I went to this conference today:
http://www.mcfco.com/AboutUs/Conferences_YearBook.php?ConferenceName=InvestorSummit2008
and attended the Social Media panel.
- KickApps - private - Alex Blum CEO
This speaker was originally slated but was not at the presentation.
- Kiptronic - private - Bill Lowenthal, President & CEO
Kiptronic manages the technical end of advertisement placement for major media producers across many different platforms(hand held devices, phones, tv, internet...ect.) They use the device type, location info, and media topic to filter what ads are placed with media content. For example someone accessing a NYTimes article on their iPhone may see an ad for the newest iPhone; or a local product; or something relating to the article they are downloading.
Fox, Viacom and NYTimes are promoted as major clients.
- Linden Lab / SecondLife - private - John Zdanowski, CFO
John is the CFO so naturally he talked about the fincial aspects of 2ndLife. 2ndLife makes money by selling virtual 'land' to it's users and charging fees for some levels of use. Most of their subscribers make money off of creating elements of the world that are purchased by other users. The have a virtual economy that has a daily volume of activity of about 360 million. Their economy does link with the real economy and many of their hard core users can finance their monthly fees for the service by their virtual trades. Their world is about the size of San Francisco. They are not the only players in this any more and predict about a dozen 2ndLife quality or better services to be online before the end of the year.
- Millions Of Us - private - Brian Dunbar, EVP, Client Services
This company is best explained as a virtual world creator for hire. They do have reach into other areas of viral marketing, and marketing in general, but their cutting edge products involve virtual worlds.
Their big project gives a good example of what they do. They are in partnership with Sony to create several virtual worlds for popular games as a part of Sony's "Home" virtual social world. Sony has not released this yet. The example is that of people who play a game will have the extra benefit of entering a world with other gamers to discuss the game or access special features that only social networking can provide (like planning a battle around a map before entering the actual combat of the game).
Their big claim to fame was the launch of Gossip Girl, in which the built a Gossip Game (a game where you earn points for gossiping) into the world of 2ndLife. Through a concentrated media campaign by the producers of Gossip Girl, they had about half a million visitors that spent on average 30 min playing the game. Talks are on going as to the future of this success... the challenge being; does the studio that produces Gossip Girl want to pay to keep content up to date.
The presentation was interesting. The three presenters and a moderator sat on the stage of a room that held about 50 people. During the course of the hour it filled up to standing room only a few times.
Things to look up: (spelling may not be correct)
Babo
Standal
Nexon
Club Pegiun
Virtual Brain
During a quite moment in the discussion I asked the panel if they had any failures in their business that provided a good lesson. Of their answers this one stuck out: If you build it, they will not come. This advice was from John of SL. They built a large stadium in SL and no one used it. If you don't have someone going out and driving people to your project than it's worthless.
Well that's about it. There are more details, but I wanted to lay out my notes so I can reflect on this tomorrow.
Special Thank you to my brother for alerting me about this.
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