Flux Research

Monetizing Documents

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:28 GMT

This Business of Blogging:
Monetizing Documents: Ecommerce, Advertising, Paid Services

Valuing ExecTweets, Facebook Revenue, Target Google, MySpace Ads Down

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:58 GMT

Most of the above links that aren't on Chas Note were discovered via Chas Note. That's why he's ranked 311th on the Ad Age Power 150! :)

EVE Online: Virtual World Bank Gets Fleeced

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:24 GMT

From the NY Times, Rob Cox writes about A Virtual Bank With Real Woes, in the virtual world of EVE Online:

Central to Eve’s strategy, players develop economies within an "anything goes" free-market framework that allows them to expand their fleets, buy weaponry and equipment and bolster defenses. Indeed, Eve has 66 marketplaces for some 5,000 items, with more than a million transactions a day.

Enter Ebank, this virtual universe’s online bank. Because players often do not have the interstellar credits...they need to expand their fleets, an enterprising player created a bank that would accept deposits and lend to players who would pledge assets, like their spacecraft, as collateral.

The bank was a success....Ebank accumulated about 8.9 trillion ISK in deposits in 13,000 accounts belonging to 6,000 users. That was far more than it was able to lend out — there were around 1 trillion ISK of loans.

Somewhere along the way Ebank’s top executive, who went by the online handle Ricdic...made off with deposits, which he then sold for real cash to gamers on a sort of black-market exchange separate from Eve.

[Game developer] CCP kicked Ricdic out...Ebank has temporarily shut down while its board of directors...tries to sort out the mess. Depositors, meanwhile, appear to have pulled 5.5 trillion ISK of deposits.

Virtual world economies are pretty fascinating systems and definitely worth following. I think if such arenas interest you, you've just got to get in there and start learning the lay of the land. But, as the above tale indicates, bringing in knowledge from the outside world will be necessary if you plan on such ambitious schemes as virtual world financial services.

Disruption, MeDeploy, Long Tail, Free

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:28 GMT

Web Tech Investments, Simon & Schuster on Scribd, Social Media ROI, Online Ad Market, Online Stationery

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:08 GMT