A real yardstick for virtual worlds?

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To some, measuring what goes on in virtual worlds is complex enough to require analytic software.

"There is so much activity that goes on inside a virtual world to consider," Jared Freeman, a creator of Code4 Software's V-Tracker package, wrote in the comments section of a TechCrunch article about the MMI. And "then there are the after-effects of virtual worlds that end up as YouTube videos, media write-ups or blog posts."

As a result, Freeman explained, he built a system for "visitor tracking" into V-Tracker with the idea that it might be possible to measure where people go. But he acknowledged in his posting that the issues involved in tracking users' behavior is complex and includes many minute considerations.

For his part, TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley suggested that the goals of the MMI bear similarities to attempts to track the business end of the film industry.

"It's an interesting setup, and an inclusive way of building a solid foundation of usable data for businesses currently dealing with/in virtual worlds, (or) those looking to do so," Riley wrote. "The setup is not unlike the Motion Picture Association of America, in that the enabling body is virtual-world and corporate-agnostic, and in theory will undertake its activities for the good of all involved. I'll be watching with interest the data they start publishing next year."

Indeed, Bloomfield and Wilson are hoping that the MMI will begin putting out measurements next year.

The question is how effective such metrics can be. It's no simple matter to keep track of the personal, social, economic and technical behavior of millions of users role-playing furries, dragons, elves, spacemen and Goths.

But there seems to be momentum toward standardizing virtual worlds, especially considering the interoperability initiative, and the involvement of Christian Renaud, Cisco chief architect of networked virtual environments, in both that effort and the MMI.

Of course, those interested in standardization will have to make such efforts attractive to users. Because without their buy-in, any metrics gathered will be meaningless.

[Mitsuyasi Tiger]

Greaaaat.....

Just what I want! Key metrics and economic statistics from my second life! I can't wait for the first time I get a telemarketer that says "Seeing your recent sending trends in the metaverse - we would love to sell you product XYZ" Oh yes, a Brave New World' *rollseyes*

~Mitsu

[Len Bullard]

A Hard Day's Night

Tiger, if you use privately finance worlds that are publicly accessible, you will get exactly that: tracked, hacked and whacked. It is like a Google GMail account: they own your data for all intents and purposes.

The troubling quote is this:

""My plan is that you get the data out there on what technologies are being used," he said, "how successfully they are, and how quickly they're growing. It's a very light-handed, market-based way of getting to the standards. If you give people the data, they'll sort it out."

There are a lot of assumptions there but they lead to the conclusion that market tracking is a way to 'get to standards' and that is a real stretch. Keep this in mind:

"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said, 'A faster horse.'" - Henry Ford.

You actually can't use 'the wisdom of crowds' to build standards. It doesn't work. That is how HTML became such a mess. There are lots of examples where 'current majorities' are simply samples of a time slice and the zeitgeist is strangely psychotic. When marketing, all of the goals are short term and these analytics make some sense (see "A Hard Day's Night" when George stumbles into the ad firm office).

On the other hand, when doing standards work, you aren't targeting short term effects. You are targeting long term behaviors. Particularly you are targeting long term persistent content because that actually outlives the hardware by a factor of ten. (Software needs about a fifteen year cycle time to recoup investment.)

My intuition is this index is yet-another-bid-for-financing and cred. Movies don't work like software and real-time 3D is a non-linear software system. Trying to mash that into Hollywood economies seems awfully near-sighted and flatlander.