Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds have already become a major part of our society and its becoming a larger part of everyday life. Its common now to start social networking sites, how facebook took over myspace and twitter is moving in to take control. It seems that computers have a larger part in the American Dream, with the white picket fence with the dog and two kids you have to have a Macbook Pro in your living room. I personally feel as if social networking will be the future job interviews, future phone calls, how to stay in touch with people, and maybe even working from home. Its a fear of many, but there's so much technology in virtual worlds its as if when you upgrade a system its already out of date. Virtual Worlds is a part of our world now and I believe that it will eventually out date most common ways of interaction.

Virtual Communities

In the article "Life beyond Second Life" from June of 2007 seemed to be at high point of virtual world in the news. While they have remained very popular I have been hearing less about them than I was two years ago. A lot of this seems to be due to better regulation and rules in the communities that own them. However, according to an article in the Gaurdian this summer, membership in virtual worlds have grown 39% in the second quarter of this year to around 597 million. While experts assume that only a fraction of these member are active at any given time the number are still staggering.

Another surprising fact is that most of this growth came from children. Worlds that target children 5-10 or 10-15 have populations in the tens to hundreds of millions. Worlds targeted to older groups (15-25) have smaller numbers but that thought is that as the youngest users get older they will expect virtual world like online communities and static, text and image based services like Facebook and Myspace won't cut it.

Not only is membership still growing but the companies are profitable. Unlike communites like Twitter or Facebook, the business models of worlds like Second Life or World of Warcraft are based on a mix of payments and subscriptions. Second Life now also offers and enterprise version that allows employees avatars to meet in virtual office spaces. With travel budgets shrinking some companies are embracing this method. Some enterprise users even claim that because the environment can be so engaging it can lead to the creation of more ideas.

So based on all of this do I think that virtual worlds will still be around in 5 or 10 years? Yes, I do. I think that they will continue to change. A lot of the novelty has worn off and I think they they will need to be more accessible to average users than Second Life or other are now to become mainstream. I'm curious to see if the business application really catches on. I think it probably works well for some industries but I can't quite imagine some professions creating an avatar and logging on for a meeting. It will be interesting to see what the 5-15 year-olds of today will grow with and expect from a social network.

Profiting from Virtual Worlds

The sale of virtual goods has risen from $265 million in 2008 to $621 in 2009. By 2013 projected growth estimated at $2.5 billion. That's just in the United States. Second Life currently has the largest market, with approximately $144 million dollars changing hands between users so far for 2009. But those numbers are deceiving, only 219 of the approximately 68,000 users earned profits over $5000 (1). So 0.3% of Second Life users are actually making some money from what presumably is a lot more time spent in their virtual world than would be required to make that same money in the real world. However there are a handful of people making a million plus a year from Second Life (1). But again, that's perhaps a half dozen people among 68,000 users. If you're looking to make it big in virtual worlds, perhaps you should keep looking.

I'm of the belief that virtual worlds are a niche idea, they'll always have value to an esoteric audience but the real money will come with the rise of augmented reality, a fusion of virtual reality and real-reality untethered from a computer screen. More on that in my presentation.

1. The future of virtual goods, from Hypergrid Business

Retrieved November 8, 2009, from Hypergrid Business website:

http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2009/09/the-future-of-virtual-goods/

Second Life

Second Life is a world of almost 2 million people where your three dimensional character can meet and chat with other people characters. Second Life has an internal currency, the Linden dollar (L$). L$ can be used to buy, sell, rent or trade land or goods and services with other users. Every person in Second Life gets a stipends or weekly salary of a few hundred Linden dollars . according to the Second Life Web site any resident can make money in second life through different ways, Linden dollars can be converted into US dollars at around 260 to 1.That means that 1 Linden dollar is worth about a half cent in real money. In addition to the stipends, you can work for someone or start your own business to earn Linden dollars or you can buy them at online currency exchanges with real dollars. This feature of Linden dollars and US dollars being interchangeable makes it possible to turn your virtual income into real income.
Thousands of residents in second life are making part or all of their real life income from their Second Life Businesses “Artists visit virtual Second Life for real-world cash”.
I think Second Life is not finished yet, and i believe that it is a preview of the Internet of the future.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/07/second.life.singer/

