German mirror virtual world Twinity from Metaversum has entered public beta, after a private beta lasting several months. At present, Twinity contains a replica of much of Berlin, but the plan is to expand it to cover several other major cities. Metaversum raised a multi-million funding round in April of this year from Balderton Capital to fund the development of Twinity.
It has been a very busy private beta from Twinity: they unveiled their replica of Berlin in July, and then followed that up with a series of promotional events, including most recently a tie-up with the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight, as well as regular walking tours of the virtual city and events clearly designed to foster an arty community.
Whilst no user numbers have been published at this stage, I suspect Twinity is doing well. It has received a lot of buzz and coverage, and has produced a technically competent virtual world which is being well marketed. The fact that it is a mirror world is also likely to be attractive to many users: Berliners will presumably enjoy the opportunity to walk around a replica of their own city, and others will enjoy looking round a city which they do not know. The mirror world concept, whilst expensive, may also have significant business rewards. It could well be easier to persuade a company to create a virtual worlds presence in a virtual equivalent of a real world area than in an unknown virtual area – the mirror world could act as a halfway house for more conservative brands, because it is more of a known quantity.
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