More on the opening of Virtual Singapore

Nearly a week after the launch, I wanted to link out to a few of the sites that had more coverage of the launch of Virtual Singapore.

For the Virtual Worlds’ piece, I wanted to clarify one point quoted there.

Metaversum is developing three mirror worlds — Berlin, London, and Singapore — where it hopes commercial, social, and artistic activities will be engaged in by a remote, worldwide audience.

There are not three mirror worlds. There is only one mirror world called Twinity. Berlin, Singapore and future cities are virtual cities inside Twinity. All Twinizens are welcome to visit any of the virtual cities in Twinity.

[Operations] Twinity update August 13, 2009

Dear Twinizens,

Today at 14:30 CET we will be doing a small update to Twinity which requires a short downtime. The update will take approximately 30 minutes and includes a fixes to our internal broadcasting and support tools. No new features are included in this release.

Thanks,

Craig

What girls think of Twinity?

Well, maybe this isn’t representative of what ALL girls think of Twinity, but it’s a group of female Singaporean bloggers, who got together and discussed Twinity a while ago.

Are virtual worlds for real this time?

About a week ago, we held the first ever Virtual Thursday event here in Singapore. The event was a real-world networking session for all companies and individuals involved in the virtual worlds space. Read More

Virtual worlds are getting a second life by Vic Keegan

Over at the Guardian, Vic Keegan has a great post titled “Virtual worlds are getting a second life.” In this, Keegan discusses how social networking sites may get a lot of attention, but virtual worlds have better business models.

There’s another curious thing: Facebook and Twitter are lauded to the skies, but neither has found a way to make money – whereas virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft, Entropia Universe, Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and Second Life are all profitable because their business models are based on the digital elixir of subscriptions and micropayments, a formula that other websites, including newspapers, would die for. Twitter makes the noise, Second Life makes the money.

While Keegan’s mention of Twinity comes a bit later:

In order to get a more streamlined experience, most of the new virtual worlds don’t allow users to make their own content. Twinity, which has just raised €4.5m in new funding, has a virtual version of Berlin and Singapore (with London still in the pipeline): you buy existing apartments or rent shops but can’t build yourself.

Just to clarify, the point is that location owners build the interiors. And stay tuned for more information on this topic. 😉