SL v. World of Kaneva: Compare and Contrast

I think niche marketing is a phrase used by those who's product isn't popular enough for mass appeal. It eases the sting.

No one in business only wants to sell " a lttle" of their product.

of course,

No one is in business to cater to specialty markets.

Who wants to call up Ferrari and give them the bad news?

Oh I see! So you want LL to switch to a $500 monthly subscription fee!

Great idea!

I think that Kaneva is a good thing for SL. Why? Because some of the people who currently/would use SL as simply a 3D chatroom will go there instead, which leaves the people who love SL for being well, SL

Well, I have managed to get a picture uploaded and applied to a wall.

I have been signed up with Kaneva for years now, in connection with the Kaveva game engine, and this is the first picture I have uploaded.

On the wall in my Kaneva apartment now is Andrew Linden, at one of the big Linden versus the rest of us snowball fights.

The true advantage of a Niche Market driven Virtual world is that it wont be populated by people who dont "get it".

Whose advantage? Yours?

Maybe it's you who doesn't "get it"?

We're all different. I don't think there is anything wrong with trying to create something that appeals to a majority.

There will always be room for Colette in Second Life. I'm sure you'll find other Colette's eventually. How about opening a sim named Colette?


Note - Despite me disagreeing with you most of the time. I do like you!

Basically to say that something so omnipresent in market economies doesnt exist is an ostritch approach.

In fact much of SL items appeal to niches of people - Furries, BDSM, Gor, etc.

Sometimes niches grow and become more popular - Hot Topic

Others are Luxury items - Ferrari , golf clubs.

The concept that everyone in business tries to sell products "to everybody" is simply false.

I am saying there could be segment of people who might becoming more dissatified by LL's attempt to become more mainstream and corporate. Some people liked it being a place for the creative, the original, those with unsual tastes.

Enough of those people, and you create a business opportunity.

The Multiverse system will be in open beta before long.
That's the social demo world.



And below is the fantasy demo world.




I read that Xbox 360 will have chatting with people, don't have to be in the same game, video chat, and that PC users will be able to connect some games running with Vista to the Xbox 360 network and play against Xbox users.

I had the list in my signature till a few hours ago.

Active Worlds
Entropia Universe
Cybertown
World of Kaneva
Hipihi
There
Areae
Outback Online

I'm not sure if you can sign up for multiverse now or not, but it should be in open beta shortly. Multiverse is at multiverse.com.

The Lounge can be found at http://www.pcdmusiclounge.com/faces/pages/index.xhtml .

One looks up things like "3D Social networking" and "virtual worlds" and such in Google.

I got an accidental wireframe of the multiverse fantasy world:

Not true at all. Niche marketing gives you the advantage of smaller amounts of competition. Your customer base is more loyal, and, in my experience, more inclined to spend more, because you "get it."

To go back to the car example, I've never known anyone whose ambition it was to own 17 Ford Tauruses. I do, however, know a man who has 5 Corvettes and wants more.


The other advantage of a niche is that you truly are different from your competitors. And, that difference can sometimes lead to your product becoming the next big thing.

.. it's enough to turn a peace-loving hobbit into a griefer ... I want one .. I want it ..*NOW!!*

Very interesting thread .. nothing to add

That's when people like Colette come along and complain that they're not appealing to their niche market anymore.

and sometimes they are right.

The thing is I think that these markets depend to some extent on being niche.

There have been online sex-based games before, like SeduCity and Socialotron, but they haven't been anywhere near as successful as SL. Partly this is because they were much lower quality but partly it is also because I think many of the BDSM, furry, etc people on Second Life would not be happy to play in a purely BDSM/furry based world because they like the fact that since Second Life is general they can "hide" that aspect of themselves. They can tell friends or similar that they're playing Second Life which is a virtual world where they can create things of their own - they couldn't do that if they were playing SexWorld. There have already been people posting here that they can't buy L$ through LindeX because they don't want their partner to see the Second Life charge on their bank statements - how would that work if the charge was from somewhere known to be purely devoted to BDSM or something?

The thing with user content creation is that you have to pick one: either a) full, free user content creation, or b) all users having equal ability to affect the world. (Because even if you give everyone the same tools they will still have different levels of ability.) I think most entertainment-based world are choosing (b) because people are happier when they are "making do" to fit within the limits of the game/world, than they are when they are "making do" to fit within their own limits.

Hmmm, and Multiverse has Speedtree vegetation too... Something LL put in the 'too difficult' pile...

