Interesting movements related to the Virtual World industry

It is fair to call this an industry or a business now I think. Still a fledgling one but definitely shaping into an industry. One of the ways you I think you can tell is that stories are not just about what has been done with a technology, but start to get stories and general interest in the people doing things with them. Much of Web 2.0 is dotted with Rock ‘n’ Roll personalities. Virtual worlds have created another set of names to know and personalities to track around various companies.
With the various moves around Linden Lab, Philip Rosedale stepping aside and Mark Kingdon joining as the CEO it was interesting to see that this was news that appeared in all sorts of business journals and publications.
The most recent, and significant story this week has been Cory Ondrejka, former Linden Lab CTO is now Senior Vice President of digital strategy as EMI. There can be lots of discussion about the media industry and the benefits that EMI will have hiring a known name in the Virtual World and game industry. As Richard Bartle pointed out on Cory’s blog announcement this has made it to the UK Guardian business news
So we have articles not about whether virtual worlds make sense, whether working in or on them has value, but instead about how a media business is going to find new ways to reach audiences and customers. That’s business taking this all very seriously.
p.s. Good luck Cory from eightbar

5 thoughts on “Interesting movements related to the Virtual World industry

  1. Hmmm.. while I wish Mr O well in his new venture, I’m not sure I’d draw too many conclusions about what this means for the status of Virtual Worlds, though it says quite a lot about the status of Mr O. That said, the print version of The Grauniad accompanied the article with a piccy taken in Second Life… which was nice, I suppose.

  2. It is absolutely validation that there are some of the brightest minds involved in Virtual Worlds currently. Whether or not EMI, or business in general will ever figure out this beast called VW remains to be seen. Actually, I think VW needs to figure out business. Scale back, dumb down, apply to the masses…

    BTW, a little discussion started on this at our home http://rceuniverse.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6947

    Sorry for my shamelessness 🙂

  3. I am not surprised that Philip, Cory and Mark are hitting biz columns. No matter how laggy SL grid is, no matter only less than 60000 consequent users in-world, virtual worlds are big business. And some people, unlike scandal-seekers and hype blowers, are thinking more clearly and follow the news.

    Actually, this exchange of people sounds like a good mixture. After all, more or less successful, attempts for different businesses to step into virtual environment it might be refreshing to see joined steps of people who know the world and people who know the business.

  4. Pingback: Interesting movements related to the Virtual World industry « Social Media.Online Games.Virtual Worlds

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