Just to let you know … I’m quite pleased how this post turned out. It shows how we can give concrete representation to cldwrld, which is a nice thing.
I think that by fixing on Facebook as a Cloud-based “software program” with 315 million “users,” we stand to miss ways of:
- making money for the owners of Facebook
- not annoying users and
- allowing Facebook to make a positive social impact faster.
I think it’s a bigger challenge and bigger opportunity than simply “Sell User Base to Marketers and Advertisers and sell Virtual Goods” which is what filters out to me (see this post for a link to a Silicon Valley Insider post (11/08) by Henry Blodgett for an estimate on where Facebook got its revenue from in 2008. And this post (7/09) by Nicholas Carlson on the same blog for a suggested breakdown of the 2009 estimate, including $200 million for “self-service ads” and a contribution of $75 million (the smallest contribution) from the sale of “virtual goods,” for a total of $550 million.
Facebook obviously has a model for making more money in 2010. Which I don’t know. But here’s a brand new idea which I think has great potential. It comes from applying the Real World/cldwrld model to Facebook as usual and thinking of it as a digital country with Digital Inhabitants. After doing that we can talk about Facebook having an economy, just as the US has an economy, and work out how to make that economy run.
I’ve talked about the ideas of virtual banks in cldwrld (and Facebook specifically) and virtual goods and virtual money and “freemix” business models and who knows what else to do with cldwrld and digital countries.
So we’ve got bits of an economy, but do we have to completely reinvent the wheel, that is a full market economy for Facebook? Do we have to create an economy based on Facebook transactions for Virtual Goods?
Looking around, can we find a virtual market economy in a place where Digital Inhabitants from other places would be welcome? The answer, as you may have guessed from the title of this post is, “Yes.” That economy would be at Second Life, a virtual world created by Linden Lab (official link and Wikipedia). Second Life also runs on the idea of Friends and Friend lists and permission requests to add Friends to your Friend list.
Here is a breakdown of how the economy ran in the 3rd quarter of 2009 on a Linden Lab’s blog and another on how Second Life is working to accept local currency payment. This nice post (6/09) by Todd Borst on his blog VirtualWorldBusiness.com details “Seven Ways to Make Money in Second Life.”
Second Life uses a slightly different metric for measuring users than Facebook. They measure “repeat logins” which are all unique users with more than one login in a given month. These topped 750K in September ’09. (As an aside it would be interesting to know that number for Facebook.)
So here’s the idea: Integrate Facebook with Second Life. Generate a Real World style mirror region on Second Life which only allows for Real World style avatars who are Digital Inhabitants with a presence on Facebook. Allow for registration with something like Facebook Connect. Expand the Second Life free basic account. Port the Friends list.
Which brings up to 315 million potential users (and counting) to a Second Life/Facebook region. Call it Pandora. On second thoughts, perhaps not. Call it facebookdc.
Then Second Life and Facebook split the money generated by activity in facebookdc, money generated by Real World style activity. Advertising would move to billboards, direct mail and all the other messy ways we advertise in the Real World, which would disconnect it from the user base and make it less of a seeming invasion of privacy. The market for virtual goods available to Facebook “users” and Second Life would explode as the economic activity of up to 315 million people powered into facebookdc.
The positive social impact? The American Cancer Society already has a “building” in Second Life (you can find it by moving through the “Learning” examples here on the Second Life website. Imagine how many new Digital Inhabitants of facebookdc might visit places like these and take action.
Some details that immediately sprint to mind: Link the Facebook credit to the Linden dollar. (For those of you who don’t remember it, here’s a link to the post (09/09) in which I discuss how a virtual monetary system independent of the Real World monetary system might come about).
Let all the power of application development on Facebook into Second Life.
Allow those who create Business Pages to create Real World style buildings and businesses. Examples of businesses doing just that are found here on the Second Life website).
Use Google’s Rosy as an independent system to ease chat communication between Digital Inhabitants who speak different languages in the region. (I wrote about this amazing product in 09/09 and how it could be integrated into Facebook and we can now say by extension to facebookdc).
Whether all of this could be made to happen I don’t know, but I like it as an idea.
So I never thought I would say this but: Think bigger, Mr. Zuckerberg!
Let Facebook have a chat with Linden Lab (whose founder, Philip Rosedale, was quoted by Daniel Terdiman, in a WIRED article in 08/04 like this: “I’m not building a game,” he says. “I’m building a new country.” and see what happens. Could be kinda cool.
Just as an after thought – if we do the same thing for other social networks and take all those Real World style regions together we get something we can call … cldwrld.
How ’bout that?
[Update 2/5/10 - I think a better choice than Second Life might be Entropia Universe, created by MindArk in which case we could call it faceworld]
