Since we started our company in July 2006, we have seen rapid growth in the virtual world market. Originally, the market was largely conflated with Second Life and many companies ran pilot marketing projects in that world. More recently, we’ve seen a shift in attention from projects in Second Life to marketing engagements in larger web-based worlds like Gaia Online and Habbo Hotel as well as a large-scale movement by entertainment companies to create their own virtual worlds.

In serving our clients through this growth and evolution, we have - unsurprisingly - observed a strong desire for improved metrics to inform ROI calculations. Earlier this year, with that in mind, Millions of Us assembled a unique consortium of companies operating consumer-facing virtual worlds. Our shared goal: to work with Forrester Consulting to produce a study that surveyed a broad array of brands that had conducted virtual world marketing projects. This was intended to gain an accurate view of the state of the market and define areas for improvement.

The study which we are making available today to interested clients, prospects, and journalists is a strong first step in moving towards a unified set of standards and measurement by which clients can gauge the effectiveness of their activities in virtual worlds. We think many people will be interested in the study’s conclusions about opportunities for cross-channel tracking and building brand recognition through the distribution of virtual goods and the use of avatar customization.

Forrester made several clear recommendations regarding campaign planning and measurement; while still just a start, these stand to help grow budgets for virtual world campaigns.

Forrester’s Key Findings on virtual worlds are as follows:

This report highlights some key areas for improvement as well. With these in mind, I’d like to offer some thoughts of my own as a starting point for what I hope becomes an active and ongoing discussion:

Those interested in receiving a copy of the full study should contact Mat Small at mat@millionsofus.com .  Link to the press release here.

A while back we launched a Brooklyn Brownstone for Warner Brothers Records’ artist Talib Kweli.¬† It was really cool, but we all wondered when the man would be stopping by for a visit.¬† Well the answer is. . . . tomorrow, at 1 PM, SLT/PST.¬† It’s very casual, just a fan meet and Q & A and hopefully will be a cool way for fans to connect with the artist.¬† Here’s a slurl to the event.¬† Here’s the announcement on Talib’s Myspace page.¬† I’ve predicted that by the end of 2007, avatars will be as much a requirement for celebs as Myspace pages are today.¬† All these early experiments are so interesting.¬† My feeling is that these things work best in SL when there’s less fanfare and it becomes more about hanging out and less about screaming adulation.¬† We’ll have to see.

Today I talked with Mike Monello. Mike is a partner in Campfire Media: the company we’re working with on the Motoratilife Project for Pontiac. Their campaigns, which break almost all the rules of conventional advertising (campaigns such as the Art of the Heist for Audi and Beta 7 for Sega), descend from a theory of social media dating back to their days making the Blair Witch Project. What’s interesting is that many of the production values and marketing techniques associated with Blair Witch are coming into the spotlight these days as marketers attempt to enter the dialogue in the Second Life/Youtube era.

Find the audio of the Sun Open Source Java audio stream here.

We’re incredibly proud to announce the launch of Scion City tonight.

On Scion City you can not only buy customizable versions of real Scions but you can
also drive them around and (in the future) see the coolest user mods that the
community creates. You’ll also be able to check out a
broad range of cutting edge film, music and art that will be playing
in the city and showing at the drive-in.

Scion City is the product of many months of work by a very special
team of people. First, may I encourage you to pan your cameras around
this sim — you’ll notice some amzing lighting and an attention to
detail and nuance that is uniquely the work of Neil Protagonist. He
crafted the vision of Scion City as a dark and futuristic urban locale
and poured long hours into bringing it to life..

Like all big visions, this wasn’t a solo effort. Francis Chung,
creator of the famed Dominus, was the lead car creator and wrought the
xB as well as the customization system. He also drove a real xB about
as hard as any human ever in the name of research.·

The xA was a different sort of challenge and for
that, we called on the skills of Lucky Millionsofus. Lucky’s hard
work resulted in a fiery little package that’s easy on the eyes and
fun to drive. To get the job done, Lucky torqued prims in ways that
are illegal in most states.

Finally, the tC, the performance car in the Scion stable. Bill
Millionsofus did the honors here, and as you fire yours up, you’ll
hopefully appreciate the energy, devotion and attention to detail that
went into creating it.

What makes these cars cool is the degree to which they’re customizable.
Basic users (like me) can change the body color and rims with a simple HUD.
Intermediate user can create convertibles and weird mashups and
pre-painted panels. And for more advanced users, we’ve made ALL the Photoshop files
available here so you can rip your car apart, modify it, show it, and
sell it!

Finally pricing. Our goal was to make the cars as similarly priced to their Real World equivalents as possible — after much research ad argumentation we decided that L$300 was a good price for the Scion which in real life sell for about $13,800.

Our entertainment at the event came courtesty of Baccara Rhodes who has
coordinated the entire event. We’ll be treated to some really special
tunes courtesy of Komuso Tokugawa *The BOOGIE MAN*
and DJ Nexeus Fatale.

OK, Now It’s Officially an Empire. I have to relish these moments of being a startup CEO in Second Life. Yes, we have all the typical startup difficulties , but every once in a while, it just gets easier. Just off the coast of Millions of Us’ Island, we now have a pair of sharks. . . . . with lasers. Mwuuhhaaaa!