1. SiliconValley.com (USA) – Some startups adding muscle in tough economy. “MVU Chief Executive Cary Rosenzweig used to make his living pushing practical products such as Tide, Clorox and QuickBooks Payroll. Now he leads an Internet “virtual world” company where visitors spend actual money for something as seemingly frivolous as a new wardrobe for their digital alter egos and gifts for avatar pals. Yet IMVU recorded four consecutive quarters of record revenue in 2008, accelerating even as the economy crashed, Rosenzweig says. With the holiday season over, business was expected to slow a bit — but January delivered another uptick, he said. Why? One theory suggests that people with maxed-out credit cards were substituting low-cost shopping sprees in the virtual realm for trips to the mall.”

2. AsiaOne (SIngapore) – Romance isn’t dead, it’s online. “According to a poll of 128,000 teens, romance isn’t dead, it just went online. The poll, conducted by Habbo, the world’s largest virtual world for teenagers, revealed that 76% of respondents believed that romance is still alive and well in today’s digital age. They believe too, that taking romance online actually makes thing easier – about two-thirds, or 64% of teens polled believe that virtual winks and MSN hearts actually make it easier for young people to flirt with each other. But that doesn’t’ mean that Singapoean teens have totally dismissed seeming ‘old-fashioned’ forms of communication. More than a quarter (27%) still prefer to flirting face-to-face than going virtual.”

3. The Jakarta Post (Indonesia) – Online gaming, good for some, disastrous for many. “High school student Ade spends his days in class like any other kid, but after school he morphs into a sword-carrying warrior, fighting ogres, monsters and dragons in the fantasy world of online gaming. Ade and other online gamers have become part of the furniture at Internet cafes throughout Jakarta, which are now sprouting up around university campuses and schools.”

4. The Guardian (UK) – The Man is in your virtual world. “Maybe it’s because it’s tax time, or coming up to the end of the financial year, but several high-level government bodies are weighing in on virtual worlds. Specifically, the bodies are interested in the financial and security implications of these multi-user, networked spaces. The first report comes in from the European Network and Information and Security Agency. According to Metaverse Law, they’ve released a position paper called Virtual Worlds, Real Money: Security and Privacy in Massively-Multiplayer Online Games and Social and Corporate Virtual Worlds”.

5. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – No classification: online games legal minefield. “Video game publishers and retailers are risking hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines by illegally selling online role playing games such as World of Warcraft without age classifications. The games industry believes there is a legal loophole exempting online games that don’t have a single player component from classification requirements but this view is contradicted by the federal and state attorneys-general.”

6. MyCustomer.com (UK) – Twinity offers new forms of customer interaction. “Virtual worlds offer customers and businesses new ways of interracting online, creating innovative brand extensions and sales channels for companies, and giving customers new forms of brand experience – that’s the view of Dr Mirko Caspar, co-founder and CMO of Metaversum, the Berlin-based company behind the development of virtual online environment Twinity. Unlike the superficially similar Second Life, which many brands and organisations already have a presence in, Twinity aims to model real-world cities as virtual locations that customers can ‘walk around’ in avatar form. Its first virtual city, Berlin, is online. More cities, including London, are planned.”

7. VentureBeat (USA) – Social network hi5 aims its 60 million users at casual games. “Social network hi5 is introducing a casual games section to its site today, complete with its recently-launched virtual currency (called “Coins”) and a range of more than 40 arcade, casino, card, sports and strategy games. It’s the latest move in the company’s effort to focus on “social entertainment” — later this year, it plans to introduce instant messaging (wrapped into games, as well), avatars and eventually a full-blown virtual world.”

8. This Is London (UK) – Welcome to cyber-London. “A virtual recreation of London is attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors every day. An online version of the capital, complete with Big Ben and Marble Arch, is featured on the 3D virtual world website Second Life. The online city boasts five areas of London –— Mayfair, Kensington, Chelsea, Westminster and Hyde Park. Users who sign up free of charge can create an avatar of themselves, and can walk or fly around while interacting with other users via text or speech.”

9. VentureBeat (USA) – PlaySpan makes virtual goods transactions more convenient. “In-game commerce network PlaySpan is taking one of the hassles out of trading virtual goods. In the past, gamers had to engineer a risky drop-off inside a game world in order to trade valuable virtual goods between game characters. The gray-market system (often not sanctioned by game operators) required that player arrange to meet inside a virtual world and was also rife with fraud, as many people didn’t show up as promised.”

10. Silicon.com (UK) – Virtual meetings to ground two million airline seat. “irlines could be hit hard as workers ditch face-to-face meetings in favour of cheaper virtual link-ups.
The worldwide economic downturn will boost videoconferencing tech, according to analyst house Gartner that predicts virtual meetings will replace more than two million airline seats per year by 2012. Telepresence systems – such as Cisco’s TelePresence and HP’s Halo – use high definition video, stereo audio and purpose built videoconference suites to help make participants feel as if they are meeting in the same room as each other.”