3D - Hard time not to be in when $1Bn invested over last 12 months
Virtual Worlds 
2007 taking place this week in the US is telling us and it's spreading fast throughout the world that $1Bn was invested in the last 12 months period... enhancing how much value creation is expected from these 3D immersive virtual worlds !
"Virtual Worlds Companies Funded from October 2006 to October 2007
Editors Note: Each company links to a full article about their funding
http://www.virtualworlds2007.com/media/10-03-2007.html
| company | amount | investors | |
| Anshe Chung Studios | unknown | Gladwyne Partners | |
| Areae | *2,000,000 | Charles River Ventures / estimate | |
| Club Penguin | 700,000,000 | Acquired by Walt Disney Company | |
| Conduit | 5,500,000 | Charles River Ventures and Prism VentureWorks | |
| Donnorwood Media | 500,000 | unknown | |
| Doppelganger | 5,000,000 | Greycroft Partners | |
| Doppelganger | 11,000,000 | ComVentures | |
| Double Fusion | 26,000,000 | Norwest Venture Partners, Time Warner, Accel Partners, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Hearst Corporation, IDG Ventures Pacific, and Sedona Capital | |
| Double Fusion Japan | unknown | Sedona Capital | |
| Electric Sheep Company | 7,000,000 | Gladwyne Partners and CBS | |
| Emergent | 12,000,000 | Jerusalem Venture Partners, Worldview Technology Partners, Adena Ventures, Walker Ventures, Copan, and Cisco Systems | |
| Flow Play ">Flow Play | 500,000 | Angel Funding | |
| Forterra | unknown | In-Q-Tel | |
| Gaia | 12,100,000 | Benchmark and Redpoint | |
| Garage Games ">Garage Games | unknown | IAC | |
| Greystripe | 8,900,000 | Steamboat Ventures, a venture capital firm affiliated with The Walt Disney Company | |
| Havok | 110,000,000 | Acquired by Intel Corporation | |
| Hi Pi Hi | 7,000,000 | NGI Group | |
| Journeys | 600,000 | Elron Electronic Industries | |
| K2 Network | 16,000,000 | Intel Capital | |
| Kreeda Games | unknown | IDG Ventures and SoftBank China & India Holdings | |
| Leeuu | *2,000,000 | Redpoint Ventures / estimate | |
| Media Machines | 9,400,000 | Mohr Davidow Ventures | |
| Millions of us | *1,000,000 | unknown / estimate | |
| Multiverse | 4,000,000 | Sterling Stamos Capital Management | |
| Network Game Interaction | 10,000,000 | GSR Ventures | |
| Play Span ">Play Span | 6,500,000 | Easton Capital | |
| Quaq | *2,000,000 | KPG Ventures / estimate | |
| In World ">Sparter | *2,000,000 | Bessemer Venture Partners / estimate | |
| In World ">Stonfield In World | unknown | Credit Agricole | |
| Timeless cities | 1,000,000 | LigthSpeed Gemini Internet Lab | |
| Trilogy Studios | 3,200,000 | Chichen Itza Ventures | |
| Trion World Network | 30,000,000 | Rustic Canyon Partners, Time Warner, GE/NBC Universal's Peacock Equity Fund, and Bertelsmann Digital Media | |
| Weblo | 3,200,000 | VantagePoint Venture Partners | |
| Whyville | 440,000 | Texas Workforce Commission | |
| Winking | 8,000,000 | NIF SMBC Ventures Asia | |
| Total | $1,006,840,000 | ||
| * indicates estimates |
Source: Virtual Worlds Management Virtual Worlds Sooner or later corporations are better off to understand the specific leverages they can get from it... in the meantine let's get some great music Cheers, Gil |
Mots-clés : 3D
, Virtual Worlds , Gun'n Roses , San Jose , Management 
Virtual San Jose
Thanks for the info Gil. Here's a little comment from a blog reporting on the San Jose conference. Clearly there is alot more to be got out of these virtual worlds especially in terms of business use. Let's hope that user friendly viewers bring companies closer to more practical use of what are so often considered 'mere games'. Serious games or profitable games ??? What do you think ?
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
World Browsing: The Electric Sheep launch more user-friendly Second Life viewer (Updated)
Is this the beginning of an AOL-ized Second Life? After CBS gave them $7 million last February for projects like this, SL metaverse developer Electric Sheep Company are now launching On Rez, an alternate SL viewer built on the Lindens' open source initiative. Their PR team at Lewis (which also represents the Lindens) just sent along these screenshots of the viewer in action. While I haven't tried it out yet-- it's publicly unveiled tomorrow at the Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose-- I think it's safe to say it's "more user friendly" than the official Second Life viewer. (If only because it's difficult to even conceive of an unfriendlier UI than what Residents have had to contend with these last four years.) The Sheep's stated goal is to create a viewer that resembles a web browser-- note the Home icon, and the reassuring browser-ish "<" and ">" arrows, next to the Google toolbar-flavored search slot.
Will it work? Given the Sheep's stellar technical credentials, almost certainly. But at first glance, perhaps the real question should be, "Will it work too well?"
Continue reading "World Browsing: The Electric Sheep launch more user-friendly Second Life viewer (Updated)"