I would like to wish Marry Christmas and happy New Year to all of Teachers and Students 

related with the Executive MBA realized by Stockholm University School of Business and Cracow Economy University School of Enterprenauership and Management.

Remember, allways look on the bright side of life and ... have many of Pinacoladas. See Virtual Pincoladas >>.

The virtual life research was a part of a DBE Assignment of MBA course realized by Stockholm University School of Business and Academy of Economy in Cracow. This new kind of assignment enabled me to collect practical experience of using newest technologies like Web 2.0, including blogging. From other side I the topic of the assignment pushed me to go deeper in new, not known for me area – virtual life, worlds and societies. Such practical kind of assignments is in my opinion the most effective way of learning.

The new trends in internet like Web 2.0 must be tracked by modern managers. Currently, Internet is like telephone or electricity – the human civilization based on in. One of my friends says: that currently each computer without internet is worth nothing. Do you think the same?

Exchanging experiences with Iza, who is leading blog: Blog Proof, I see one general disadvantage of all new trends of Web 2.0. All of them consumes extremely time of involved people. I saw this analyzing virtual life and also leading blog.

All of Web 2.0 are very trendy now, but in my opinion this situation can changed. Other problem is extremely huge amount of daily generated contents in blogs, which duplicate others information or provide no-worth information. Hmmm, maybe someone sees here an opportunity…

No I’m sure one, that without this practical BDE assignment, probably I would be not able to see all of sides of new technologies! I hope we will have similar opportunities in other subjects too…

During last 3 moths I tried to jump deeper in new, growing, virtual economy. I’ve tried to analyse virtual societies and reason why people decide to live in virtual worlds. What opportunities bring new trends for investors and how can looks like the virtual future.

Results of this research are multi dimensional:

-        reasons of development and existence virtual worlds

-        virtual societies and psychological aspects of living in virtual worlds

-        micro economy of inside virtual worlds

-        trends, opportunities and risks for investors from real world

Current virtual worlds, societies and economy are on early development stage. Real people are going into virtual worlds searching generally entertainment. Virtual spaces gives people one main opportunity, which is not available in real world: they can begin life many times with “clear account”. From other side, they can be someone who they are not able to be in real world like properties owners, investors, artists, etc. Virtual worlds are visited generally by young generations, which know very well new technologies and new virtual life style.

Participation in new life style is very expensive, but not in the same way as in normal life. The cost calculated in US dollars are rather low, but the participation in virtual reality is consuming extremely time.

The inside economy of virtual worlds is steered by companies like Linden Labs providing virtual worlds infrastructures. On current development stage, from one side the regulation are not very restricted and from other side are limited to implemented infrastructure functionality. In my opinion both treads will develop in the future and the restriction level will grow.

According to infrastructure there is one trend, which in my opinion will have important influence on the virtual life development. This trend is an integration of virtual infrastructures and open standards for worlds and artificial beings behaviour. 

Currently, the real business can generally profit from three general sources of virtual worlds and societies:

-        providing infrastructure of virtual worlds

-        trading virtual goods

-        promoting and testing new trends and brands (value added)

Manager can ask what to do with this new fast growing trend. In my opinion the answer depends on company situation:

-        for small, new, growing or having none stable situation companies the new trend can be not interesting – too high costs (money and time) and not sure incomes,

-        for big companies and investors with stable incomes, the new trends could be interesting for investment, but with high risk and possible high revenue.

Virtual worlds and virtual life are currently in development phase. Real users are finding virtual spaces as new entertainment environments. The virtual societies are connecting generally young people from the whole globe.

What opportunities hide new worlds for investors from real worlds?

First of opportunity can be using the virtual spaces as value added to current offer (products or services) by enterprises. Each company can use virtual societies as new target group where can test and promote new brands or tries to set new trends. Such operations required to invest in group of people who are operating unofficially in virtual worlds. Nowadays, marketing departments are staying before big challenge. They have to map real products or services to virtual ones. The main challenge is to send the real user hidden information under virtual products or services, which enables the user to recognize real products or services.

Second, but difficult opportunity for real investor is to build and provide virtual worlds. Only owners of infrastructure of virtual worlds can earn real money, but they have to be very fast in implementing competitive features. Probably in the future the infrastructure of virtual worlds will be open and this will enable users a single sign on and free teleportation between worlds.

The early stage of development of virtual worlds and increasing amount of users should be a signal for real investors to follow trends in those new worlds. There can be generated opportunities that are nowadays impossible to imagine.

