More People are Leading Virtual Lives - Miami Herald

More real people leading virtual lives
By JAMES H. BURNETT III
Jared Freedman is not a member of a Masonic lodge on Earth.

But in the metaverse, the rapidly expanding universe of virtual worlds springing up on the Internet, Freedman's avatar, a three-dimensional graphical representation of him named Ancient Shriner, is leader of a virtual Masonic lodge.

Gone are the days when the only people who hung out in computer-generated fantasy worlds were characters in The Matrix and lonely kids who couldn't get dates.

We're talking real people spending real money to lead alternate lives in Internet-based communities as avatars who move and talk in real time, like the real people they represent.

Among the most popular virtual worlds: Second Life (secondlife.com), which has about 6.2 million residents, There (There.com), which has about 750,000, Whyville (Whyville.com), with 2.27 million and Habbo Hotel (Habbo.com) which has about 50 million worldwide.

''There are tens of millions of people worldwide who live in virtual worlds and take them very seriously as a new means of entertainment, communication and social interaction,'' says Beth Coleman, a professor of comparative media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is writing a book on virtual worlds and their occupants.

``The biggest difference in this and the kids 10 or 15 years ago who played fantasy roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, and, later, the people who engaged in multiplayer online role-playing games, is you can't really characterize current users as geeks or loners. These are people with lives, real friends.''

Freedman, a 40-year-old software developer in Surfside, discovered Second Life in fall 2005.

After scrutinizing the site for a few months, he registered and moved in. His first order of business: create an avatar.

Freedman, bearded with short, curly black hair, is five-foot-eight and 180 pounds.Ancient Shriner stands a skinny six feet and has a long white beard.

''Different, huh?'' Freedman asks. ``You create avatars to represent a part of you, and that part might not have anything to do with your actual appearance. In my case, my grandfather was a 33rd-degree Mason. . . . He sort of looked like Uncle Sam. So I designed my avatar to look like them -- my grandfather and Uncle Sam -- and I came up with that handle of Ancient Shriner.''

While most of the other Second Lifers Freedman/Ancient Shriner met were building virtual homes and acquiring virtual clothes and accessories for their avatars, Freedman built Second Life's first Masonic lodge.

''The funny thing is I became known as a Mason,'' Freedman says. 'So I started this lodge, gave myself the made-up title of `Masterful Sage,' [and] began meeting other people.''

Michael Cai, a Web technology analyst with Parks Associates in Dallas, says the virtual world population has been booming for about two years.

Cai, who describes virtual worlds as the convergence of old-fashioned chatrooms, networking sites like MySpace.com and games like World of Warcraft, says their attraction is the ability to create an almost fully functional avatar.

''If you think about it, it's the next best thing to physically being in the same room with that other person,'' he says.

Still, as Freedman illustrates, avatars don't always look like their creators.

A recent survey of 9,529 Second Lifers by Seattle-based Global Market Insite found that 45 percent give their avatars more attractive bodies, 37 percent make them younger than themselves, and 23 percent give them another race.

The transformation isn't so drastic for Caridad Jorge, 24, a Miami real-estate coordinator, but she understands the temptation to alter one's look, because ''it's a game. You make yourself look the way you want.'' Jorge is five-foot-five and fair, with dark brown hair. In There.com, her avatar Coralline is tan, taller and slimmer.

Coralline plays virtual spades at other avatars' virtual houses and goes on scavenger hunts that take her inside virtual backyards and even to detailed virtual versions of such places as Paris or the Pyramids.

''I've never wanted to build a house in There,'' Jorge says. ``For me this was a way to really go somewhere else and do things and visit places I might never have time or money for in the real world.''

MIT's Coleman says that until a few years ago most virtual-world residents were the same folks playing fantasy games featuring knights, dragons and wizards, so their avatars were ``very fantastical.''

''But the trend has been toward more realistic representations,'' she says, ``because more people are now trying to escape not who they are -- what they look like, I mean -- but where they spend their time.''

Twenty-two percent of Second Lifers polled by GMI said they had more virtual-world than real-world friends, and 29 percent said their virtual lives interfered with their real lives.

And even though a meaningful virtual-world life requires a lot of time, Coleman says she doesn't believe it carries the addiction danger of virtual multiplayer games, because simply living online isn't competitive.

