The Best Blogs on Virtual Goods
We may well be the pioneer virtual goods supplier (WYP sells the real world in virtual terms) in Germany, but the German market for virtual goods is certainly lagging behind the more developed markets in East Asia and - to lesser extent - North America. It is therefore essential for us to regularly follow international resources on this rapidly developing field of innovation.
As our reading may be of interest to others, we would like to share the blog feeds that we consider to be the web’s best resources on Virtual Goods. As we dont want to go as far as ranking these great blogs against each other based on our subjective perception alone, we stick to the number of subscribers in Google Reader (given in brackets):
- Lightspeed Venture Partners (2.949) - VC with tremendous expertise in virtual goods - recommended reading: Why Do People Buy Virtual Goods?
- Massively (2.456) - high frequency news provider focussing on MMOs - recommended reading: The big business of selling virtual goods
- Inside Social Games (786) - tracking the convergence of social platforms and games - recommended: Virtual Goods booming in Asia
- Virtual Worlds News (778) - recommended reading: >400m USD invested in VG businesses in 2008
- Virtual Economy Research Network (400) -Finnish academics analyzing the subject - recommended reading: ARPUs in social networks
- UgoTrade (320) - Virtual Realities blog following a cooperative vision, lots of insightful interviews with thought leaders - recommended: Mashing Up Virtual Worlds with Web2.0 and Gaming
- WorldsInMotion (306) - discusses the business of virtual worlds - recommended: the wasted opportunity of CityPixel
- Charles Hudson Weblog (256) - Producer of the Virtual Goods Summit -recommended: his presentation on virtual goods on the Engage Expo
- KZero (204) - UK based analysts on virtual worlds - recommended reading: KZero’s infamous Radar Chart clustering all relevant virtual worlds
- VirtualGoodsNews (170) - Insights on key market players - recommended reading: Are US Social Networks Adopting Virtual Goods Too Late?
- Shark Jumping (66) - Insider perspective of Sean Ryan, CEO of 3D avatar service Meez - recommended: Only Virtual Goods Will Pay
- Payment Guy (65) -Focus on Virtual World’s Payment Systems - recommended: WhatsYourPlace - A Cool Google Maps Mashup
- Economics of Virtual Worlds (37) - Focus on public policy issues - recommended: Virtual Worlds & Pop Culture
- PaidContentIsBack (34) - Corporate Blog of Germany-based SnipClip - recommended: Social Games & Virtual Goods
- WhatsYourPlace Blog (20) - Corporate Blog of Virtual Goods Revolution WYP - recommended: Virtual Goods is NOT about buying pixels
- Gambit blog (5) - corportate blog focussing on monetization of social games, with insightful assessments of existing concepts - recommended: assessment of Habbo
If you feel we have omitted a high-quality resource, please let us know and we may add your suggestion to this list.