The latest revenue model for online communities doesn’t exist—literally. Several companies are already making quite a lot of actual money, not through advertising or subscriptions, but by selling items that are really just images on a screen. That’s the main theme of the Virtual Goods Summit, a conference held at Stanford last week, the brainchild of Google’s Charles Hudson and my friend Susan Wu, a VC at Charles River Ventures.
While the term evokes gold coins and magic items bought and sold in MMORPGs, conference attendance by social networks like Dogster and Hot or Not suggests how pervasive the concept has become. Virtual goods can also be gifts you send to friends on your network (as in Facebook), and it’s an already growing income stream. Consider some highlights from the conference:
- Three Rings’ CEO Daniel James on Puzzle Pirates, a casual MMO: “We do about $350,000 a month in revenue, of which $250,000 is virtual currency sales.”
- Craig Sherman of teen hangout Gaia Online: “Virtual economy, we have about 50,000 completed auctions every day. Plus 12 virtual stores that are like an Amazon space, 6,000 items sold.”
- Dan Kelly from virtual currency exchange site Sparter, on the total value of the industry: “It’s easily a billion dollar [secondary] market. Consumers have told us these things have value, the industry now is trying to reconcile that with their business model.”
The question is why they have value, and Robert Scoble began the moderating of one Virtual Goods panel by noting a real Swiss watch that sells for $20,000—roughly $19,500 more than meaningful functionality and quality would ever require. With Hot or Not, users can buy each other virtual flowers, and according to CEO James Hong, intention drives the willingness to pay more: “We sell more expensive flowers to people that have a relationship.”
Kudos to Mark Wallace and the staff of Virtual World News for taking such copious notes to the conference’s many panels—read more here, here, here, and here. Be sure to also read the conference presentation– first in the West, I believe– on the phenomenal success of QQ, China’s largest IM/games/social network, where you can buy virtual penguins as pets (54 million sold so far), with a virtual currency that’s so popular, the Chinese government is worried it’ll destabilize the official one.
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7:50 PM PT
[...] the Virtual Goods Summit and you can read his comments over at 3pointD. Further commentary from Wagner James Au and Chris [...]
7:59 PM PT
[...] World News - Liveblogging the Virtual Goods Summit GigaOm - ..Three Rings’ CEO Daniel James on Puzzle Pirates, a casual MMO: “We do about $350,000 a [...]
2:45 AM PT
[...] talks from Virtual Goods 2007. An overview of the conference plus commentary on the subject is available here from Om Malik along with a list of top ten MMOGs by active user or subscriber. (Update: The [...]
6:50 AM PT
[...] and internet usage have started catching up, the virtual goods space online has developed into an impressive market (multi-billion USD in 2007). Interestingly enough, the unanticipated viral growth of virtual worlds [...]
4 comments so far
9:11 AM PT
In Korea, there are many virtual goods models. For example, cyworld sells minihome skin items and miniroom furniture items.
They are earning $100,000 everyday from those deals. Skin items are just homepage background images that are made by comic or design providers.
Users have to pay for each skin item $3~4 and this item will expire in few months later. But almost Korean users buy items. And they send items to their friends for gifts.
10:18 AM PT
Why is it so difficult to understand virtual goods?
Often times, aren’t they the same as buying wallpapers or ringtones or (gasp) flying toasters?!
Also, these new virtual goods (flowers, etc) are just replacing physical goods the way ecard’s replaced paper cards!
The big problem still seems to be how to integrate it all.
6:05 PM PT
If only more (smart) people starting these companies spent their time developing real products! We have billions of users wanting real products with utility (especially in developing countries) that would also sell for real money.
May be its just easier to design virtual products :)
10:46 AM PT
If only more (smart) people starting these companies spent their time developing real products! We have billions of users wanting real products with utility (especially in developing countries) that would also sell for real money.
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