Virtual Worlds Forum

Nickelodeon's Kids and Family Group has released the latest comScore Media Metrix figures for the performance of its websites - judging by the scramble last time they did this, we expect Disney to hit back with its own press release imminently. Anyway, the Nick figures show good growth for its Neopets virtual world, which increased its unique visitors by 22% in June, while average time spent on site per user grew 19% to 173.6 minutes.

Nielsen Online has released some stats on the most popular websites in the UK, but also the fastest growing ones in terms of total minutes. Two virtual worlds make it into the top ten of the latter chart. Read on to find out which...

Teen-focused virtual world Habbo has announced an impressive milestone - the 100 millionth avatar created by one of its users. The lucky user (a Brit) won a customised room with rare items, a big sack of Habbo coins, and a real-world MacBook Air for their trouble. However, Habbo has released some other stats showing how it's growing...

Web-based virtual world IMVU has announced that it's passed the milestone of 20 million registered accounts, although that translates to 600,000 active monthly users. The company is also now earning $1 million a month in revenue, 90% of which comes from selling virtual currency, while 10% comes from embedded advertising. Around 1.7 million items have been created by users and uploaded to the IMVU community too.

Mattel has revealed that its Barbie Girls virtual world has now signed up nearly 13 million registered users, which it claims makes it the fastest growing virtual world ever. Meanwhile, the company claims more than 85% of those users are older than eight years old, which it says plays into its strategy of keeping older girls "engaged with the core play experiences of the Barbie brand".

We've said it before: there's a huge potential crossover between virtual worlds and casual gaming, and several startups looking to make the most of it. One such is US firm FlowPlay, which launched its beta ourWorld virtual world in April. The company has just announced that it's signed up more than 100,000 users, with returning players logging more than 200,000 hours in the world, with the average user spending an hour a day in the site.

VC firm Lightspeed Ventures is emerging as one of the key players in the social games and MMO spaces, and analyst Jeremy Liew has just published some interesting research into monetisation of free-to-play MMOs and virtual worlds. The topline conclusion: the most successful examples can expect to generate $1-2 per active user every month.

Strategy Analytics has released a report claiming that by 2017, there will be nearly one billion virtual world registrants, with 22% of global broadband users having signed up for one or more virtual worlds. What's more, the company claims that 27% of these registrants will become active users (in other words, there'll actually be around 270 million active virtual worlds users by 2017, which is less headline-worthy than a billion, but still pretty impressive).

If you spend $350 million on acquiring a virtual world, you'd expect its traffic to rise - especially if you're one of the most powerful media firms in the world. Yet it seems Disney has some work to do with Club Penguin, judging by the latest figures from Nielsen Online.

That's the headline coming out of some new research by Gartner Group, which highlights the way many big brands have dived into virtual worlds, but then quietly slunk out within a year and a half when they don't meet their initial expectations.

Learning site Funbrain says more than 14 million children have used its Poptropica virtual world since it launched last September. I hadn't heard of it before, but it's proof that kids' appetite for virtual worlds is growing strongly - and is not necessarily restricted to the large existing worlds like Webkinz and Club Penguin.

We covered Reuters' article about larger virtual agencies looking beyond Second Life for new projects the other day, but New World Notes has followed it up with another angle on the story, pointing out that smaller boutique agencies aren't ditching Linden Lab's world.

Two press releases from 11th April. The first is from Disney: 'Disney Online Continues Its Digital Dominance as the #1 Kids and Family Online Destination, Breaks Traffic Records in First Quarter 2008'. The second is from Nickelodeon: 'Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family's Digital Group Has Record-Breaking Month Online and Establishes Itself as Number-One Kids and Family Online Destination'. Deciding who's correct is beyond our brief, but there's some good news on their respective virtual worlds nonetheless.

Over at New World Notes, Wagner James Au has been surveying his readers on the question of whether Linden Lab will announce plans for an IPO in the next 18 months. It's based on the recent developments, with CEO Philip Rosedale stepping down. And the readers say...

There's an ongoing debate in the virtual worlds industry about how the effectiveness of marketing or advertising campaigns should be measured. Is it about pure numbers of users, or about the amount of time they're engaged for? Many advertisers tend towards the former, while many virtual worlds would like to convince them of the merits of the latter. A new study by Forrester Consulting may help.