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/virtual_worlds/article2747259.ece

Simulating Civil Engineering Projects In Virtual Worlds

Last year I saw a demonstration of a particularly interesting use for Second Life. Such-and-such an engineering company (the person giving the demonstration was obliged not to divulge the company) was employing Second Life to create a 3D replica of a gas station fuel pumping system. Those who were invited could visit the station and walk around a full scale replica, examine the floor layout, signage, etc etc. They could also, if they toggled it, see through the "pavement" the under-workings of the station, and see various revealing views of the piping and fuel delivery system. The company could then show this to potential clients, essentially allowing them to explore the physical space and the specifications of the project without it having been built... I can definitely see how that would be appealing to a gas company.

I think it will be these kinds of educational engineering and architectural projects will have the most long term use value in the online virtual world. The gratuitous uses will always be there, but most of them are passing fads, even if that fad passes through 20 million people.

Simulating Civil Engineering Projects In Virtual Worlds

View more presentations from Pam Broviak.

Surrogates anyone?

After reading Nick's blog, I did agree that the article was outdated. I realized that the user activity for Second Life sites are now in the tens of millions. Most of my friends, that are unemployed, spend most of their time on these sites. They are able to pretend to work and shop without the effects of real-life negativity. Other just enjoy doing and being something different.

Where do I see this virtual world ending up?
In my mind, I think the movie, Surrogates. This movie hits it on the nail. I believe the virtual world will run out of new ways to draw new users. Of course, they will try 3-D interaction, but when that gets old, Surrogates will be next. Surrogates will have the new appeal users are looking for. Users will have to ability to interact from the comfort of their own homes and pick how they would like their Surrogate to look. The twist will be interacting in real-life, not virtual. I know this might be crazy, but I don't think we are far off.

Surrogates movie trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwTJ7mCcFoY

Virtual Worlds

The whole idea of a virtual world does not appeal to me one bit. I try to avoid them and a result don't know much about them. I would rather have real life experiences and interact with people in real life. Nevertheless, I did some reading to educate myself on this topic and some of what I read simply shocked me.

There are approximately 350 virtual worlds. One hundred ninety-three (193) of them cater to teens or younger. It is predicted that this market will decrease in the upcoming year. So far 63 virtual-world related companies declined by 58 percent from 2007 to 2008, shrinking from $1.4 billion to $594 million.* These predictions were based on the sluggish economy. However, I found a conflicting report by consultancy kzero.co.uk that found the membership of virtual worlds grew by 39% in the second quarter of 2009 to an estimated 579 million. However, not all of those members were active.

There are a few ways of making money when it comes to virtual worlds. Once you have acquired assets in your virtual worlds you can sell them on ebay. Apparently it's not hard to make middle income.

I predict that virtual worlds will continue to grow. They sure are not showing any signs of stopping.

*Source: http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/01/23/virtual-worlds-getting-dose-reality

Virtual Worlds in Social Networking

It didn't take long to realize that the article you gave is already "outdated". Online virtual worlds are expanding at an exponential rate. Some of the top virtual worlds from 2007 were clubpenguin.com and zwinky.com, with 4.0 million and 3.6 million respective users in the MONTH of May. (1) Farmville alone has over 11 million users in a single DAY, making it a record-setting virtual world. (2) Farmville's release date was June 19th, 2009, and it has been growing approximately 1 million new players in a single week ( and I am proud to say that I am not one of them). The secret to Farmville's success it, without a doubt, is using Facebook as their platform. Games with the same idea as Farmville, i.e. Bejeweled Blitz and Mafia Wars, are solid proof that virtual worlds in social networking are definitely the hot thing of the now. These games even have the capabilities to create a sort of competitive friend list consisting of any Facebook friend that also participates and competes within the same virtual world.

As successful as this virtual world is, and as much as i understand why it makes sense, I still believe it has gone too far. It did not take much at all to find a Farmville cheater site. This is probably one of the more ridiculous websites I have seen lately. Topfarmvillefarmer.com is the complete guide to building the best farm in the Farmville community! Complete with autobots to crop for you, and the top selling Farmville guide book, pwn your friends. Seriously though, that's ridiculous, paying money for books and guides for a game comparable to Zuma. But, I suppose if it makes you happy, and the small group of 15 responsible for Farmville make money in the long run, then it's a win-win.