But what happened if the new virtual boom will be like internet bubble from the end of 20^th century? In my opinion, all investors have collect many experience and they will check first all new opportunities. I think the internet bubble won’t be repeated.

In summary, new virtual worlds are a good ground for new investments, but not in the nearest future. Only a transformation of virtual worlds to association of open, connected virtual worlds can bring new, not expected opportunities. Current generations will be surly witnesses of the changes in virtual life.

David Coleman is presented in his article the opportunities of virtual workspaces hidden behind virtual worlds. There will be possible that not only one avatar will be steered by real persons, but there will is also possibility of team building. Using such opportunity, the interaction in virtual worlds will change from one-to-one to many-to-many. For more detail and also other aspects of team workspaces read the article.

On the current development stage of virtual worlds they give members only entertainment and possibility of communication. The business is observing the process and surely will catch all opportunities to earn money on this new group of customers.

According to my analysis of virtual life I’d like to discus in this post the reason why people are going to virtual worlds. From the business point of view people are finding there a possibilities of entertaining. But what kind of entertainment is it? People are spending several hours sitting before computer and they have two main aims:

-        communication and interaction with others,

-        building own new, artificial personality.

Now, I’d like to look on those processes from psychological point of view. First of all people who are hiding after computers are building bigger walls between peoples. I think two persons can understand self very well in virtual reality but they won’t be able to communicate in real world. This process is very well visible in big metropolises like, London, Paris, etc. If you are in the train people do not speak together. Everybody wants to separate from others. One person is becoming alone in group of people. The virtual societies can push the same mechanism also to small towns and villages. I think such processes are very dangerous for the human civilisation. I think in the future there will be required promotion on real meetings for new generations which are growing now in virtual cities and worlds.

Looking on the psychological side of virtual societies, I see one very important aspect why people like more virtual life instead of real. In virtual life you can create more then one artificial personality (avatar). If one of your avatars loose trust of others, you can just kill this artificial personality and create new. Nobody will know that you are starting from beginning. You have a “clear account”. In real life nobody has such possibility. Our civilisation is targeted on signing persons who are making mistakes. The winner is someone who is making lower amount of mistakes…

I spent in my life many hours chatting with different people around the world. Now I know that I wasted too much time searching unknown. In my opinion everybody of us should building the local society instead of virtual. I think people should not forget real world! Life is too short.  

The idea of connected open virtual cities could be realized very fast. Sony is working on common platform for all online games, where user creates one own avatar and can switch to different virtual worlds. I think it is beginning of defining and building one platform which connects all virtual worlds. The independent providers will create own cities which will compete for avatars. Each avatar will be able to choose the best for him world, from Warcraft worlds to second life. From fantasy to science fiction worlds. The platform could be also a right opportunity for try-economy, worlds where real companies tests new products on real world simulators.  

I think in near future the biggest internet content providers will fight for making own standard as the best one. I think, here can be only one winner. The possibility of revenue for other companies are in building virtual cities and making them most attractive for avatars. Avatars should pay for entry to virtual worlds. I see two levels of virtual taxes: common entry to the platform and all free worlds or cities. The popular cities probably will created own entry prices, paid monthly or pro virtual time unit…

Currently the virtual worlds and online games are more entertainment then real revenue platform. But the situation could change very fast.

Today I found the right channel for economic analysis of second life. In the old edition of the blog, the author discus SL-economy with Linden Lab founder. Check the article. The newest information about events in second life are discussed on the NWN  blog.

Searching on possibilities of real revenue in virtual worlds I found pod casts of CBS News. On the page you can read and see in video area the reportage about virtual life. The video shows how the virtual world looks like and how the people are involved. Some of them spent weekly 40 hours in virtual world… are we going in „Matrix” direction?

But Sibley Verbeck, founder of the Electric Sheep Company see the virtual worlds as a place for entertainment and communication. In case of communication this virtual game can be important place in globalizing world. See video: Second Life.

From other hand virtual worlds are not free of real problems, like hackers, virtual crime. In such cases could be used real forces (e.g. FBI) to avoid problems.

Interesting way of virtual reality usage I found in the video where Cyndi Tenhoopen talks about opportunities of telemedicine. The parents have a option for checking the illness of child. If it is not strong illness they can check it via internet virtual healthcare. They have no to go to crowded emergency rooms. See video: Virtual Healthcare.