Some Facts and Numbers...
Some stats
on virtual, participative and collaborative 
worlds - Just numbers and facts,
I'm not trying to put ANY analysis or order in it: YOU do that in the comments!
Are you afraid? Exhilarated? What are those numbers telling you ?
Ebay
the biggest
online community in the world, by most measures. It's definitely a Virtual
World in my book. Ebayers have an online identity, trust is essential in their
community , the real worth exchanged is, of course, huge by any measure.
- 241 million subscribers
- 83 million are active
- 1.3 million people in the world are EARNING THEIR LIVING FROM EBAY, making it, by far, the biggest franchise in the world.
In France alone:
- 10 million subscribers
- 15000 earn a living on eBay.
- In 2006, eBay came (way) out on top of all the online retailers for the Christmas season…
Halo 2 and 3
For
those who don't own an Xbox and are not gamers, Halo is the Microsoft game
blockbuster on the Xbox. It's a huge world, many people play online. There's a
huge online community of players exchanging videos of tricks and hints…
Video
games topped music and the movies for revenue in 2004 - and have been spreading
the gap ever since. As they go online, they're also displacing television.
Eevrybody
laughed when Microsoft spent 40M$ to develop Halo 2 in 2004… except ROI took 17
hours, (125M$ in one week end) making Halo 2 the biggest entertainment
blockbuster in history, ahead of Spiderman 2, Jurassic Park, and previous
(movie) record holders.
Halo 3 broke new records, with 170M$ for the first DAY of launch in the US, beating Spiderman 3 (the movie) and Harru Potter (the book) as the year's blockbuster.
Some french, verified, figures:
MSN
today is the FIRST media for the 15-25 crowd. Teens use their online MSN
identity to chat with friends. Penetration of other messengers is weak in France
(and Europe ) compared to the US. As a result, 50% of teens with a fast home
connexion SPEND MORE TIME ON MSN THAN IN FRONT OF THE TV OR ON THEIR MOBILE
PHONE.
Some french
figures again. Sky Rock s the leading radio for teen agers in France (the 13-20
crowd). Sky Blogs , a french "Myspace " is the leader in France for teen
blog hosting. It's where French teens project their identity and wait for
others to post comments.
On a typical Saturday…
- 15000 new
blogs are created
- 6M pages are seen
- 800 000 new articles are posted
Ok, that's
all for today… I have other numbers, from the likes of Neopets, Project
Entropia, Secondlife of course, World of Warcraft… but that will be another
post! Tell me what you think!
We'll all learn just as much - or more - from reading all the comments as from reading the numbers! Lets' build some communal knowledge!
the proof of a human and social touch !
As a matter of fact all these figures are impressive and the halo 3 stuff is just breathtaking... on eBay I would just ask someone dealing with history to tell us why after so many years of democratisation of information via internet we are witnessing a kind of aristocratic ranking and ways to do business... it's seems common on eBay to be refused to deal with someone much higher in the rating than you are...
A new digital pyramid of rights to deal and think could emerged if we are not careful... we had the french revolution back in 1789 to cut the head of aristocrats and centuries of unfare priviledges; it might not be the time to use internet to exclude the mass from dealing and getting access to knowledge. In today's age, information is a right and it belongs to all at least as a wish to be aimed at. Why could not get a decent living from eBay someone new to internet and new to eBay... or any other internet milestone.
Gil