Toyota Launches Metapolis with Meet-Me
Toyota, the most adventurous marketer in virtual worlds, has opened up a presence in a brand new world: it's own. Toyota Metapolis is built on the same technology as Meet-Me and is connected to the virtual Tokyo aimed specifically at a Japanese audience that launched in Alpha last December. With its own launch page and an island to itself, though, Metapolis seems fairly self-sufficient. Boasting residential areas, a museum showcasing prototypes, a mall, and an event hall that can supposedly host 1,000 avatars, Metapolis looks to be an already ambitious virtual worlds marketer's most ambitious project to date. Hit the jump for a video tour.
Meet-me is apparently more limiting for users than something like Second Life, but the independence, control, and scope of a virtual community like this seems to be the sort of thing marketers have been looking for.
Some marketers, like Wells Fargo, turned to Active Worlds for greater control, and the Second Life Grid has been touted as providing similar options. With more and more platforms launching this year that enable users--or brands--to create private, individually hosted, and, often, Web-embeddable virtual worlds, I imagine we might see an English language equivalent of something like Metapolis down the road.
I don't guess Meet-Me has an English registration system yet, does it?
Posted by: Sue Baskerville | March 15, 2009 at 12:02 PM