One newer benefit of virtual living is money.

''There is a great deal to be made,'' says Jay Yarbrough, who lives near Tampa. ``I joined There.com in February 2004. . . . My avatar Thumdar has made lots of friends and goes interesting places. We even started a website within the virtual world, Thumdar.com, that studies what goes on in There. But what I found was as many people were becoming interested in virtual worlds, not many had the technical savvy to fully develop the avatars they wanted.''

Yarbrough/Thumdar began meeting others who wanted their avatars not just to have dark hair, but long, wavy dark hair. They wanted 3D cars with all the trimmings and virtual hot tubs with virtual flat-screen TVs.

Thinking ''Pimp my avatar,'' Yarbrough offered his ''techspertise'' and was quickly making a nice side income, he says, adding he knows other techies who earn $100,000- plus giving avatar upgrades.

Surfside's Freedman, who owns Code4Software, developed such a reputation for the virtual lodge he built that in March, Coldwell Banker hired him to build its virtual headquarters.

And Rick Schwartz, an Internet entrepreneur in Boca Raton who made a fortune dealing in website domain names in the early days of the Internet, moved to a virtual world last fall strictly for the money.

''Honestly, I've made my living online for a lot of years,'' Schwartz says with a laugh.
``So I was not interested in making friends. I wanted income.''

Schwartz went to Montreal-based Weblo.com, which hosts a 2D virtual copy of Earth. He purchased the virtual state of Florida for $18,000, named himself governor and promptly bought more than 120 cities ranging in price from $20 to several hundred dollars.

Now, Schwartz, who is just starting to develop interactive features for visitors to his Florida, gets a cut from Weblo.com any time a virtual resident of that world pays for an upscale membership to live in virtual Florida.

Michael Wilson, CEO of Makena Technologies and one of the creators of eBay, says the virtual world is a gold mine, but most residents don't want to make money.

``They just want something to do,''says Wilson, whose company created There.com and developed Virtual Hills and Virtual Laguna Beach for MTV for fans who wanted to sample life as seen on the reality shows The Hills and Laguna Beach.

''People simply want to meet each other and have their digital images, their avatars, be
able to do the same things they might in the real world,'' Wilson says.

Kansas Sells! - The Wichita Eagle

Kansas sells! By Carrie Rengers

You may not have heard the news, but Kansas has a new governor.

Oh, yeah, and the state recently sold for about $3,500, too.

Arkansas real estate agent Mike Carey is the new "governor" of Kansas in an online Monopoly-type game at Weblo.com.

"Well, I need to change a few things right off the bat," Carey jokes about his new reign.

He bought Kansas along with his home state of Arkansas, a couple of other states and numerous cities.

Players spend real money to buy real places without ever actually owning them. Carey says it's like buying stocks or bonds.

"You don't really get anything tangible other than the opportunity to make money," he says.

"If I can buy Kansas for $3,500 and sell it for $15,000 a year later... that's a pretty good return."

Each time players buy assets, they get dedicated Web sites to promote the state, city or landmark they've purchased.

"The purpose is to direct traffic to your Web site just like any other Web site," Carey says. "The more traffic you direct, the more money you generate."

Also, everyone who owns a city within a state has to pay the state's owner.

"So far, it hasn't really brought in the big bucks," Carey says.

But he's hopeful.

"It's a fun way to invest your money," Carey says. "It's a little quirky."

Virtual Research in Motion - The Record

By BILL BEAN RECORD STAFF Greg Baker owns Research In Motion. He also owns Coca-Cola, Starbucks, United Airlines and Air Canada. With a mere $150, he bought all this, and the City of Cambridge, too.

OK, Greg Baker is not part of a shadowy cabal that runs the world. Greg Baker is really a Grade 7/8 teacher living in Hamilton. The Cambridge he owns is a virtual city.

The Research In Motion he owns is a virtual company. His acquisitions were done inside a cyberworld set up by a Montreal firm, Weblo. Sean Moore is the enthusiastic director of marketing of Weblo.

On the phone from his office, he expounds on the potential of Weblo to be The Next Big Thing, by allowing "the average joe" to make money selling virtual realities. Selling cyber-objects is not new. In some online fantasy games, players can acquire computer-generated items that can be sold to other players for real money.

