tech innovation in 08

For many users of virtual worlds and online games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, social networking is a well-understood part of their online experience. After all, these environments feature friends’ lists, user groups, messaging, and personal profiles, and are an efficient way to meet new people and socialize with people from all over the world. But given all that, the social-networking systems of these worlds and games are rudimentary at best, and are certainly closed to the outside. That’s why Corey Bridges, a co-founder of the Multiverse Network, thinks that one important innovation likely to come to pass in 2008 for virtual worlds is “deep integration with social networks.” There are a couple of very likely forms this integration could take, Bridges says. First, virtual worlds having an expression in existing social networks, like the little virtual-world applications we’re starting to see on Facebook. Second would be social-network extensions within virtual worlds themselves. And because users of virtual worlds are familiar with the use of social-networking systems to an extent, Bridges says, the further melding of the two types of environments won’t be too “painful a conceptual leap for consumers to make.”

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