VIRTUAL WORLDS AND REALITY COLLIDE

People making a profit off of virtual gold

There was a fascinating article in the New York Times today that talked about online virtual worlds. If you have time, please read the story because it is quite good. It is also quite long, but I couldn’t stop reading it. (Its over 5,000 words long!)

Basically, the story focuses on the daily pursuits of Chinese gold farmers in World of Warcrft, an online space where you can be any “Tolkien-ish” character you prefer (wizards, orcs, elves, etc.). The object of the game is to advance to the next levels that include difficult tasks and missions and cool objects to collect. However, getting there is the difficult part. More often than not a character runs out of gold coins in the world and must “farm” for more, by tilling, fighting and stealing from others.

The farming process can be long and tedious, so some companies have set up online gold plantations, where workers do nothing but farm for gold and then sell it to players for real world money. Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Paying real money for a virtual benefit?

In fact, a simple search for “World of Warcraft” and “buy gold” returns well over a million and a half results in Google. The article I mentioned documents the pursuits of Chinese laborers who work getting the online gold to sell. It is an amazing look at how something that was originally intended for playing around has transformed into a way and means of sustaining life.



The economies of World of Warcraft and other online virtual realities such as Second Life, rival those of developing countries. Each world has its own economy and currency. It is amazing to me that the online world and reality are colliding and people are using physical means to obtain virtual dreams.

So how does this relate to public relations?

If the over 50 million people who are participating in online worlds are willing to pay real money for virtual benefits, would they also pay virtual costs for physical benefits? In other words, can a PR firm establish itself in the online world? I definitely think we should, if not us definitely getting our clients to open shop. We need to take advantage of the growing opportunities in the online space before we are running to catch up.

One of the continually changing challenges in PR is to be able to connect with our audiences. And if they are in online virtual realities, we must be also.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Why online communities are important to PR

I love this graphic showing most of the social networking sites and virtual worlds like a map, enticing you to explore new lands while subtly showing who the major players are right now. Social media is the heart of Web 2.0. It is about people connecting and sharing information. So I ask the question, “What is the relevance to public relations?”

Let me give you some statistics I found on social media:

• 80% of internet users will use virtual worlds by 2011
• US ad spending on social networks will top $2.5 billion by 2011

Now, don't ask me why the year 2011 is so important, but at the Gartner Symposium 2007 (where the statistics came from), the following comment was made about social media:

“The collaborative and community-related aspects of these environments will dominate in the future, and significant transaction-based commercial opportunities will be limited to niche areas, which have yet to be clearly identified,” said Steve Prentice, vice president and analyst at Gartner. “However, the majority of active Internet users and major enterprises will find value in participating in this area in the coming years."

Prentice said the key word--niche. It will be how money is made online, and it will be how public relations reaches out to people. They are already congregating in self-identified interest groups for us. We just need to be sincere and approach them as people and not as a simple target groups. We need to add digital elements into our campaigns and realize that most people get their information from friends and online.

Now that friends and online mean practically the same thing, we can't ignore the powerful combination of online communities.