I realize that could have been a more informational post, but I decided to have some fun with it. Seeing as my entire family (including mom) plays Farmville, I am not too fond of it. Social Networking is where virtual worlds are now; it is all the rage. It only took Farmville two months to get 11 million users, so it is hard to tell where virtual worlds will be anywhere in the future. They can come and go so rapidly. I feel like, no matter what happens, virtual worlds will be where the people are. They have found an online niche within Facebook. Then again, I only touched on virtual worlds within social networking, which is one of many facets of virtual worlds.

(1) http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/14/news/companies/virtualworlds/index.htm

(2) http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2009/08/zynga-exec-spills-beans-on-farmville-success.html

Penny Arcade

I didn't manage to get a post up yesterday; I had one but the dog ate it. Hopefully, late is better than never.

Since I'm interested in web comics, I decided to take a look at the medium's biggest success story, Penny Arcade(http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/). Penny Arcade is a combination online strip, which updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and blog. It's created by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Both the strip and blog are exclusively concerned with games, online and video, which it reviews and comments on. I couldn't find exact income figures, but I've heard from numerous sources that the Penny Arcade operation generates an income in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. It's become a major force in the gaming industry itself and sponsors a convention called Penny Arcade Expo, a week-long event held annually in Washington State. Apparently, it's doubled in size every year since it began in 2004(1).

Penny Arcade began in 1998, making it a true webcomic pioneer. In the beginning, it made it's money almost exclusively from advertising. Now, according to its creators, it has more than two million page views a day. It still makes a great deal of income from ads(for which it can obviously charge a premium), but the site also has a store which sells numerous book collections, tshirts and other products. There are also several Penny Arcade video games, posters, action figures, all sorts of stuff, as well as the Expo. It's clear that, at this point, Penny Arcade has morphed into a business empire in which the webcomic on which it was based plays only a part.

The success of Penny Arcade is due in large part to a fortunate convergence of wide interest in the area they address(digital games) and the disproportionate willingness of the people who share that interest to use the Internet(especially early on). There are other web comics whose creators have been able to earn livable incomes, but none, as far as I know, have come even close to matching the success of Penny Arcade. Nonetheless, I think Penny Arcade's model is one that can work in a number of similar enterprises and its success says a lot about the potential of web businesses to well by addressing relatively small and well-defined niches.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Arcade_Expo

Sermo

The way that Sermo has approached their revenue model is in direct reaction to the community they're serving: doctors. To reach doctors, and to make doctors feel as though they're in a safe community, you have to take out advertising as a source of revenue. They're inundated with advertising and marketing from pharmaceutical companies. In their private community, no ads allowed.

So, how to make money? Sermo leverages the quality of its members to bring in revenue. The insights of physicians are valuable to a wide variety of interested parties. Companies can pay a subscription fee to be connected with members of the Sermo community in a way that does not break the secure and private environment of the community. Companies can purchase what Sermo CEO Daniel Palestrant calls "heat maps" of information. Certain ideas, or topics, which are discussed by a mass of Sermo members, are produced for corporate consumption. Additionally, members can participate in surveys and focus groups (with monetary rewards), of which their anonymous answers and feedback are provided to the sponsoring company.

The "win" here by Sermo is monetizing the quality of the social community. It's not how many hits or impressions or behavioral targeting, here. For Sermo, it's about giving physicians an opportunity to communicate with other doctors in a secure, private community, and monetizing the demand of the ideas produced in such a place.

Twitter

Twitters business model is currently a point of extreme interest in the online community right now. Alot of thought has gone into how to take this open platform tool and make a profit off it. BusinessInsider.com actually just held a contest to see who could come up with the best revenue model for the company. To date they have raised almost 55 million in venture capital which will be used to cope with the new "active users which have increased 900% in a year even more if the thousands of api's are taken into account". Amazing considering the company only employees a team of 29 people.

Currently twitter is in the process of creating a series of websites that collect tweets about certain topics or by a selected group of people. The advertising revenues from this sites such as ExecTweets (a tweet site for executives) and March Tweetness (a website that collects posts about the up coming March Maddness) has started to next the company its first real revenue since it began. Overall twitter already has taken its seat in society and its just a matter of time until it becomes its own corporate giant.

