MTV’s Virtual Hills Pushes 3D Social Networking
As noted here, MTV is expanding its virtual world, Virtual Laguna Beach, to incorporate Laguna Beach spinoff show The Hills. (Read more about MTV’s virtual world initiative and how it came together in my piece in the February issue of Wired, which has just come out.) MTV’s vHills apparently launched last Monday, while I was away, but it’s now kicking off what could be a nice experiment in user-generated content: a fashion challenge (to be announced in vHills on Tuesday, 23 January, at 8pm EST) that looks like it will allow users to become either models or fashion designers. It’s also something that could help push adoption of virtual worlds as 3D social networking sites, if you ask me.
Of course, a fashion challenge is nothing new compared to what goes on in Second Life or There.com. (Makena Technologies, which runs There, provides the technology underpinning MTV’s world, which is separate from the There grid.) Though fashion shows are old hat to virtual world veterans, members of VLB/vHills, who are drawn mostly from the shows’ fan base, are no doubt younger and have less experience of MMOs and virtual worlds than people in SL and There. Part of what MTV has to do is lead them along by the hand. So it’s interesting that MTV is pushing users toward creating their own content less than 6 months after the launch of its virtual property.
To my eye, things like MTV’s virtual world could help push social networking into the 3D era. As I write in Wired, VLB garnered 300,000 signups in its first 10 weeks, and though there are of course no figures for concurrency or “regular users” (nor even an agreed metric that would satisfy critics on this score), the service is proving very “sticky” for repeat users: On average, users visit six times a month for 35 minutes a session. And the appeal is not solely related to the shows: MTV says signups continued to rise even after the VLB season ended.
MTV’s virtual world will be an important story to watch this year. Skepticism over virtual worlds has now reached the same fever pitch that the hype over them reached a few months ago — with the same low ratio of substance to hot air that characterized the hype. Watching things like VLB/vHills could give a more meaningful indication of whether 3D social spaces are going to displace flat social sites like MySpace, and if so, to what extent. Stay tuned.
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looks kewl my friend told me about it
VLB is no doubt cool, and appeals to a younger audience. They have just allowed members to design their own clothing and sell them in game. This is a big step forward…or could have been. The problem is after reading the agreement they retain all rights to all designs without having to compensate or credit those who design the products. I don’t think many of the kids will bother to read the agreement, and will work hard only to find their content used on the upcoming games MTV is planning without them being compensated in anyway. This is wrong.
Soo true tbmce -___-’
i want to be in this game it looks fun!!!!