Think of Weblo as an online Monopoly board, where every address and every contract from the real world, has an online duplicate that is for sale. The headquarters for Manulife Financial, the province of Newfoundland, and the management rights for Pamela Anderson, can be bought.

If you buy Guelph or the head office of the Vancouver Canucks, you get the rights to a web page for you to develop as you see fit. Post some facts and figures, some photos or a video. Start a blog. Develop a site that draws traffic.

According to Moore, users can make money by making their site attractive for advertisers, by taking a percentage from other Weblo users who exist within their sphere of influence (the owner of Ontario would get a percentage of any transactions involving Ontario centres, for instance) or by selling the site. Is Weblo, which had its official launch in December, The Next Big Thing?

The jury is still out. Some of the sites look pretty sad. Moore says it's in the interest of the siteholders to improve their properties (just like in the real world). I'd suggest potential buyers learn how to post video or images to the web. You'd guess that Tokyo or Vancouver would have advertising potential.

Someone might have bought Kincardine as a conversation starter. Sites for models and celebs may be popular, but I noticed no one has bid on Margaret Atwood. Certainly, no one is going to retire on the income from site ad revenue.
For instance, the site for Cuban cover girl Vida Guerra may have 50,750 hits, but all those visits have generated only $34 in revenue. Weblo seems to suggest the big money is to be made on "flipping" properties: Las Vegas sold for $2,300, after being bought for $430. Guerra's site is offered for $500.

Then there's Cambridge, which Greg Baker bought for $7.57, becoming, as Weblo puts it, the "virtual Mayor of Cambridge." You could have had Kitchener for $24.85 (now owned by a man in Montreal).Waterloo went for $50 (belongs to a man in Queensland, Australia) and Guelph led the market at $60 (someone in Owen Sound bought it).

The prices will be higher for the next buyers, assuming there are any. Baker got in because he was amused by the idea of owning virtual property. "I went through a phase where I was kind of addicted."

He bought Cambridge because "it was local, available and affordable." (The same reason commuters to Toronto choose it.) Baker doesn't plan to expand his holdings beyond the 30 he has now (which include Oakville, Best Buy, Haliburton and the contract for Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys): "I can only afford to spend so much on nothing." Is it really nothing? Every fad has a bubble, and then the bubble bursts. "It's sort of like a trading card," said Baker. A card is "just a piece of paper . . . the value is what others believe it is." He's hoping that people will believe in the value of a cyber-shadow.

So, is Cambridge's virtual mayor planning any improvements? A bridge across the Grand? Extended GO Train service? "I suppose I should. Or I might make a deal (to sell) if the right offer came along . . ." You too, could be the Mayor of Cambridge. Bill Bean writes for etc. every Saturday. You can contact him at 519-894-2231, ext. 2618, or e-mail him at
bbean@therecord.com.

Reporter has Some Fun as Online Property Mogul - Okanagan Daily Courier

Reporter has some fun as online property mogul
The Daily Courier (Kelowna)
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Page: A4
Section: Okanagan
Byline: Chuck Poulsen
Source: The Daily Courier

I spent last weekend buying virtual property on Weblo.com.

My first priority was to buy the Green Bay Packers.

The Packers already had an owner - of course - and ownership of the team carried a hefty price tag of US$75. I bought them as a serious investment. I figure when people get up to speed with this website, some bigger idiot than me will come along with a profitable offer for the Packers.

Meanwhile, I'll be talking with my employee, Brett Favre, about my expectations for the coming season.

I thought I should also be a mayor of some place, but all but one city in the Okanagan was taken. I didn't want to get into a bidding war. Being a mayor isn't worth that much.

However, for $5 I now own and am the mayor of Lumby. I don't know if I've ever been in Lumby, but I'd better let them know I'm coming so they can plan the parade.

I fought against the Vintage Landing Development in McKinley Landing, which is now called Kinnikinnik. I hope Kinnikinnik does well, now that I own it.

I have a call into my employee, developer Grand Gaucher. I wish to speak to him about changing the name to something people can say, or spell.

