Virtual Worlds Forum

Music has always been a big feature in Second Life, but when it comes to branded activity, it's been restricted to artists and labels rather than music manufacturers. Not any more though: Gibson Guitar is opening its Gibson Island tomorrow with a live gig. The company's island is (naturally) in the shape of a Les Paul guitar, and offers several venues for in-world gigs. Playing the launch is Bob Welch, apparently a multi-platinum solo artist back in the 70s, not to mention a former singer/guitarist for Fleetwood Mac.

When it was announced earlier this week, Google Lively seemed to be focused on people's own personal virtual rooms, rather than branded rooms. However, it seems the latter has just as much of a role to play in Lively's future, with the announcement that the National Geographic Channel has launched its own Lively space, created by virtual agency Millions Of Us.

Virtual worlds firm Worlds has announced plans to launch a virtual world in partnership with Darryl McDaniels - otherwise known as DMC out of hip-hop pioneers Run DMC. The world will be called DMC World, although that name may run into problems, given that it's already used for a popular DJ online community.

UK-based virtual world VizWoz has announced a new contest for users involving its new VizWoz media player feature. The search for the 'VizWoz DJ of the Year 2008' kicks off next week, and will tie into other music-related activities within the world.

US firm Blockdot has opened a gaming center in Second Life, offering a range of casual games for users to play and interact around. It's located on Asahi Advertising's G7 Island, and the games are taken from Blockdot's own Kewlbox web portal.

Here's a story out of leftfield to show how 3D avatars could break out of the web and onto other media platforms. TV Asahi is producing a one-hour pilot TV show called Hoshi-ichi Owarairyoku Test, due to air on 14th June in Japan. It appears to be some kind of cross between a gameshow and a talent show, hosted by local celeb Kendo Kobayashi. Anyway, the interesting thing (from this blog's point of view) is the fact that up to 100,000 viewers will be represented on-screen as 3D avatars.

News is all over the wires that Linden Lab co-founder Cory Ondrejka, who left the company earlier this year, has joined major record label EMI as senior vice president of digital strategy. He'll be working with digital president Douglas Merrill, who joined from Google in April. The moves are clear signs that EMI is looking outside the music industry for executives to try and restore its waning fortunes, but is there a knock-on effect for the virtual worlds industry in Ondrejka's appointment?

Virtual worlds firm Metaversum has created a city called Bitropolis within its Twinity virtual world, to promote this year's Bitfilm festival. The event showcases the latest digital films and animations, but it's the first time it's had a presence in a virtual world too.

The BBC has been a big supporter of virtual worlds in the UK, not least with its Adventure Rock world, which has been high-profile in recent months. It seems the area will continue to be a priority for the UK broadcaster, judging by its annual programme policy statement (PDF link)

Sony's Home virtual world for PlayStation 3 might not have opened to the public fully, but the company has nevertheless unveiled a new area to its closed beta test users. It's called the Media And Events Space, and will seemingly be used for virtual mirroring of Sony's real-world press launches.

Whatever happened to Duran Duran's plans to make a splash in Second Life? The band were planning their own island and a high-profile concert, garnering plenty of press coverage for their forward-thinking when the plans were announced back in August 2006. Yet since then... nothing. However, it seems they haven't abandoned the idea.

Second Life has a long tradition of live in-world music events, although one of the barriers has always been the limits on how many fans can actually enjoy the virtual experience simultaneously. Utherverse is a company that's claiming to have solved these problems (albeit outside Second Life) with plans for Virtual-Vancouver, which it's describing as "the first massively multi-user online music festival".

When it comes to record labels, they don't come bigger than Universal Music Group. So the news that UMG is using Second Life for its annual Pan-European company conference will come as a big boost to the notion of virtual worlds as corporate tools.

VentureBeat has a catchup with UK-based WeeWorld, which says its users are now creating more than 600,000 WeeMee avatars a month, and that the grand total since its technology launched three years ago is 21 million. It's interesting how companies often focus on number of avatars (Habbo is the same) rather than unique users - it'd be interesting to see stats on how many avatars the average user creates.

This is one of our more lighthearted posts, but the video above is well worth a look. It shows a pair of Habbo users living out their wrestling fantasies on the virtual world, using dialogue rather than fighting moves, and some smartly organised furniture acting as a ring. There's a serious aspect: Habbo has been working with wrestling body the WWE on several promotions, so the video shows how this marketing has been taken up by the community in its own quirky way.