(www.businessinsider.com/.../11-twitter -business-plans-for-your-review - )

Pandora

Pandora internet radio makes most of their money from advertising. All of their advertising revenue is from banner ads on their website and mobile interface. They do not have audio ads, although they are considering subtle, NPR like audio ads in between songs like 'The next half hour is brought to you by . . ." according to an August 2008 article in the Washington Post. I assume Pandora also makes some money on referrals from sales of digital tracks from iTunes and Amazon.com but I couldn't find any numbers one this. Like many internet start-ups, Pandora was supported by venture capitalist investors. Its revenue was supposed to exceed its cost for the first time in 2009. This was before the announcement of royalty fee hikes.

Last year Pandora almost had to close down after a federal panel ordered the doubling of the per song royalty fee it, and other internet radio stations were already paying. Royalty fees that Pandora has to pay to record companies accounted for about 70% of its projected revenue of $25 million in 2008. Traditional radio pays no fee and satellite radio pays a fee that is lower than internet radio providers. "The Copyright Royalty Board last year decided that the fee to play a music recording on Web radio should step up from 8/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2006 to 19/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2010. Multiplied by the millions of songs and thousands of listeners Pandora serves, that means the company will have to pay about $17 million this year, Westergren said," according to the Washington Post article.

Fortunately for Pandora, a new royalty resolution was met this year at a rate Pandora thinks it can continue to function with. According to a blog post on July 07, 2009 by Pandora's founder Tim Westergren, after nearly two years of lobbying a new rate was set with the help of groups from the artist and label side as well at the internet radio side. While this new rate was lower, Pandora still had to make some changes. They limited their free subscribers to 40 hours of listening each month. After 40 hours was reached they would be able to listen for the rest of the month for $.99. Pandora says these heavy listeners only account for about 10% of their subscribers.

Craigslist

So i decided to look into Craigslist's business model this week and get an understanding as to who they target and how they have been making $80 million+ and a worth of $5 billion (and these numbers are from 2008).

From what I've found, Craigslist started out as a free service in '95 allowing users to to post jobs availabilities and real estate in the San Fransisco, CA area for over 5 years without expanding. In June 2000, it then expanded to Boston, MA. and only 2 months later to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Diego, Seattle and Washington DC. Craigslist has continued to expand to all 50 states and over 50 countries, with over 450 sites total. It is currently ranked 9th visited site in the US and 31st in the world.

Although posting began free, it has evolved into a service that is still free but does have a fee for specific areas. This information is taken directly from Craigslist.com.

All craigslist postings are free, except for:

1. Job posts in the San Francisco Bay Area

• The fee for posting a job in the SF Bay Area is $75. This fee pays for one job in one category.
  (One job posted in two different categories would cost $150.)

2. Job posts in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Orange County, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, Seattle, South Florida, and Washington DC

• The fee for posting a job in these cities is $25. This fee pays for one job in one category.
  (One job posted in two different categories would cost $50.)

3. Brokered apartment rental listings in New York

• The fee for posting a brokered apartment rental in New York City is $10.

4. Posts in adult services and therapeutic services on craigslist sites in the United States.

• The fee for posting ads in these categories is $10. Live approved ads can be re-posted for $5.

With just these relatively low fees they have been making their revenue of $80 million.

The interesting thing about Craigslist though is that it hasn't evolved in it's interface and user experience. Because it has no competition, it seems those at craigslist feel little need to update or innovate their platform. Gary Wolf at Wired Magazine stated this in his "Why CraigsList is such a mess." article in August:

"On this site, contrary to every principle of usability and common sense, you can't easily browse pictures of the apartments for rent. Customer support? Visit the help desk if you enjoy being insulted. How much market share does this housing site have? In many cities, a huge percentage. It isn't worth trying to compare its traffic to competitors', because at this scale there are no competitors."

It will be interesting to see if Craigslist will remain a popular source for nearly 1/3 of all adults in the United States. It seems it will be difficult for any competition to arise with the popularity of Craigslist, and the very nature of how much it charges. Why go to another site when the one your on is already free? I think it's going to rely on a competitor to reinvent, or perhaps merely a face lift, of how users interact with the site.

