Virtual goods bubble looming?
The buying and selling of virtual goods is an extremely nascent market that seems to be heating up dramatically. Almost daily there are announcements pronouncing large virtual good revenues on the horizon and new forms of payments and rewards for the intrepid user.
Just today social network Hi5 introduced multicultural holiday gifts along with a new payment system. Virtual world Habbo also introduced a new type of currency and reward program for loyal users.
With all of this interest and efforts toward monetization, is this a bubble waiting to burst?
So far, my answer is no.
Virtual goods are part of the walled garden in which they are purchased and consumed. If they fail, they only fail within that specific environment and don't take down the ecosystem because there really isn't one.
There is no portability of the goods between social networks or virtual worlds due to technical and business reasons and therefore there are limited opportunities for outside providers to base their businesses in other-world environments. That insulates others (meaning not the base site) from going down with ship.
For example, I can't start a company to sell virtual cookies on Facebook (though I can use Viximo, which takes the lion's share of the revenue) and even if I could sell on Facebook the virtual cookies wouldn't transfer to other sites Gaia or Habbo. I also can't take the sword I purchased in WoW and use it in IMVU. And while that might be nice, it probably doesn't matter.
It's not clear just how big the virtual goods market is, nor have we seen it become completely bastardized as we eventually will when marketers try to sell anything and everything. In the mean time, it's nice to see any economy flourishing.
Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @daveofdoom. 
(Except for maybe in WoW, if it's something you're going to use in your conquests)
But as for buying "items" on Facebook or Hi5?
Give me a BREAK.
Why would anyone ever want to pay $1 for a lousy JPEG? =P
Why not just copy the jpg, host it onto photobucket. and give it to the person FOR FREE?!
Especially if you're feeling the pinch of the economy and your budget's tight.
- by Len Bullard December 22, 2008 12:49 PM PST
- Today the market is either vertical (one world), or tools-based (eg. Maya) or VRML/X3D/Collada (which all the industry is trying unsuccessfully to drown).
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(5 Comments)Here is one option for the customer: buy the virtual from a tools-based vendor. For a small fee, have the vendor store the product you buy on their server in the original tool format. If you lose a copy, they'll give you another. If you want to take it into a different format world, for a small fee, they customize one for that world.
You get the picture. It is somewhat like buying from a clothes tailor who takes you on as a permanent customer and keeps your last measurements. If you attest you haven't gained weight, they'll make new clothes for you and ship them anywhere in the world.