I tried to buy The Daily Courier, but someone else already owned it. I bid $10, but was turned down. I then bid $20 with a note saying "final offer." I haven't had a response yet, but that's my limit. I'm not going to spend any more than $20 on a
company that would employ the likes of me.

I got the legislature in Victoria for $3. Someone already owns B.C., so I don't know how that will work. There will probably be a court fight.

I thought one of the most valuable properties in this area that was available for a first-time price of $3 was Mission Hill Family Estate. I'll be speaking with my employee, previous owner Anthony Von Mandl, about the lack of fruitiness in his
latest merlot. I also own Big White and will be speaking with my employee, Michael J. Ballingall, as soon as I can think of some orders to give him.

My biggest coup was to pick up ownership of the new William R. Bennett Bridge for $3. I now have a bridge to sell you. Maybe I'll make it a toll bridge.

I also own the Kelowna RCMP detachment and the Kelowna Law Courts, $3 each.

They will be for sale soon, but I have some changes to make at both places first. No one is in charge of the courthouse, so I don't know who to talk with there. But I'll be discussing the RCMP changes with my employee, Supt. Bill McKinnon.

Online Land Rush - St.Petersburg Times

Online land rush: So you want to manage
Oprah?
Weblo.com offers a virtual fiefdom for a price and a sense of fun, connection and power, even if the jury's still out on profitability.
By Christina Rexrode, Times Staff Writer
Published April 15, 2007
Rick Schwartz seems bullish on Florida's economy.
After all, he's the virtual governor.
Schwartz, a Boca Raton resident, recently dropped $18,047 to buy the state - and the accompanying gubernatorial title - on the nascent Weblo.com, a parallel e-world where virtual
ownership of every real city, state and property is up for sale. So far, there are 21,500 registered users, and almost 7,000 cities have been sold.
"Monopoly on steroids," says the Montreal company.
Except this game is played with real money.
Here's how it works: The first person to register a property, city or state can pay to be its rightful Weblo owner. If you buy a city or state, you're named the virtual mayor or governor.
Any place with an address is up for grabs: the Eiffel Tower, your old high school, your neighbor's house.
A property's initial price is determined by an index that considers its real-life population and economy, as well as its potential appeal as a Weblo profile. It's a game for the rich and the poor: Cities sell for as little as $5, but buying a state will cost thousands.
"You're thinking, '18,000 U.S. dollars, for real? It's a profile!' " said Sean Morrow, Weblo's director of marketing, referring to the sale of Florida. "But it's a significant return on investment."
Schwartz, who's in his 50s, is also the virtual mayor of St. Petersburg, for which he shelled out $11.72.
If property owners adhere to Weblo's game plan, they'll "develop" their sites with relevant information. Mike Jameson, a Connecticut resident who has bought properties throughout Florida, posted maps and photos of Disney World to his profiles for Lake Buena Vista and Celebration. He bought Treasure Island, as well, but hasn't done much for its profile.
There's a commercial incentive to create a good site: Weblo shares its ad revenue with site owners. The more visitors your site attracts, the more money you'll earn.
You can also make money by reselling your site. The Weblo member who bought Seattle for $40 resold it for $2,000, proving that flipping isn't limited to real property.
"Global domination has never been more fun," the company enthuses on its Web site.
- - -
Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities who tracks the video game
industry, expressed reservations about the odds of making money off Weblo.
"You can't sell ads without traffic, and if they make some schmo responsible for creating the content of Florida, he may do a terrible job, lowering overall traffic," Pachter wrote in an email to the St. Petersburg Times.
"Unless there is some quality control, consumers will tire quickly of visiting the site, and advertisers will lose interest. Sounds like a pyramid scheme to me."
Still, there's a NASDAQ-esque feeling to Weblo. The latest buys and the sales data can be set to scroll across the top of your computer screen. Jameson, who is 40, says he watches it constantly, as if it were the stock market.
Schwartz - or should we call him Florida's governor? - logs on to Weblo far less often. If you visit his sites expecting photos of the beach and the state flag, you'll be disappointed. He says he's waiting for Weblo to catch on before he develops his profiles.
Schwartz estimates that he has spent $50,000 to $70,000 on Weblo. But his friends don't question it, he said, given his success buying domain names.
"When you look at the ways you can throw your money away, if it's going to the stock market or going to the casino, you don't have any control over it," he said. "It's strictly a gamble. If it (Weblo) catches on, stranger things have happened." Weblo's Morrow wouldn't say what percentage of the Web site's profiles are profitable, or