Skype: Communication is Key

I decided to check Skype's business model because the digital world today is mainly focusing on applications and software that can be used on cellular device. This is obviously mainly seen on the iPhone or android phones that have suddenly exploded on every service provider. An analyst even held by Ebay basically stated Skype's plan in a paragraph;

"Skype is expected to more than double its revenue to over $1.0 billion in 2011. With more than 400 million registered users currently, Skype’s metrics continue to accelerate as the company further establishes leadership in free and paid Internet-based voice and video communications, with growth opportunities in core consumer, mobile, businesses and platform. Skype’s leadership position has strengthened over the past year, driven by a new management team and the launch of many innovative products." (1)

The money that they make comes from the actual free networks that are set-up. The free aspects of skype are: Skype-to-Skype calling, video calling, chat/im, file transfer. These free features entice people to extend their service into other features that you need to pay for. Now I know that most people won't pay for unlimited calling with Skype because it's more then their providers. But money is also made through advertisments and licensing with other online companies.

These are the four methods that Skype is using to increase their consumer market:

• continue driving new users (by building “communities” or leveraging social networks)
• better promote its paid products (make it obvious, upon registration, where paid products can be found – not buried three levels deep in the “My Account” tab)
• increase revenue per paying user (encourage adoption of revenue services based on calling patterns; continued focus )
• monetize free users via advertising (but be smart about it, do it tastefully and carefully all the while protecting the core business) (1)

So word of mouth is what fuels Skype and keeps on introducing new members to the network. With portable software growing with each new smart phone, Skype seems to be darn secure in the near future.

(1) : http://voiceontheweb.biz/2009/03/skype-business-model-revealed-at-ebay-analyst-event/

Skimlinks

I originally started out researching Mashable which is the self proclaimed world's largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. It was difficult to discover exactly how they make money besides the obvious banners around the perimeter of the content. I decided to search a broader topic rather then focus on a specific site and I discovered Skimlinks. Skimlinks is an affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing ser­vice aimed at pub­lish­ers that want to make money from their shop­ping rec­om­men­da­tions. So what is traditional affiliated marketing? Basically it is getting paid a commission for driving traffic to a retail site through blogged content or links. The CEO and founder of skimlinks explains in the video posted below exactly the services they provide to authors and the video gives some good insights on how people go about making money through blogs and or networks.

What is interesting to me is that there are services now that actually target people trying to make money from blogs and other types of sites. I think the video below explains the process pretty well.

Skimlinks: Revenue through recommendations from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Can you Digg it?

"Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web."
Digg allows the community to select the most interesting things on the web and make them known. Everything from videos to news gets submitted. The most popular items get displayed on the front page of the website. Ever see an icon of a man with a shovel at the end of a blog? That's Digg. Digg is 32 on the top 50 websites list ranked by unique visitors. They were fully funded to be profitable.

The business model for Digg is simple. Just like many other web based companies, Digg makes money through selling advertisements. According to Jay Adelson, Digg's CEO, Digg gets 10-20 times the price for an ad compared to a social network. "Folks like LATimes, NYTime and WSJ come to us with those questions [the question being how to prevent the valuable newspapers from disappearing], and we work with them to drive traffic to those websites. We send them 80 million visits a month to the websites. We are helping them to understand how to leverage all these social technologies to better monetize these users." Jay Adelson said during an interview.

There is a unique difference in how Digg will use advertisements to make money. Instead of just posting ads on their site they will inject them into the stream and have the community vote on them. Advertisers will then pay according to the popularity of the ad. If an ad is popular it will cost less. The unpopular ads will cost more pricing them out of the system. At the time, Digg would focus more on non-banner ad sales, including custom sponsorships.

YouTube

Ever since I joined YouTube a few years ago I have always wondered how they make their money. So I decided to look into the matter. As I had guessed, they do rely on advertising for their income. This amazes me though, that such a big company can survive on advertising. As was already stated, YouTube also gains profit from deals with content companies. But even so, the money they bring in is insignificant compared to the costs of running a site like YouTube. "According to Multichannel News, Credit Suisse analysts project that YouTube bandwidth costs, content licensing agreements, hardware needs and other expenses will reach over $700 million in 2009" (1) That is well over 3/4 of their total opperating expenses. Analysts agree that "the issue for YouTube going forward is to increase the percentage of its videos that can be monetized (likely through more deals with content companies) and to drive more advertiser demand through standardization of ad formats and improved ad effectiveness" (1) YouTube still has some work to do before they can be really successful.

