Virtual Worlds News

Red Bull Expands Presence In Home

Red Bull entered Sony's PlayStation Home as the first consumer goods brand for the virtual world back in December 2008. Now the energy drink company has decided to up its commitment to virtual world engagement by expanding its space in Home. Today Red Bull launched two new spaces, a Flugtag area to let users check out and even try flying some of the many homemade aircraft launched briefly by crash enthusiasts over the past 19 years. A second area, the Red Bull Illume, highlights pictures from the company's Illume sports competition.

If Sony's numbers are accurate, Home may be a more and more appealing space for brands. In December, the company pegged Home at 10 million users, up from the 5 million that the company was bragging about in March.  That may be set to grow as Sony preps for a mobile version of Home on its PlayStation Portable, currently in beta in Japan.

Farmers Market Moves from Second Life to Open Web

A unique presence in Second Life since early 2009, the Virtual Farmers Market (VFM) has jumped the gauntlet and with the help of development studio Digital Presence has begun life anew on the open web, albeit in much the same format as was the case inside Second Life.

Habbo Launches Ad Measuring Tool Habble

Teen virtual world Habbo Hotel this week launched Habble, a measurement tool that tracks the level of online conversation taking place about brands in-world. The product was created to help advertisers measure a return on investment from ad dollars spent within the Habbo world and is designed to be used in conjunction with existing metrics, such as click-through rates, time spent on-site, friending levels, and impressions; Habble enables marketers to measure brand names, slogans or key phrases over a defined period with data updated daily and displayed and analyzed in a chart that maps peaks of activity.

"To engage with young people, brands first need to become part of the conversation and this new tool provides another level of insight into this hard to reach demographic," said Phil Guest, SVP Global Ad Sales at Habbo owner Sulake. "It is helping our advertisers understand the value of running advertising promotions in Habbo Hotel, not only showing the uplift from a promotion, but more interestingly, the continued discussion long after the brand promotion has finished."

[Sulake's Executive VP and President North America Teemu Huuhtanen will be speaking at the upcoming Engage! Expo taking place February 16 and 17 in New York City.]

Jeremy Liew Discloses Consumer Internet Predictions for 2010

Readers of the this blog and others (as well as traditional news sites, including The Wall Street Journal's) know that Jeremy Liew, a managing director at Lightspeed Venture Partners, is an active voice in the conversation surrounding consumer internet applications, including virtual worlds and virtual goods.

Every year, Liew (who is also a regular speaker at Engage! Expo, the trade show and conference program produced by this blog's parent, Engage Digital Media) memorializes his predictions for the coming year in a post on the Lightspeed company blog.

This year, Liew sent his post to VirtualWorldsNews.com with an invitation to run it simultaneous with his posting to the Lightspeed blog.

Here are Liew's Consumer Internet Predictions for 2010 (and pay close attention to #1 and #2):

Boy Meets Girl Hoodie Promo: First Online, Then In Stores

Fashion Fantasy Game (FFG), an online fashion game/virtual world/chat community for teen girls is allying with contemporary apparel brand Boy Meets Girl (BmG) to offer a virtual fashion line of BmG products online -- all designed to drive real-world sales.  As part of the promotion, all FFG members will receive a free virtual version of Boy Meets Girl’s Coco Hoodie, which is expected to be one of the hottest real-world gifts for teen girls and young women this holiday season.

The Boy Meets Girl brand has been featured in a number of fashion publications as well as TV shows like Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, Sex & the City, and America's Next Top Model. Which makes the try it online before you buy it a natural fit, according to FFG founder and CEO Nancy Ganz  "Today, teens are used to being able to sample a song and download to purchase; our savvy Fashion Fantasy Game audience is ready to try on outfit virtually and then purchase the real thing with a few more clicks." Fashion Fantasy Game says it has tallied nearly a million registered members who have created more than 1.8 million original fashion designs online.

"Nicholas Flamel" Spinning Gold With Gaia Community

Michael Scott, author of youth fantasy series "The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel," keeps coming back to Gaia Online to promote his series. It's not just the official tours--this week marks his third virtual appearance, one for each book so far--but his overall interest in the virtual world as a new form of reader community.  The outreach doesn't hurt either.

"I connected immediately and astoundingly with the audience," Scott said of his first visit in 2007. "In the days following the first appearance, I had so many hits to my personal website it literally crashed the server on three occasions.  I'm still seeing a lot of hits from Gaia."

Animax And Planet Color Targeting Parents Through The Kids

Earlier this month we reported that Animax Entertainment was working with Suppertime Entertainment to create a new virtual world based around Planet Color by children's author and illustrator Todd Parr. It's aiming at kids too young to be involved in most virtual worlds--but it's also targeting their parents.

"We really felt we needed a media platform. Todd Parr's audience is kids 4-8. They're readers, but parents make the purchases," explained Gerry Renert of Suppertime and the co-creator of Planet Color. "We wanted to get that message out there in a broader sense and also in a more involving, direct sense. What makes more sense than the online presence?"

WildTangent And Mochi Media Partner For Ads

WildTangent and Mochi Media announced that they had partnered today to combine audiences across their collective advertising networks. Mochi's platform has been integrated by over 10,000 Flash game developers, it says, and is generating several hundred million monthly video impressions. Those will be joined with premium advertising opportunities in the WildTangent Games Network, which is primarily filled with casual games, but also features casual MMOs and virtual worlds like RuneScape, Free Realms, and Magi-Nation.

"WildTangent's advertising business is growing at a rate of more than 50 percent annually because it creates scalable engagement opportunities in and around games for leading brands," said Dave Madden, executive vice president of WildTangent. "Mochi Media has cultivated a huge audience of gamers reachable with a premium advertising experience. By adding them to our network, we are now able to offer advertisers reach against more than 30 percent of the U.S. online gaming population with a unique mix of media opportunities."

WeeWorld Joins Alloy From Betawave

WeeWorld is leaving its spot in the Betawave ad network (formerly GoFish) to join Alloy Media + Marketing, Lauren Bigelow, General Manager at WeeWorld, told me last week.  Alloy and GoFish were both part of a back-to-school campaign for Sears last year, which took the brand across the teen and tween metaverse, including WeeWorld. 

Bigelow says the transition was prompted by Alloy's expertise, as "a veteran in the teen space."

Quick Stat: Habbo France Draws 20,000 Fans For Nouvelle Star

The big music news in Habbo around here has been its partnership with FremantleMedia to bring American Idol into the virtual  world. The two had previously partnered for a short-term promotion for the French version, Nouvelle Star. That partnership is apparently back on.  In Habbo France, users can congregate in a Nouvelle Star room, take a weekly quiz, and meet eliminated singers who visit each week after the show. The world will also host a chat with the winner after the show ends in June. 

That's both a bit more and less than the American Idol partnership, which sounds like a larger environment, but brings in less participation from the current cast. Here the users get the complete branded experience, but in France they get the personalities.  Habbo FR has formed a fan base of 20,000 users in Nouvelle Star's group. With the end of the show approaching in six weeks, that's sure to increase. [via Sulake]