The latest revenue model for online communities doesn’t
exist—literally. Several companies are already making quite a lot of
actual money, not through advertising or subscriptions, but by selling
items that are really just images on a screen. That’s the main theme of
the Virtual Goods Summit, a
conference held at Stanford last week, the brainchild of Google’s
Charles Hudson and my friend Susan Wu, a VC at Charles River Ventures.
exist—literally. Several companies are already making quite a lot of
actual money, not through advertising or subscriptions, but by selling
items that are really just images on a screen. That’s the main theme of
the Virtual Goods Summit, a
conference held at Stanford last week, the brainchild of Google’s
Charles Hudson and my friend Susan Wu, a VC at Charles River Ventures.
Three Rings’
CEO Daniel James on Puzzle Pirates, a casual MMO: “We do about $350,000
a month in revenue, of which $250,000 is virtual currency sales.”Craig Sherman of teen hangout Gaia Online:
“Virtual economy, we have about 50,000 completed auctions every day.
Plus 12 virtual stores that are like an Amazon space, 6,000 items sold.”Dan Kelly from virtual currency exchange site Sparter,
on the total value of the industry: “It’s easily a billion dollar
[secondary] market. Consumers have told us these things have value, the
industry now is trying to reconcile that with their business model.”
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