International Virtual Economy set to make Billions

Paying real money for products that do not exist is big business

Virtual goods such as weapons or digital bottles of champagne traded in the US could be worth up to $5bn in the next five years, experts predict.

In Asia, sales are already around the $5bn mark and rapidly growing.

For many, virtual goods are one of the hottest trends in technology and are fuelling huge growth in the social gaming sector.

"This is just an exploding part of the gaming business right now, said venture capitalist Jeremy Liew.

"It is the most exciting area in gaming," he said.

Mr Liew, whose firm Lightspeed Venture Partners has invested $10m in virtual goods companies, said the rapid growth of the sector was unprecedented.

"We have seen companies go from nothing in the last 18-24 months to tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue."

Revenue model

Playfish is a social gaming company that started two years ago. Today it has 11 online games and more than 61 million people who play those games worldwide.

Playfish believes virtual goods will continue to lead to more riches

Crucial to its success is the sale of virtual goods, ranging from furniture for your pet to menu items for your own restaurant in games like Pet Society and Restaurant City.

"Virtual items within the Playfish games are the centre point of the way in which Playfish derives its revenue," Tom Sarris of the firm said.

"We have two different revenue models. The primary is the sale of virtual goods and the second is in-game advertising, but that is a very minor aspect at this stage."

Mr Sarris would not reveal how much Playfish makes from the sale of virtual goods, but admitted that it accounts for the lion's share of the company's revenue.

That, according to Mr Liew is fairly typical.

"Virtual goods is the whole story in the world of social games. It accounts for 90-95% of revenue for a lot of these social game developers."

The new gamers

And it is not just the stereotypical gamers that are spending their hard earned cash on goods that only add up to a handful of pixels on a website

Emma Cox is probably fairly typical of the new breed of social gamer who plays as a way to stay connected to friends and family.

Ms Cox buys virtual goods to get ahead in the game

"I am not a traditional gamer. I don't buy console games or go out and spend $40 on a game for my PlayStation," said Ms Cox.

"I am playing online games for a different reason and it's instant gratification, playing with friends, showing off to others and have them see all the virtual goods you have bought for yourself and even for them."

Ms Cox says she spends about $10 a month per game on virtual goods and plays two to three games. Her favourite is Country Store where players trade real money for coins allowing players to move ahead in the game or to buy goods.

The game bills itself as an opportunity to let players get away from the hustle and bustle of life by hanging out in the country tending crops and breathing the country air.

On her last visit, Ms Cox bought fertiliser and seeds for corn and peppers.

"These virtual goods are easy to buy, they are accessible, they are online," said Ms Cox.

"The immediate impact is being able to move throughout the game a lot more quickly. It also enhances your overall experience of the game - it is about total entertainment."

Playfish's Mr Sarris said that is the main reason people are willing to purchase products that do not exist.

"The way we look at it is it's no different from paying money to go and see a movie or rent a dvd. What you are paying for is the experience and that notion of entertainment."

Social is key

Central to the early growth of this virtual goods revolution have been social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

Ten of the top 15 apps on Facebook are social games

Users of these networks can also pay for virtual goods, such as digital birthday cards, champagne or flowers.

"Increasingly as people's relationships migrate online, your interactions occur there," said Lightspeed's Mr Liew.

"That makes it more natural for those acknowledgements of how important someone is to us to occur there also. Buying something like virtual champagne or a birthday card is telling someone they are important to you."

However most of the momentum in this virtual goods market happens through social games which Mr Liew said is responsible for bringing a new type of new gamer to the fore.

"We have found tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people playing these social games and many would never consider themselves as gamers. Yet they spend real money to play these games and in some cases really meaningful amounts of money.

"That is what makes the expansion of this market so exciting," added Mr Liew.

Bright future

The market is clearly one with a lot of life in it.

About two thirds of the top 15 applications on Facebook are games, according to analytics firm AppData. Those ten games are said to draw more than 100 million users a month.

Mr Liew said the virtual goods revolution will remain big news in 2010

Earlier in December, one of the biggest social gaming companies, Zynga, sold a stake in the firm to Russia's Digital Sky Technologies for $180m (£113m).

And in November, Electronic Arts, agreed to buy Playfish in a $400m deal (£251m).

Proof of how successful the virtual goods business has become is evident in moves by Facebook itself to test a payment system to get a cut each time an online-game player buys a digital tractor or pair of flip flops.

"We are still in the growth stage of this industry," said Mr Liew.

"We are still seeing people come out of nowhere and become a leading player. Five years down the line, it will become more stable with five to ten companies becoming more valuable.

"The virtual goods industry is one of the most exciting categories of 2009 and will remain an exciting category in 2010," he added.

Source : BBC

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If you think you gonna be the Next Big thing! Then US is the place to be..

Investors worry the US is not doing enough to entice founders here

A proposal that will make it easier for foreign entrepreneurs in the US to start the next Google or Yahoo will be debated in the new year.

