Saturday, October 13, 2007

Competing virtual worlds


Parallel to the early success of Second Life, the virtual world on the internet, China is seeing a familiar trend: China Web2.0 review just identified a third Chinese virtual world, uWorld, after Hipihi and Novoking. It illustrates a very Chinese way of competing.

While elsewhere initially (the hype seems to be over now) was struggling to get on board at Second Life, in China the smell of success triggers off competing services, fighting each other. I'm not sure what strategy in the end brings the best results for the users. Especially in the social media applications much of the success depends on volume. In video sharing Tudou was able to get a leading position, before hundreds of others joined the mayhem.
This kind of competition might divide up audiences, possible ad revenue, capital and other resources, it also prevents any form of complacency that might be hampering more mature IT-projects.

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