whether the company has turned a profit. But Jameson says he thinks he'll make a 36 percent return on his investments ($5,000 or $6,000 so far) by the end of the year.
- - -
Even without the financial element, Weblo allures. Like a massive game of Risk, it plays on people's desire for power. "I love to be known as the virtual mayor of Lake Buena Vista," said Jameson, "because, as you know, Disney owns that town."
(Want to buy the main offices of the St. Petersburg Times? Too late. This reporter snapped them up for $2.38, though she'll entertain offers.)
Like a memory book, Weblo plays on sentimentality. Suzanne Calpas, a stay-at-home mom in Prince George, British Columbia, bought some cities in Turkey that she visited on her honeymoon.
And like any other networking site, it plays on the need for social interaction. "Mostly it's for fun," said Calpas, 39, who bought Pittsburgh for $300 and Lake City for $5. "People send you messages, you start to develop friendships."
Jameson, a real estate agent in real life as well as in Weblo Land, thinks he has found one more use for the site: He has registered dozens of cities in his home state of Connecticut, and plans to use those profiles to provide house hunters with information about different areas.
"When I do listings for houses, I will say, 'I am the virtual mayor of this town,' " he said.
Weblo, like Jameson, has big Web-based plans for the future. Morrow, the marketing director, said the company is formulating plans for a Weblo presidential election, probably to be held just before the real election next year.
The Canadian company has no similar plans to replicate the British throne. "Not yet," Morrow said. "Good idea."
Christina Rexrode can be reached at crexrode@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8318.
Analysis: Does Weblo have what it takes?
Weblo says it's on the brink of something big. Since its official launch in December, it has gained more than 21,500 members, about a quarter of whom joined this month alone. About 20 employees, mostly 20- and 30-somethings, run the young company from its Montreal headquarters.
Creativity? They've got it. Focus? That's another matter.
Weblo is very much a mishmash of Internet pastimes, and one is inclined to wonder if it could benefit from a narrower focus. In addition to its main appeal as a big, electronic game of Monopoly, it's also trying to take on social networking and pop culture functions. Members can now acquire profile rights for celebrities (not to mention friends, enemies, co-workers, and whoever else) as well as for properties.
Members also can build their own personal profiles, because part of Weblo's strategy is this: People who already use the Internet to blog, post pictures and keep up with friends can be lured to a new networking site by the possibility of simultaneously making money. A word of caution: Traditionally, there hasn't been much room on the World Wide Web for more than one or two social networking sites. (Heard of Bebo? Crushspot? FaceParty? Few have.)
Weblo isn't without precedent. In some ways, it's a distant cousin of popular computer games like the Sims and Sim City, because they let players create and manipulate virtual households and cities. And despite its lack of orcs and elves, Weblo is also reminiscent of World of Warcraft and other Web games that fall in the "Massively Multiplayer Online" genre because it uses a global network of players.
It will be interesting to see where Weblo goes from here: Will it become a footnote or a trendsetter? Sean Morrow, the company's marketing director, said Weblo will seek "a rather large round of investment" within the next year. He declined to elaborate.
What is Weblo?
A new Web site where the first person to register the full, correct address of a city, state or property can pay to own its profile.
How do you make money on it?
- You earn ad revenue based on the number of clicks your site receives from unique visitors.
- You can resell your Weblo property for profit.
- If you own a city or state, you earn a surcharge on every transaction that takes place there.
You're eligible to receive a surcharge on ad revenue earned by your residents and a surcharge on membership fees.
Is the money real?
Yes. Every member gets $5 in virtual money when signing up. The rest of the money is real, and can be withdrawn through PayPal or by check.
How big is Weblo?
It has about 21,500 registered users, about a quarter of whom joined this month alone.
Almost 7,000 cities have been sold on Weblo, including 3,500 in the United States. Arkansas, Kansas and Idaho sold in the past week.
Most expensive states
By initial Weblo price
California: $53,000
Texas: $23,328
New York: $19,354
Illinois: $18,830 (still for sale as of this week)
Florida: $18,047
Top 15 Florida city sale prices in no particular order.
Jacksonville - $38.63
Miami - $21.08
Tampa - $17.91
Orlando - re-sold for $95 original price $13.67
St. Petersburg - $11.72
Fort Lauderdale - $11.95
Hialeah - $10.71
Tallahassee - $ 8.40
Pembroke Pines - $7.63
Hollywood - $9.94
Cape Coral - $9.34
Port St. Lucie - $6.02
Coral Springs - $6.42
Clearwater - $5.14
Gainesville - $8.78
Most Florida cities beyond this list sold for minimum price of $5.
[Last modified April 13, 2007, 21:24:51

