Virtual Worlds and Web Analytics… Y’all ever play around with Second Life or World of Warcraft?  I have.  I think the concepts and worlds are very, very interesting and fun.  I find their messaging around the analytics of their user base even more entertaining though.  It’s like looking at ComScore and NNR for accurate web analytics data… really fascinating demographic stuff of questionable accuracy outside the frame of their audience panel and technology.  For example, I have three avatars, but have only downloaded one client. The trends are compelling though…

Some CMO’s I know won’t touch Second Life with a virtual ten foot, paisley, polygon pole.  Some finance folks I know laugh over beers about Linden Dollars.  Does that mean specific corporations become a central bank setting monetary policy subordinate to the central bank in the server’s home country?  How do International Fisher Relations apply when you have no interest rate?  My friends who have physical bodies say “virtual worlds are for when you have no friends in the real one.” Harsh criticisms, but they don’t negate the fact that something is happening and people are participating on some scale.  We’re all going to “do web analytics” on virtual worlds some day (maybe sooner than we think).

Where are the API’s for analytics data from these companies?  I believe Linden Labs announcing an analytics API would help push adoption by marketers forward and increase spend rates.  When I look at emerging technologies for 3D online collaboration, like OpenCroquet, I see the end of walled gardens like Second Life and WoW unless they open up the platform:

“Second Life doesn’t create a computational environment that belongs to its users - it uses a constrained computational environment (its servers) to capture “eyeballs” for a variety of schemes to derive revenue from them. With Croquet, users/developers may freely share, modify and view the source code (due to Croquet’s liberal license), the technology is not hosted on a single organization’s server (and hence governed by that organization as was the case with ViOS and now with Second Life), and it provides a complete professional programmer’s language (Smalltalk/Squeak), integrated development environment (IDE), and class library in every distributed, running participant’s copy (the programming development environment itself is simultaneously shareable and extensible). Croquet based worlds can also be updated while the system is live and running.”

Other online collaboration environments that would benefit from an open source of verifiable measurement include:

• Uni-verse.  An “open source Internet platform for multi-user, interactive, distributed, high-quality 3D graphics and audio for home, public and personal use.”
• Muse. A “software platform allowing organizations to create collaborative custom solutions that utilize rich media, 3D environments, and multi-user capabilities. Using Muse, developers can create immersive 3D environments that unite video and animation, audio, html, 3D models and much more.”
• Virtual Object System.  A “free and open platform for multiuser 3D virtual reality and interactive, collaborative 3D virtual spaces, and collaborative data systems in general.”

And the big guys and gals over at Microsoft and Sun are experimenting too (where’s Google and Yahoo? - do tell me!):

• Microsoft’s Task Gallery.  A “novel approach to bring existing, unmodified Windows applications into a running 3D virtual environment. The result is a working platform for experimentation in 3D user interfaces, in which the user retains all familiar productivity tools. This also allows for a smooth transition between traditional 2D interfaces and our new 3D territory.”
• Sun’s Looking Glass Project. A “Java technology and explores bringing a richer user experience to the desktop and applications via 3D windowing and visualization capabilities.”

Notice what all of these visionary ideas have in common: openness.  It’s only through open standards to key interfaces in these systems that we web analysts will be able to do what we do.  

So that beckons the rhetorical question, which web analytics tools right now could even work with extended data models for 3D virtual collaboration environments? 

I’m looking forward to how management at the following companies evolves their business models to focus on openness through analytics enabling their sustainable growth rate:

• There.com
• Multiverse
• Forterra Systems
• Whyville - ahh, my favorite question “why?”
• ProtonMedia
• Entropia Universe
• Habbo
• Areae

As Marshall Sponder forms the Web Analytics Association’s Social Media working group, I’m looking forward to hearing your voice on the phone calls.  Make sure you also read my good friend Eric Peterson’s take on some of this area as well.