REPORT: Over 27 Million Use Facebook's Virtual Worlds

At least 27 million Facebook users are active in at least one virtual world application.

Before the spectacular growth of social networking and Facebook games, technology investors devoted considerable attention and dollars to virtual worlds.

Generally defined, virtual worlds are online digital simulations of physical locations in which users interact with each other through fictional avatars in real time.

Attention in this space peaked roughly between 2006 and 2008, fueled for example by Disney’s purchase of kids’ virtual world Club Penguin for $700 million, Google’s ultimately unsuccessful launch of a virtual world called Lively, and ongoing media buzz over Linden Lab’s Second Life.

But given the triumph of Facebook and its paradigm of an online, asynchronous network of real friends, many industry analysts have assumed that virtual worlds are no longer relevant.

However,

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