Congressman Jared Polis has proposed a start-up visa to entice "foreigners with good ideas" to stay in the US.

The issue has been gathering steam in Silicon Valley where half of all tech company founders are immigrants, according to Duke University research.

The idea is part of a proposed overhaul of the US immigration system.

"Every day the American economy is losing ground - not to mention high-tech jobs and technologies - to India and China because foreign-born entrepreneurs cannot secure a visa to stay in the US," he said.

Lost opportunity

Eric Diep, who has just turned 22, could be regarded as one entrepreneur who got away.

He came to Silicon Valley as a student like many immigrant founders who have helped start companies such as Google and PayPal.

Mr Diep was one of the first developers to get into social games with his application called Quizzes, initially launched on the social networking site Facebook.

Google, Pfizer, Yahoo and eBay were in-part founded by immigrants

Over a year ago he started to apply for a visa to allow him to carry on working in the Valley, but he soon encountered problems.

"The reason it was so difficult for me was because I dropped out of university and the stipulation for a lot of visas is undergraduate experience. My age also seemed to be an issue for the attorneys

"At the beginning it wasn't the expense in terms of legal fees but the big problem soon became one of distraction. I was trying to spend as much time working on perfecting my product but then I would have to go away and figure out the legalities of applying for the visa,"

In the end, Mr Diep decided to base himself in his native Canada and travel back and forth to Silicon Valley.

"The flying is so tiring between the two places and it's expensive. At one point, I had no money left in my bank account but at the last minute money came in and now I feel pretty fortunate that I can still do this.

"It was a pretty close call," he added.

He backs a start-up visa because, for him, being in Silicon Valley is where he needs to be.

"Being there at the time really launched me. I would never have spotted the social gaming opportunity had I not been there."

Visa details

The start-up visa is aimed at streamlining the country's EB-5 visa system which was initially introduced in 1990 to attract foreign capital to the US.

Each year 10,000 EB-5 visas are available but to get one, applicants need to invest $1m and create 10 full-time jobs.

Mr Polis said he wants "a new class of eligibility" with the start-up visa.

The new visa would require $100k-$250k in venture capital funding

It would be granted to foreign entrepreneurs if their business plan attracts either $250,000 from a venture capital operating company that is primarily US based or $100,000 from an angel investor.

They must also show that the business will create five to ten jobs or generate a profit and at least $1m in revenue.

Some of these requirements may well be changed when the bill goes to committee in the new year.

"Immigration reform is a big discussion in Washington," said supporter Brad Feld, who is also a managing director with venture company the Foundry Group.

"We think the start-up visa is an easy thing to talk about and get consensus around in terms of having a positive spin on entrepreneurship and creating jobs."

Job creation

Some critics fear that making it easier for entrepreneurs to set up shop will hurt Americans by taking jobs away from them.

"I feel incredibly strongly that that is a misinterpretation of the proposal," said Eric Ries a venture advisor and author.

Start-up companies are needed to boost the economy say backer of the visa

"Some people have called those opposed to new immigration reform xenophobes and that is why I think it is important we craft this proposal so it addresses those concerns. This is not a new visa category but reform of an existing but flawed category," .

The proposal's backers say that far from taking away jobs, new jobs will emerge that were never there in the first place.

"If the capital is available for the market, we should jump to bring those people here. Those jobs only get created once the founders get funded. This is a market driven decision," said Dave McClure, an internet entrepreneur, investor and start-up advisor.

YouNoodle is a start-up company founded by two British entrepreneurs. It tracks the start-up sector and said the figures speak for themselves.

"If just ten thousand start-up visas were made available this would mean over 3000 additional new innovative and funded companies would be based in the US every year," said Kirill Makharinsky, YouNoodle co-founder.

"They would generate more than 10,000 jobs on average every year. In the first 10 years that would add up to over 500,000 highly-skilled new jobs

"So the upside is huge and the downside is negligible because no jobs are being taken away from US citizens," Mr Makharinsky .

And for Mr McClure, the consequences of not establishing a start-up visa class are obvious.

"We will lose out because we are not being competitive with the rest of the world," he said.

"There are similar programmes in Canada, the UK and Australia. They are all vying for the top entrepreneurs and if we only look at our own citizens, we are only taking 10-20% of the world's talent into consideration here. That would be short-sighted in the extreme."

Source: BBC

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We are going 'YO'! www.yostuffs.com, Keep watching for more...

Yostuffs.com, Keep watching for more...

