During the past months, our trainee Matthias analyzed the virtual goods market, especially in the area of social gaming, social networks and virtual worlds. Today, SnipClip announced at the GamesBeat conference, where Oliver will pitch for SnipClip at the Who’s Got Game competition, that it will publish the results. The press release highlights some interesting insights:

Average revenue per monthly active user per year:

• non-gaming social apps: $0.37
• social games: $3.65
• virtual worlds: $8.04

Market potential for 2008:

• non-gaming social apps: $215 millions
• social games: $340 millions
• virtual worlds: $244 millions

Today, I participated at the first Web Montag in Augsburg, my home town. About 35 web developer, designer and business people joined the event at the Capitol. The event was organized by WEKA – thanks to the organizers! The next Web Montag will be held in March and again organized by WEKA.

Despite the strong interest for the first Web Montag in Augsburg, I was the only one presenting at the event. My presentation was about social games and virtual goods. Some people from the audience asked me for the slides. So here they are:

Brands are increasingly the sum of their most loyal and influential fans.

Taken from:

Microsoft published the presentations from the Xtopia conference as online videos today. Here is the online video from my presentation about making money with virtual goods in social communities:

“In den USA beläuft sich der Umsatz mit virtuellen Gütern bereits auf über eine Milliarde Dollar, dann muss in Deutschland doch auch Geld damit zu verdienen sein“ erläutert Martin Szugat seine Motivation für SnipClip.com. Zusammen mit zwei Freunden gründete er SnipClip.com und konnte jüngst die ersten Startup-Preise sammeln. Social Communities erfreuen sich immer größerer Beliebtheit und daher müssen sich nach Meinung von Martin Szugat alle Händler und Marken mit ihnen auseinander setzen. „Wenn wir unsere digitalen Produkte verkaufen wollen, müssen wir in die Social Communities, dort sind unsere Kunden. Außerdem setzen wir auf die Sammelleidenschaft der Deutschen.“, Im Rahmen der Microsoft Gründerinitiative wird SnipClip.com uns ihre Lösung für den „realen“ Vertrieb von virtuellen Gütern auf der Social Community Plattform Facebook zeigen.

“unternimm was.”- die Microsoft Gründerinitiative: Startup3: SnipClip.net – Geld verdienen mit virtual goods und social communities

The introduction is by Carsten Rudolph, head of the “Unternimm was”. initiative of Microsoft. “Unternimm was.” supports startups not only in a technical way, what most people would expect, but also in business development. So thanks Carsten for your support!

On my search for more figures from virtual items sales in social networks or virtual worlds I got in contact with Vili Lehdonvirta from virtual-economy.org. I am so happy, that he and his colleague Juho Hamari started an own forum-thread on virtual-economy.org, where everybody can share revenue data and other metrics of virtual asset sales market.

This is a really good start and I hope, this can be a central point of metrics of the virtual asset sales market.

Good bye and stay tuned.

Here is my presentation from the Xtopia 2008 conference: 

Thanks to all participants for your attention and your questions!

Last weekend I attended with a couple of friends the BarCamp in Munich. That was my first BarCamp and it was quite fun. Around 300 people came to the headquarter of Sun Microsystems, where it took place. There were a lot of interesting sessions. I learned something about the monetization of blogs, got inspired by new techniques of PowerPoint presentations, were impressed by a really crazy magic session and participated in a discussion about the financial crisis and the consequences for start-ups.

I even gave my own session! The week before the BarCamp I spend a lot of time preparing my presentation. I hope you like it (sorry folks, the presentation is in German).

Despite the presentation was a success I got a little bit frustrated: first I got no slot on Saturday and on Sunday the organizers forgot to put my session on the board. Finally I had technical problems when I wanted to start my presentation. Bad luck! I gave my session in the cafeteria. Unfortunately, not more than 15 people found the way to the cafeteria, but that did not matter. First I was a little bit nervous, but in the end I really enjoyed it. Here are some impressions of my session:

(Thanks for the photos, Tobias.)

The feedback after the session was good (thanks for that!) and I liked the discussion afterwards. I am really looking forward to present “Virtual Goods in Social Networks” still another time.

Thanks to the organizers of the BarCamp and also to the sponsors. The organization was perfect except the little mistake with my session. Next time I will definitely participate again.

Goodbye and stay tuned.

The Allfacebook blog reports about the aversion against Facebooks new design:

The backlash against Facebook has continued to spread ad Facebook rolls out the new site design. One group, “1,000,000 AGAINST THE NEW FACEBOOK LAYOUT!” has surged and will most likely surpass two million users later today. Another group, “Petition Against the ‘New Facebook’” has over 1.35 million members. It’s not just the group members that don’t like the new profile.

Via All Facebook » Millions of Users Dumbfounded by New Facebook Design

Wow, that is a large number of people who dislike the new design. I’m not sure whether it is good. My colleague Matthias likes it and he argues that it is more intuitive. For me it is just not cool enough – in fact it is boring. But this is how Facebook works: it is boring, because it is designed for ease of use. Now, it is even more boring, i.e. more easy to use.

Facebook resembles the Windows desktop and becomes more and more a social network-enabled webtop instead of a social network with web applications. However, where or what is the “Apple-style” webtop? MySpace? No, too chaotic. Is this is a market-gap?

Btw: do you like the new design of Facebook?

Whether or not, you probably have to life with it. Nevertheless, have a good time!

I am currently writing my diploma thesis. The issue of it is the monetisation of social networks with virtual goods. The last few days I was searching for scientific literature. I found two very good websites, which I want to share with you.

1. Social Science Research Network

There is a huge amount of scientific papers and the most of it is for free.

2. Bibliography of virtual-economy.org

Virtual-economy.org is also a blog, which I can really recommend. The amount of the scientific publications is not that big, but with a very specific content.

If you know other places, where I can find scientific publications, papers or dissertations about virtual goods, virtual items, virtual economies in social networks, please keep me up to date. I really appreciate your recommendations.

Good bye and stay tuned.

Basic Thinking, one of Germanys most read blogs, has published an article about virtual goods in the context of social networks. The article is by Tobias Lampe, CEO of WhatsYourPlace. His closing statement coincides with our vision:

Gerade aus diesem Grund passen virtuelle Güter auch sehr gut zu Social Networks – denn diese stellen die soziale Umgebung zur Verfügung, die virtuellen Gütern erst ihren Wert gibt. Für Social Network Betreiber ist dies natürlich auch aus wirtschaftlichen Gesichtspunkten interessant, ermöglichen virtuelle Güter doch zumindest ein zweites Standbein neben der reinen Werbefinanzierung. Und das ist für die langfristige Wirtschaftlickeit auch bitter nötig. Meine Prognose ist daher, dass gerade Social Networks in Zukunft vermehrt mit virtuellen Güter Konzepten experimentieren werden.

Read the full article: Basic Thinking Blog | Gastbeitrag: Virtuelle Güter – Geld für Nichts?