
• General computer game usage (Gartner cites a recent Entertainment Software Association report indicating that 69% of US head of households already play computer games.)
• Penetration and growth of Internet-enabled notebooks in this generation and spread of easily accessible wireless Internet.
• Involvement by major firms like IBM in virtual worlds, coupled to metaverse consulting groups to serve them there. (“[T]his reflects both a growing interest from their client base, and will result in growing pressures (and competencies) to accelerate the move by corporate users into the virtual worlds space.”)

Surprising to me at least, Prentice believes most virtual worlds of 2011 will not be console-based, and that they’re primarily remain a PC-centric platform. But he thinks it’s possible we’ll see metaverses accessible through phones and PDAs by then. (”Never say never: people said they’d never watch movies on a phone, and they do.”)

Another surprise is that Prentice thinks none of the existing virtual worlds will dominate four years from now– hence the “‘second life’, but not necessarily in Second Life” qualification. At this point, he says, “Linden is [like] the AOL of the early Internet. The biggest ones don’t even exist yet.”

Source: GigaOM

Google launches universal search - 5,672,968,176,820,971 results found

Google announced yesterday that users searching the web with its site will be treated to a veritable bounty of results from now on. No longer just the useful links you were after, but an array of video, pictures, and news will all be returned by a single search query.

Full Article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/17/universal_search/
Source: The Register

Joost secures investment of $45 million prior to launch

Joost, the broadband video service that has attracted much media attention, has raised $45 million from investors, including venture capitalists and broadcasters CBS and Viacom, in return for minority stakes in the start-up company. Joost says the funding will enable it to accelerate product development, global expansion, localisation and expansion of the service.

Full Article: http://informitv.com/articles/2007/05/10/joostsecuresinvestment/
Source: Informitv

SpongeBob SquarePants snubs Google

Viacom is playing divide and rule with the internet TV wannabes. After issuing 100,000 take down notices to YouTube contributors, the media giant has signed a deal that allows Joost to distribute its content legitimately.

Joost is an on-demand TV over broadband service that offers media companies a proprietary alternative to the industry-standard IPTV platform. It was started by Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, and was formerly known as the Venice Project. It works on any reasonable modern PC, and although users need to download some client software, it's free.

Full Article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/21/viacom_joost_deal/
Source: The Register

Ofcom to investigate Murdoch's ITV stake

Trade and Industry minister Alastair Darling has asked Ofcom to investigate BSkyB's purchase of a 17.9 per cent stake in ITV. He wants the regulator to provide him with advice on whether the deal has public interest implications by 27 April. Ofcom said it is also looking at the possible impact on programming.
The Office of Fair Trading announced its own investigation in January into competition issues raised by the deal and will also report to Darling on 27 April.

Full Article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/27/darling_ofcom_bskyb/
Source: The Register