Third-party metaverse developers
Linden has released a cool survey of developers providing 3rd party services in the Second Life platform. At SXSW, Reuben Steiger of Millions of Us was very upfront about calling himself “an ad agency,” and that’s what some of these folks do — certainly many of the ones making big bucks. The value isn’t so much in the eyeballs they get in SL, it’s in the publicity that ensues when the build for some company gets picked up by a wire service and plastered all over the news.
Anyway, a few of the stats:
- Around 560 people making their living at it.
- Around 380 projects going right now.
- Biggest company has 175 people.
- Total revenues in Q1 07: $6.7m (note that the media revenue is down at $31,500).
(via Clickable Culture)
Nice Raph (and Tony, by extension). It’s weird, both you and Adam Reuters after the panel touched on the fact that I called Millions of Us an ad agency. I guess it’s would be more fashionable to say that we’re a “Metaverse Development Company” but the problem is that outside of a fairly small community, nobody knows what that means. So I describe us in terms of what we do and ultimately that is conceiving of ways to help companies and organizations use participatory media and virtual worlds to connect with people in ways that are both authentic in tone and gamelike in their experiences. Ugh. See why I say ad agency? 5000 Linden dollar reward for someone who comes up with a better title for us.