Virtually, the whole world is for sale

Weblo offers buying and selling of real-world cities, properties
By ANDRÉA MARIA CECIL
Daily Record/Sunday News
Article Launched: 04/15/2007 01:22:28 AM EDT
Apr 15, 2007 — City of York: $5.
York Airport: $1.
Harley-Davidson's Springettsbury Township plant: $2.
That's right, York County and all things within its outline are for sale - sort of- on the Internet.
Creators of Weblo.com have made a carbon copy of the real world - far beyond York County - and turned it into a real-life game similar to the Monopoly board game.
It's a place where everything from the Empire State Building to the city of London have sold and resold.
"A lot of people bought things they have a personal attachment to. ... One gentleman bought a bunch of Philly steakhouses," said Weblo spokesman Colin Trethewey.
Cities with a population of less than 40,000 people start at a selling price of $5 and all properties start out at no more than $2.
The most expensive city was New York, with an original selling price of $410. Philadelphia sold for $72.38.
"The prices aren't really crazy, it's just that people decide that there's value in these cities," Trethewey said.
Weblo determines the prices of cities by using a formula that includes population, the percent of population that has access to the Internet and the percent of the population that are Weblo members, he said.
Owners of cities, townships, villages and properties create their own Web sites and
get money when someone clicks on one of the advertisements Weblo has posted on their sites. How much money depends on their Weblo membership level.
"Even people that have free sites are earning money. Not a lot: $15 or $20," Trethewey said.
Unlike social networking sites, including MySpace.com, Weblo.com pays members when more people visit their sites, he said.
People can purchase cities, villages, baseball stadiums and steakhouses through PayPal, which is widely used by eBay buyers and sellers to transfer money. "Although one person tried to send cash to buy something," Trethewey added. "We sent it back."
And those who buy cities are considered their mayors in the Weblo world - an idea that did not bother York's real-world mayor, John Brenner.
"That's great. There's hundreds of mayors all over the United States," he said. "If they want to share some of the responsibility (of running a city) - now there's a Web site I'd like to visit."
Mayors of cities on Weblo also receive part of the profits when anything within their
city is sold. The same goes for owners of states.

There are more than 21,600 Weblo members.

"Some of them have thousands of properties and hundreds of cities," Trethewey said.
He added: "The idea is to just keep it growing. The goals are actually quite large - the goal is to be up to 10 million members by the end of 2008. And we're starting to see that growth now where it's doubling every month."
Brenner, for one, said although he only had just learned of the site, he was impressed.
"It's very creative, and anything that raises revenue should always be taken seriously."
Reach Andréa Maria Cecil at 771-2001 or acecil@ydr.com.
Weblo at a glance How do I find it?
Go to http://www.weblo.com. In the upper right-hand search bar, type "York," "Harley" or anything else you might be looking for. Remember to choose if you're searching for cities, states, celebrities, domains, properties, airports or Weblo.
RecentWeblo purchases:
—Arkansas: $3,779
—Idaho: $1,964
Kansas: $3,807

New Slant on Virtual Worlds - Scoble Show

Scoble Show- Robert Scoble with Geeks, Technologists & Developers

Talking about a new slant on virtual worlds

Video | Posted by Robert Scoble | April 4th, 2007 4:05 pm

Rocky Mirza, founder and CEO of Weblo.com, tells me about his new virtual world

where people can buy and sell real estate, corporations and domains: all virtually.

It's fun and you can make some dough (or spend it to buy other people's stuff).

Click this link below to watch the interview:

http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1427/demo-build-your-own-virtualrealestate-

empire-with-weblo