(1) http://www.impactlab.com/2009/04/21/does-youtube-make-money/

I found the above table very interesting as to how much time users spend on certain sites.

Souq.com

Souq.com One of the biggest shopping websites in the Middle East region, it’s almost like any sell & buy websites, but Souq.com has its own rules ( “Souq” is often used to designate the market in any Arab or Muslim city )
Souq.com launched a test site in 2005 and later it officially launched in the UAE in 2006. Souq.com works in a similar way to many of the leading auction platforms, but with the addition of essential localized services that address the Arab internet user and online shopping behavior. Souq.com offers its users both an auction platform as well a fixed-price selling format. Also, Souq.com has integrated mobile services (GSM) that provide users updates on all aspects of their auction transactions.
Souq.com is a member of the Maktoob group of companies Arab online community. Souq.com start making money in the early 2007 by adding fees for using the website and especially in the Cars and automobiles section, according to the new Terms and Conditions of the website Membership on the Site is free. Souq.Com does not charge any fee for browsing, 
bidding and buying on the Site. Souq.Com charges Transaction Fees to all sellers 
when their item is successfully sold on the Site and Special Listing Fees are 
charged to Sellers who use the Special Listing Feature for listing their items. The fees is about 5-7 % from the sold items price, and some Additional Fees applies when sellers decides to enhance their listing (increasing the visibility of their items Bold, Categories ... ).

YouTube

YouTube's purpose is to act as an online video distributor. Allowing users to view, review and share videos with anyone in the world. It's given a platform to the DIY filmmaker to reach massive audiences. With some of it's auteurs actually turning their broadcasts into a successful business. Such has been the case for Michael Buckley, who was able to quit his full time job to do a three day a week video about celebrity gossip called "What the Buck?". Revenue from his program is generated from his participation in the YouTube partner program. Partner videos have advertisements in the video like a commercial and on the same page as the video. Revenue from the ads is shared with the video creator and YouTube.(1)

It's not just the little guy that YouTube is seeing profits from. Another revenue strem comes from YouTube's deal with MGM to distribute less sought after content and DVD release promotions.(2) Most recently YouTube made a similar deal with Time Warner for content from Cartoon Network and CNN.(3)

It's not clear whether this is a profitable business model. YouTube is a property of Google, and even though Google is a publicly traded company it does not disclose numbers for it's individual holdings. Almost three years ago YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. According to an analyst for Credit Suisse, YouTube will lose $470 million this year alone. (4)

It seems unlikely that we'll all continue to suffer through the overpriced, painfully limited and obsolete technology that cable uses to deliver it's content to us. Sites like YouTube and Hulu are onto something much better, the question is will they be able to turn it into a profitable business or will someone who does it better come along and eat their lunch.

1.) YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money, from The New York Times

Retrieved November 1, 2009, from The New York Times website:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/business/media/11youtube.html

2.) YouTube goes to the movies, from CNN

Retrieved November 1, 2009, from CNN website:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/06/technology/youtubemgm.fortune/index.htm

3.) YouTube's Working Overtime, from Slate, The Big Money

Retrieved November 1, 2009, from Slate, The Big Money:

http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/feeling-lucky/2009/08/20/youtubes-working-overtime

4.) Does YouTube actually make any money?

Retrieved November 1, 2009, from The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/apr/07/youtube-video-losses

Seesmic

Seesmic was created in June of 2007. The company's mission is to provide everyone with an innovative way to communicate and connect online through video conversation. Developed by French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, who relocated from French to San Franciso, runs this company with 13 other employees.

Seesmic is a social software application site offering Seesmic Desktop, an Adobe Air application that integrates multiple Twitter accounts and your Facebook account and Facebook pages. Recently, Seesmic received a 12 million dollar investment. There goal is to make the company the gateway to all social services, no matter what platform one is on at any moment.