Updated: Virtual Worlds on Facebook

Nobody's built a virtual world that's completely tied to Facebook, but virtual worlds developers are starting to realize the potential. Last week Active Worlds announced that it had embedded its universe into Facebook, and today we learned that the company is interested in deepening that connection. (Consider this a sidebar.) Right now there aren't a huge number of virtual worlds taking advantage of Facebook's 51 million active users,  but here's a look at five who are.

1. Active Worlds: This is by far the most thorough link between a pre-existing virtual world and Facebook, even though it's just a way to access the Active Worlds universe through Facebook. That might change, though.  "Instead of going to the general Active Worlds page, you go to your own Facebook world where only your friends go and interact, and you can customize your own world just like your page," Active Worlds chairman JP McCormick.

2. SceneCaster: SceneCaster, though, wins the award for being the most deeply connected world from the get go. When it debuted, the 3D room creator was already aiming at a social network connection (along with ties to Google Earth, Flickr, and more). The Facebook app launched just a week or two afterwards. Not only can users embed their scenes into Facebook, they can browse, tag, and do pretty much everything else available on the site from within the social network as well.

3. Virtual MTV: This is another new arrival, just popping up on my radar this week. It doesn't connect you directly to MTV's virtual worlds, but it offers a steady stream of information pulling from MTV's wide array of virtual properties that's still growing. Users can follow news about the latest in-world events, watch tenuously linked videos (some seem based on the ongoing machinima contest), shop (via pop-up) for virtual goods, check out general MTV news, and get connected to other MTV worlds.

4. Second Life Link: This app is closer to MTV's. It's an unofficial tie-in to Second Life that doesn't let you look into the world, instead making connections between users' Facebook profile and friends and their Second Life networks. Users can view the Second Life status of friends, display their own avatar, and link from Facebook to their favorite Second Life sites. Second Friends offers similar, but less  extensive capabilities. ,

5. My Virtual World: From RocketOn, a company that "develops Virtual Worlds and Online Games that work with Facebook and other social networks," this app lets users use avatar-based chat, play games, and interact with users on Facebook, Myspace, and the company's website. It's definitely an interesting solution and one to keep an eye on.

6 (bonus). Every major game: When we looked at social networks based on MMOGs in August, we also looked at MMOGs based on social networks like the incredibly popular Zombies game.  These games, not all on the list, but most, combine a sense of place and social interaction with either real-time or asynchronous interaction in a way that, to me, sounds a whole lot like a virtual world. If users aren't ready for full-blown 3D apps on Facebook, these light-weight worlds are definitely good prep work. "You can build something for people on social networks," said Blake Commagere, one of the developers on the project,, "but if you don't leverage the social aspect, it's just not as interesting. Then you're 'Oh, here I am with a widget on my page, all by myself.' If you can see it on other people's pages, that's when users get into it. One of the things that's compelling in the games we're making is that you can see 'Oh, here's my friend John, and he's got more points than me.'"

Update: Raph Koster looks at the numbers for most of these applications, which are low, though it's also pretty early for some, and has a good rundown on his key principles for a Facebook world.

Comments

[John]

WoW!! How can you leave the Facebook application My Room from this list? It was there wayyy before Scenecaster and has tons and I mean of more daily active users than all those listed combined.

http://apps.facebook.com/my_room

[SuezanneC Baskerville]

It would nice if someone would tackle the job of adding translation between languages into the virtual world interoperability effort.

Machine translation may not be great but I think it could be a great addition to virtual worlds if built in to the interface properly.