Interview: Electric Sheep Announce WebFlock, Solution for Flash-Based Environments

Today the Electric Sheep Company announced WebFlock, an in-house developed tool for producing download-free, browser-based, customizable environments for clients. The first client is Showtime, with a beta set to launch at the end of August. The Sheep originally helped bring The L Word to Second Life, and now are taking a virtual environment to fans on their own terms. That's the basis behind WebFlock: while brands want to bring their communities to virtual worlds, explains CEO Sibley Verbeck, the only mass market so far is in the under-12 market. WebFlock aims to take virtual experiences out to the market instead of bringing the market to the virtual world.

"We were finding a lot of situations where there were customers for us that wanted to have the value a virtual world can bring—the value of users having synchronous experience, feeling like they’re in a place together—and that makes a ton of sense for all kinds of communities interacting over the Web already," explained Verbeck. "There just was not a platform where you could easily create that and get a large adoption very quickly from the user base."

"Our thought was absolutely there’s value in 3D virtual worlds," said Verbeck. "More importantly, you have to take what the user base is doing now and give them incremental steps and have them see value in the incremental change they make. Most users in the mass market out there don’t know what values they could get from virtual worlds, so they’re not going to go through much hassle, even registering or installing a browser plug-in, to see if it’s valuable to them. We felt there was a set of projects that we thought had value where the applications are entirely white label and the users don’t have to register for a thing, so we started creating that."

What is WebFlock?

One problem in describing WebFlock is that the point is to be many things to many clients. At its core, the tool lets the Sheep create entirely white-label, Flash-based, download-free (past the Flash plug-in) environments for socializing, casual games, and media consumption.

WebFlock, at its most basic, is a not-quite 3D environment that provides branded rooms with chat functionality, metrics tracking, and automatic load-balancing on a Software-as-a-Service model. The Sheep charge a monthly fee for hosting, support, software, and maintentance. The rental fee, plus custom avatars and spaces design, will cost brands under $100,000 for 12 months.

The spaces are capped at about 20 people or so, but Verbeck says that's as much a function of usability and culture than technology.  And that may be a temporary limitation.

"In a visual space like that, one of the things you trade off is that it is an intimate connection and persistent connection, but in any context, you can’t carry on any lively conversation with more than 20 people or so, and text chat rooms have been limited to that too," said Verbeck. "I will separately say that we are very interested in and are working on a way to have a large-scale, live event. You’re probably only going to talk to the people around you, but your experience is impacted by seeing the whole crowd."

At its more developed, WebFlock is much more customizable. Spaces can be placed on a single brand homepage or distributed through MySpace or Facebook. It can come with not only customized avatars and spaces, but games, more interactive objects, and integration with brands' existing Web content, like streaming media or social networks. In fact, that's one of the main points.

One drawback for brands working in other virtual worlds is simply that they lose control over some of the users' registration information. A community member becomes a Second Life user instead of simply a Showtime fan. So while WebFlock will let spaces run with no registration and simply anonymous guest avatars, it can also connect to existing communities.

"Our implementations will allow our customers to have users use their existing log-ins with that Web site to get into the virtual space," said Verbeck.  "I think Showtime will start out with just instant-on guest avatars, but may incorporate log-ins later.  Other projects we are currently working on involve using our customer's existing log-in systems.  The key is that the user doesn't have to sign up for a new account with some third party."

Competition

Browser-based environments and virtual worlds for brands seem to be the flavor du jour. Last week alone brought the public beta of Vivaty and the launch of Google's Lively on top of previously launched ExitReality. Verbeck says WebFlock is a different beast. The company will still develop on other platforms--and may one these--but looks at WebFlock for unique advantages.

One is that there's no download. Services like those above all require proprietary plug-ins, "and it's a race to see how many people will download them," said Verbeck. WebFlock just takes the already ubiquitous Flash.

