Stepping into the Internet:New Ventures in Virtual Worlds

摘要

When the call for papers for this special issue went out in the fall of 2007, there was a lot of hype around virtual worlds, with organizations such as Toyota, American Apparel, IBM, Reuters, Sun Microsystems, and Wells Fargo experimenting with Second Life as a potential platform to reach consumers. Anshe Chung was touted as the first online personality to exceed one million U.S. dollars from profits earned inside a virtual world. However, in accordance with Gartner's hype cycle, after the initial spike in hype in 2006, virtual worlds quickly entered into the phase Gartner refers to as the "trough of disillusionment." As enticing as the initial press reports were around the potential of virtual worlds for creating new forms of value, during the disillusionment phase individuals and organizations discovered what we have long known in MIS: if you build it, they will not necessarily come.