IBM Collaboration Development team
Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds
Roo Reynolds
Metaverse Evangelist
roo@uk.ibm.com
08/01/08 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Web 2.0
2 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Web 2.0 examples (then and now)
 Personal websites → blogs
 Britannica Online → Wikipedia
 DoubleClick → Google AdSense
 Domain name speculation → search engine optimisation
 Screen scraping → web services
 Content management systems → wikis
 Directories (taxonomy) → tagging (\"folksonomy\")
3 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Web 2.0 components / characteristics
Tools: RSS, Standards: REST, Techniques:
AJAX, PHP, XHTML Mash-up, wiki,
Ruby tagging, blogging
The Web
Light-weight Rich user
programming as experience
models
“The Platform”
Software that gets Small pieces
better as more loosely joined, or
people use it “re-mixed”
Services, not Harnessing
packaged Architecture of collective
software participation intelligence
4 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Key themes to remember
 Social networking
 User-generated content
5 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Web 2.0 attitude
“ Web 2.0 is an attitude not a technology.
It’s about enabling and encouraging participation
through open applications and services.
By open I mean technically open with appropriate
APIs but also, more importantly, socially open, with
rights granted to use the content in new and exciting
contexts.”
Ian Davis http://iandavis.com/blog/2005/07/talis-web-20-and-all-that
6 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Web 2.0 is understood – so what’s next?
7 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Games?! A few numbers…
 69% of American heads of households play computer or video games
 In 2005, 25% of gamers were over the age of 50
 The average game player age is 33
 44% of most frequent game players say they play games online
 In 2005, video and computer games sales came in at $7billion
– Slightly down on 2004 – due to new consoles
Source: Entertainment Software Association., “Essential Facts about the Computer and Video
Game Industry, 2006”
8 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Virtual Worlds - background
Online Games
e.g. Quake, Half-Life, …
MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games)
e.g. Everquest, Project Entropia, World of Warcraft, …
• Persistent online world
Virtual Worlds - Massively multiplayer (but not role-playing games)
e.g. There.com, Second Life, Big World, …
• The users generate the content
• Not really a game; no objectives – ‘just’ a platform
• A place for meeting, building, selling, collaborating and exploring.
9 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Virtual Worlds
Second Life (http://secondlife.com)
3,600,000+ user accounts and growing fast
1,100,000+ logged on in past 2 months. Usually 15,000+ concurrently
online
Active economy
Millions of US$ changes hands between players every month.
Media coverage
BBC, Wired, Economist, Business Week, Observer, Sunday Times,
Guardian, Channel 4, CBS, USA Today, The Register, Forbes, … everyone
10 © 2007 IBM Corporation

BBC – One Big Weekend concert
with streaming audio and video
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Major League Baseball event
hosted in virtual stadium
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Regina Spektor – marketed
in-world by Warner Bros.
13 © 2007 IBM Corporation

American Apparel
virtual store
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Reuters have a Second
Life office, complete with
embedded journalist
15 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Why does IBM care?
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Meetings
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IBM Alumni event
(http://greateribm.com)
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IBM Innovation Jam results:
Funding for ‘3D Internet’
19 © 2007 IBM Corporation

IBM 12 island
innovation complex
20 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Circuit City
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Sears
22 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Wimbledon demo…
Integrating real-world
‘Hawkeye’ ball tracking
July 2006
data with Second Life
for Wimbledon demo
23 © 2007 IBM Corporation

Australian Open
Jan 2007
24 © 2007 IBM Corporation

More possibilities
–Marketing, brand promotion
–Retail
–Hardware / Storage
–Media and entertainment (TV?)
–Modelling (visualisation, simulation, …)
–Research, including monitoring (and data-mining)
–Education (e-learning, blended learning, …)
–Conferences
–Community events
–…
25 © 2007 IBM Corporation

What’s next?
 rooreynolds.com
 eightbar.co.uk
26 © 2007 IBM Corporation