Could get interesting, though it looks very much like a VW Development kit from what I can see. DIY virtual Worlds anyone?

I duno i expected a bit more from kaneva. However that multiverse one seams good.

Of all those you listed, is SL the only one with a mac client?

Thanks

I think there's a less furtive motive involved in this equation. Niche interests do not eclipse everything that we are.

A purely BDSM world would provide an experience that was limited to just one part of someone's life, whereas SL provides a more rounded experience of both that narrow interest AND all those other moments when people are "off-duty" from sexual activity.

I like the diversity and energy that comes from the intersection of many communities, even when they are far from my own interests. I'm not a furry, but I like seeing furries in my world. It makes life more charming and interesting and broadens my own scope. And if you have several different interests you don't have to log in and out of different games in order to participate in one event versus another.

People are missing the other potential point.

That as Second Life becomes more mainstream - it could be driving away the creative and the unusual.

Its posible that a product driven to pick up this Niche market (SL's orgiinal market- dont forget) would be less limited than Second Life - rather than more limited as some have surmized.

I'm kind of surprised about all the misunderstanding about niche markets going on here.

A niche market is something that appeals to a small segment of the population.

It is not something anyone would be ashamed of having as their business focus.

For example:

Tennis outfits for women are a niche market. The producers make clothing for female tennis players. Female tennis players are a small segment of the population compared to, say, female jeans wearers.

Should the makers be ashamed because they aren't making jeans, instead? That doesn't make sense.

There are all sorts of companies catering to niche markets, enjoying a thriving trade, and building up their reputation as leaders in their niche market fields. Scrapbooking for instance - and within that, embellishment makers. And within that, dozens and dozens of brands! Some more famous and successful than others.

Are these scrapbooking companies supposed to be ashamed because the whole world doesn't want to scrapbook? I don't think so. They are probably proud to be providing the art they do. (And happy to make the money they do.) And if they didn't exist, there would be a lot of frustrated, sad, and angry scrapbookers!

Flamenco music is a niche market among music afficianodos. Does that mean that the flamenco guitarist is supposed to be ashamed that he isn't a rock group, appealing to a much broader audience? Hardly. He is an artist in his own right, in his own niche market.

I could go on and on - but no, there's nothing remotely "loser" about catering to a niche market. Unless you discover belatedly that the market doesn't even exist!

I'm just writing too much today.

coco

I'm dissapointed in Kaneva too. I wasn't expecting something as good as SL, but I was hoping that in return for giving up 3D content creation one would get something good in return. What you get in return is probably stuff you'd rather do without, like a pause everytime you switch locations, forced socialization via the Rave system, clunky avatar motion, awkward looking animations.

I think it will handle streaming video and music if you upload the files, so that's a difference between it and SL. How well it will handle streaming them (if it does) when there's a crowd we don't know yet. The interface is idiosyncratic and rather silly; for example, there will presumably be thousands of places to select from a list, but the dialog for selecting the places only shows about ten at a time, paging through them would be torment. The dialog on the website for uploading files like the SL snapshots I uploaded is primitive and appears to only allow one file at a time, meaning to upload a couple of hundred files would be a long and very dull process involving among other things clicking some kind of "I am not uploading anything bad" dialog every time. So far, when I appear there in my home, the camera is up high at a bizarre angle, and the avatar is at a door, a door that you don't seem to be able to go out of. Why taunt you with a door that doesn't work? There are other doors in the clubs that you can see through to a supposed city street, but you can't go out of them either.

There's a conference room for Second Life people there, but I haven't found out how one could put SL machinima there.

And I don't know that I will able to find or produce a Philip Rosedale T-Shirt, or wear anything but what the Kaneva company provides.

It's odd thinking about people whose introduction to 3D virtual worlds is at a place like Kaneva. The won't see the considerable variety of avatars and clothes one sees in SL, they won't see the variety of buildings and terrain SL builders and landowners produce.

The "crowds" I saw were at - guess what - dance clubs. There were female avatars in bras and panties or bikini bathing suits, which I think is as closed to buff as one can get in Kaneva, standing on the furniture, doing the limited selection of dances available, people saying somewhat the same sort of things you read in SL clubs, but with the addition of the "Rave Me!" requests - yuch. Kaneva is set up to be a constant rating party.

Hmm, I wonder if MySpace has any plans to add a 3D component to its offerings?

Like performace?

Seriously though, most of these social virtual worlds (even PlayStation Home) don't really add anything more than 3D graphics to what Habbo Hotel can do and that's what, a decade old now?