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Music Update: Hip Hop, RnB and Reggae December 30

Skillz
NEW December 30
Skillz - 2009 Rap Up (4:58) VERY HOTTTTT Skillz raps about everything that went on this last year. MUST HEAR!!
Akon - Nosy Neighbor (Prod. By David Guetta) (4:00) VERY HOTTTTT CD Quality
Crooked I - Streets On Lock (3:02) VERY HOTTTTT
Twista - All The Way Turnt Up (Remix) (Feat. Roscoe Dash, Soulja Boy, And Arab)(6:03) VERY HOTTTTT
Clipse - I'm Good (Remix) (Feat. Rick Ross And B.G.) (5:32) HOTTTTT
Beyonce - Waiting (Remix) (Feat. Range) (3:57) HOTTTTT
Day26 - Like This (Feat. Jermaine Dupri) [Prod. By Jermaine Dupri] (3:44)HOTTTTT
J. Holiday - Love Lockdown (2:52) HOTTTTT
Alicia Keys - Heaven's Door (3:19

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3D Street

10 of the World’s Most Amazing 3D Street Artists: From Sidewalk Sketches to Awesome Wall Murals

by batish

(Check out our complete collection of 100+ Works of Creative and Geeky Art and Graffiti.)

3D graffiti, whether it’s in chalk or paint, on walls or the street, represents a new way of combining the mastery of Renaissance art techniques with the gritty, ephemeral qualities of amazing street art. These 3D street artists gives graffiti a whole new meaning – one that departs from the conventional interpretation of graffiti as vandalism in the form of images and letters scrawled on public property. Artists like Kurt Wenner, Eduardo Relero and Tracy Lee Stum create street art that is so incredible it is almost impossible to pass by without being sucked in to the worlds they create on asphalt and concrete surfaces.

Kurt Wenner

Kurt Wenner’s ability to transform Renaissance classicism into 3D street art is unparalleled and has made him the top anamorphic street painting artist of our time. Kurt aims to ‘reinvent classicism for a new age’, bringing his talent for realism to the streets, literally, having invented a pictorial geometry that corrects the specific distortion caused by viewing his street paintings at an oblique angle. A former NASA illustrator, Kurt has had his work featured in a lengthy list of articles, television features, ads, and documentaries.

Edgar Muller & Manfred Stader

Edgar Muller and Manfred Stader are a German team of street painters. Much of their work is in the 3D anamorphic style, but both of them often create traditional street paintings in a style that mimics the detail and realism of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Their background in realism gives them an incredible advantage as anamorphic street painters, as evidenced in their ‘River Street’ work and the paintings above. Stader and Mueller have won many street painting competitions, and have taught street painting at universities.

Julian Beever

Julian Beever’s world-renowned sidewalk chalk drawings have been a viral hit all over the internet, and it’s easy to see why: he’s a master of the anamorphic technique, which he’s been perfecting since the mid 1990s. Each of Julian’s creations typically take a full day to complete, and by the next day they’re just a memory, washed away by rain or walked upon by pedestrians. The English artist has been given the nickname ‘The Pavement Picasso’, and he continues to work all over the world.

Tracy Lee Stum

Tracy Lee Stum is widely considered to be one of today’s finest street painters. She has traveled the world to be a featured artist in many festivals and events, and she currently holds the Guinness World Record for the largest street painting by an individual, which she completed in 2006. Tracy’s work contains many themes, from Biblical to exotic to the mundane.

Eduardo Relero

Eduardo Relero is a street artist working primarily in Spain. His fanciful illustrative style looks like storybook pages come to life, and indeed each of his anamorphic sidewalk chalk drawings seems to have a story behind it.

Rod Tryon

Rod Tryon has been adorning the streets of the world with his chalk drawings for more than 20 years, and was first inspired to try anamorphic designs in 1996. Of his paintings, Rod says “Entertaining the audience by creating an image that looks like it is coming up out of the street, or the impression of a hole opening up in the asphalt in front of you, is a special treat for the artist. Seeing crowds react to his 3-D pastel images, bring great joy to both the artist and onlookers.”

Greg Brown

The work of Greg Brown isn’t meant to be accessible. His huge murals seem to jump out at the viewer, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to interpret, and that’s how he likes it. Greg’s murals vary dramatically in style and content from one to another, due to the intense collaborative process he takes on with each client. They range from Dali-esque surrealism to classic trompe l’oeil, with subjects including everything from construction equipment to miniature ships.

Eric Grohe

Eric Grohe was a professional graphic designer and illustrator for decades before beginning work on his renowned trompe l’oeil murals. Eric’s murals appear to jump off of the surfaces that he paints on, and they grace walls all over the United States and the World, from Seattle Washington to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Eric’s work reflects a patriotic all-American theme, and his depictions of scenes such as football games and picturesque towns have turned blank walls into works of art.

Daim

Daim is a German graffiti artist who first started spraying in 1989 and hasn’t stopped since. Daim has become one of the most sought-after graffiti artists in the world, and has even appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records for spraying the highest graffiti in the world. The only ‘traditional’ graffiti artist on our list, Daim creates 3D art on interior and exterior walls, canvas and vehicles and also works in animation and sculpture.

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