"For business and ROI, even if it’s the easiest download in the world, it still will cut the audience participation in half," he continued. "That’s fine if you’re spending a long time and trying to get adoption through social networks. But that’s not what we’re doing. The trade off is it’s not true 3D. We’ve been doing a little bit of 3D capabilities and extending what you can do to  Flash. But it is a trade off."

The other benefit is in the ownership. WebFlock is not--not--a virtual world. It's a tool for developing virtual environments. While other worlds develop content relationships with brands, The Sheep are only interested in taking WebFlock to the brands themselves.

"[It] is a business model concern for a lot of publishers we’re talking to," said Verbeck. "Lively and Viaty and all those are trying to be the world themselves. We’re offering something entirely white label. It’s not us establishing a relationship with the end user. This is a tool set for anyone to publish to their website and it’s separate from everyone else’s in the world. We can totally customize the product. That’s a pretty big difference. And there are things that make sense to do either way, but a lot of the opportunities that we were trying to develop for, we just weren’t seeing something out there."

Use Cases

That's actually always been part of The Sheep's work. Building out a virtual world sim isn't about advertising to the virtual world population. It's about providing a valuable, virtual service and space to a brand's fans and community. It's just that previously that's only been possible in other virtual worlds.

"Almost all the projects we’ve done in Second Life were not targeting the Second Life audience," said Verbeck. "They were targeting the existing audience and trying to bring them into Second Life. It’s pretty much the same. If we did an experiment with MLB—and we’re not working with MLB right now--they’re looking to serve current MLB fans that come to their website and then go to their forums. If we were doing anything with MLB today, we’d be putting an experience on their website. That’s going to be the same as our customers have always been trying to do. There’s a distinction, but it’s the other way around. We’re still serving existing community, we’re just now not trying to get them to sign up for a different platform."

That's the other important thing to understand. WebFlock is a play for communities. It's likely never going to be an enterprise tool. It can, though,  be used to develop full-blown virtual worlds, as the Sheep are doing for an upcoming kids world. Mostly, though, its about heading back to the Web to find passionate communities.

"We think a big use case is communities on the Web, whether that’s a a community for those interested in the new Batman movie, so there could be content and spaces for fans to talk about the movie," said Verbeck. "That’s not a fixed community over time, but those are passionate fans. We have multiple customers that we’re already in production for projects on."

Communities

That fits into The Sheep's larger plans for WebFlock. If anyone recalls Verbeck's afternoon keynote at Virtual Worlds 2008, they might recall a sense of pessimism. That's not about the industry, which is more successful than ever,  said Verbeck, but about the time line for development and where money is being spent. WebFlock is part of the Sheep's answer.

"I said then that serving communities on the Web is going to be another big thing for virtual worlds," recalled Verbeck. "The rest is all kids and experiments so far. I think it’s a huge step forward with the kids worlds. This is the first time in 20 years the industry is not going to go away entirely. But that’s not true of the entire space. Hopefully we’ve created a tool that works in some situations and hopefully other tools will be created for others."

Verbeck admits that even with the easiest solution, there will still be emotional--not pragamtic or technological pushback--from some communities. Some just aren't interested in virtual worlds. There are, though, more that might find value in them than are currently being served.

As an example, Verbeck returns to Major League Baseball. The forums for MLB don't require a login. They're completely anonymous. Users can simply log in and communicate through an asynchronous experience. During a game, though, the forums start to be used as chat rooms, turning them into synchronous communication. Those users may not take to a video game-like environment, but, then again, if it offered casual games like trivia around the sport, streamed video, and customizable avatars with team jerseys, they might.

"Where our expertise come is in is that for any given community, you have to customize the activity," said Verbeck. "There’s more interest in the virtual world environment than just a straight chat space because you can play games and watch video. You have to look at the activities they want and are doing already."

For those communities, it's just a matter of finding out what the communities want. And The Sheep are counting on the fact that there plenty more communities out there that could benefit.

"My assessment is that there is a huge audience being entertained in some fashion on the Web often through communicating with other people," said Verbeck. "I contend that that audience is going to get a lot of virtual worlds and is going to take to it. You look around the technology space and there’s a lot of us that go to the Web and are just getting one specific article, but there are a huge number of people that are just hanging out, even if they don’t call it that."

