What's next? Hiring virtual nannies to baby sit virtual children, sitting on virtual couches to speak to virtual therapists, or perhaps it's coveting a virtual neighbor's swanky new digs?
As more people spend time on the Web, increasingly they're porting their offline habits onto the Net. The social networking spaces are the biggest examples of this.
Many of my readers know that I refer to MySpace spaces as dorm rooms because they are the virtual equivalent of that one-room environment that reveals in a snapshot, who you are and what you like. In my day, posters of bands were plastered on the physical dorm room walls. Today, those virtual posters sing on demand in our virtual rooms.
The social networking blogging platforms have helped everyone create these public, dynamic virtual rooms. In the early days, the blog/social network hosters, which act as governing bodies, provided all the fundamentals for a community to thrive, like communications, mail and trash services. On News Corp's (
NWS) MySpace, roughly 30 million emails are conducted a month, I heard. The governing bodies have also provided the virtual version of an interior designer so one can decorate one's space by using the cookie-cutter templates offered.
But a decorated space and a platform to communicate are just the beginning to living out our lives online.
With the proliferation of photos and videos, a number of Web-based services, like OneTrueMedia, have arisen to let anyone appropriate or manipulate images and videos to hang up, or should I say embed, in their particular space. (Sidenote: I've been a fan of photo/video-editing tools, like JumpCut, which was just acquired by Yahoo (
YHOO).
For other startups I noticed in the video space, read this prior column.Most of these companies servicing this trend of putting our lives online, are making money via advertising or subscriptions. But one business model I found quite interesting, and one that really taps into human nature, is being developed by Wallop, a social networking company spun out of Microsoft (
MSFT) Research Labs. This week, the company presented its new social networking service at Demo, one of the more popular events that highlight startups with potential.
Essentially, Wallop is banking on humans to be true to their nature as they find meaning and value in the tangible objects they collect, and as they covet their neighbor's assets.
Wallop wants to feed this desire by letting people buy all sorts of knick-knacks, as well as rugs, curtains, wall paper, furniture and collectibles to spruce up their Wallop spaces. The more people want to express themselves with new frilly items, the more they'll go to Wallop to buy these things. This is what Karl Jacob, CEO and founder of Wallop, is banking on. Now, it may be hard to imagine that people would spend a dime on silly items to decorate their spaces. It's just imaginary!
But in actuality, there is a significant market for such frills.
Jacob provided me with a list of examples. For instance, on CyWorld, the Korean social network site, about $125 million is spent annually on stuff to decorate the CyWorld communities. In the virtual-game market, about $900 million is spent by players sprucing up their environment with castles, bigger castles, castles with moats, castles with moats and big round tables, castles with moats, big round tables, and knights, etc. And, we can't forget ringtones. Consumers spent $2 billion in ringtones back in 2001. Today, about $7.4 billion is spent on personalized ringtones around the world.
So, Wallop is a neat idea, with a lot of potential. The challenge will be getting people in the door to set up yet another profile. I already have more than half a dozen profiles from MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo's 360, MSN Spaces, Friendster, Tribe, Yelp, two blogs and Six Apart's Vox.
It's just unclear to me how many people will be drawn to the Wallop world, just for the sheer sake of being able to buy stuff to spruce up their spaces.
But if our online world feeds an alter ego that makes someone feel whole, then I can imagine their desire to spend on it, if only to give themselves a bigger role in a real world that often makes them feel so small. I'll give Jacob this, he certainly understands that a thriving online community is one that lets people be people. And, one thing people love to do, is to express themselves, be noticed and be heard.
Hmm. I guess down the road, Jacob will have to make available some virtual therapists. But, for now, I'll take that brown leather couch, please.
Tags :
Francisco,
Networking,
bambi,
social
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