Showtime and The L Word

There may be other projects and even a full-blown kids world in the works, but the first glimpse most will see of WebFlock will come at the end of August in the beta of The L Word experience.

"We’ve collaborated with The L Word for some time, and they’re very comfortable with iteration," said Verbeck. "The venue will be The Planet, an iconic location and coffee shop from the show. It’ll have similar capabilities to what you’ve seen with chat [casual games, instant avatars, light socialization]. It’ll gradually be adding more features and games throughout."

The L Word has been in Second Life for over a year now, with Showtime extending its commitment there as well as looking at bringing in other shows. The service, which has obviously been considered an internal success, at least, will likely stay, with WebFlock coming as an addition, not replacement.

"I don’t think that community will come out of Second Life," said Verbeck. "I think the fans who have gotten used to using Second Life in that context will continue using Second Life because it’s a richer feature set. But, yes, it still is one of the most successful branded communities in Second Life, and it’s very active by Second Life standards. Maybe it has a few hundred very active users, but that’s nothing for an audience of a premium cable television show. This, for the Web, is for the other 99% that are already so motivated they go to the L Word website and post on forums. Really that’s the difference. For the time being, it’s not going to be as rich."

Plans

In order to reach all the communities on the Web, Verbeck says he anticipates that other studios, agencies, and Flash developers will eventually adopt WebFlock. There aren't any announcements on that front--The Sheep have just started pitching it--but the goal would be for developers to work on a range of applications, from casual games to virtual worlds, hosted by The Sheep for a fee. And, eventually, Verbeck says, the final step is to let others host the service under a licensing model.

In the end, it points back to promoting virtual worlds and 3D-style interactions on the Web.

"The goal would be to really incite the building of virtual worlds and the Web and have virtual spaces on sites all over the Web, everything from retail and entertainment applications and communities, all those things." said Verbeck. "The way that a lot of sites have videos now and a lot of sites have forms, the goal would be to have a lot of sites have virtual spaces. It may not all be through WebFlock, but that’s what we want. We’re trying to help with that."

That's a goal that others have  talked about. Some look at the 3D Web as a purely 3D interface for content--a Metaverse in the original sense. Verbeck sees 3D as a component for the Web.

"The way I see it is that Web pages are all interlinked," he explained. "You don’t just go to the front of the website, you go through and scroll through. I think virtual spaces will be compatible with the Web that way. I think you’ll have a text link on a site that takes you to another specific virtual space and you could have a link in a virtual space that pulls up a text website elsewhere. It’s a way of thinking that some websites are text and images and some are video and some are virtual spaces. You can link to and from any of those different media, and it’s just the Web."

Comments

[David Crespo]

Ouch! that has to hurt. One week after Google Lively, and this is announced.

Webflop?

[Jeff L.]

Good to see a download-free, browser-based virtual world tool. This is definitely the future of the Virtual Worlds.

The cost seems high though ($100k annually)…

3DXplorer from Altadyn offers similar capabilities (or maybe more) at a fraction of the cost. It's been out since last year.

Anyway…best of luck to ESC.

[Leon Jones]

I'm looking for a big hat to make me look cool. Anyone know where I can get one?

[Simon Newstead]

Seems like a nice move, the more tools out there for community builders the better.

And having a lower end more accessible solution with Flash can help open up the audience even more.

Hopefully this doesn't lead to a rash of under inhabited single brand environments though?

[Kevin]

Too little too late. What upsets me the most is the false claim that it is a 3D world (that is called breaking the law) and the claim that the platform brings massive scalability (20 avatars at dog slow speed does not even qualify as scalable).

All I see is an attempt by the ESC to position itself as a leader in the development of browser-based virtual worlds with false claims. Well... why not... after all the ESC was born on feeding off SecondLife hype and empty promises leaving lots of lots of companies with useless empty SIMS.