- Throwback Thursday: Metaverse Developers Not Only Testified Before Congress In 2008, Jon Stewart Featured It On The Daily Show!
- BREAKING: Rec Room Has Over 3 Million Monthly Active VR Users, Most On Meta's Quest 2; That's 10x More Users Than Meta's Horizon Worlds & Venues!
- SL Content Creators: How Much Of Your Income Does Linden Lab Take?
- Did Zuckerberg Just Say Collaborative In-World Creation Is Unique To Horizon? Because… Wow.
- Meta Announces User Content Marketplace For Horizon — Probably Prematurely & With A Weirdly Non-Competitive Revenue Cut
My Patreon Supporters
Hypnotic Romance, an SL sim with secluded spaces for couples. Click here to teleport.
The Virtual Worlds Museum. Click here to teleport to their Second Life hub with tribute to sunsetted worlds!
“TV POWWW!” by Tom Boellstorff & Braxton Soderman. Read about the first televised videogame here.
The Fitting Room: Try out new SL fits in a secure, private space. Click here to teleport.
Breedables CoOp, helping the SL pet community grow through shared resources. Go here to get started.
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Pretty Things, Nice Life is a striking decor and fashion blog by Victoria K. James. I really like her most recent post Crane & Koi which she admits is a much more saturated color than her usual. I love that tub and the birds!
- KOPFKINO – Tranquility Water Garden Tub – Copper
- TLC Animals
- TLC Gold fish pond with Waterfall Set
- TLC Goldfish
- TLC Red-crowned Crane
For another gorgeous space , click here:
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When I was talking to that Government Body That Shall Remain Nameless about regulation of metaverse platforms, and plans to start calling public hearings before Congress and EU Parliaments, they were surprised when I mentioned that this already happened in 2008 with Philip Rosedale and other metaverse developers.
"Yeah," I said. "Jon Stewart even did a segment about it on The Daily Show."
"Really?"
Yes really and you can watch it here. (Note to Comedy Central: Did you forget to enable embed settings?) Jon Stewart even had an embedded reporter in Second Life: Rob Riggle as the bodacious avatar Beowulf Porpoiseburg.
OK, not really Second Life. Here's what happened:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Kia Kiyori hitchhikes through Second Life, snapping what she see. This untitled picture captures another sign of spring, baby animals. In this case, she snapped some baby pigs who are intently checking out a robin. Pigs are among the smartest animals, smarter than dogs and make fine pets. They sure are cute as piglets. I love how Kia used depth of field, sharpening the focus on the bird they are watching. I also love the way she gives the SLurl if you want to visit yourself: “Hitchhiker's Guide to Nelipot”
For more hitchhiking encounters, click here:
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Just got this pretty amazing breaking news note from Shawn Whiting, Head of Influencers & Partners at Rec Room:
"Shortly after the holidays, Rec Room crested 3 million VR monthly active users… A majority of those VR monthly active users are Quest 2. [Emph mine – WJA]
"We're very happy with the VR growth but at this point VR is a pretty low percentage of our monthly players. Rec Room is seeing much more growth on iOS, Android, PlayStation, and Xbox due to there being billions of those devices out there collectively."
So that's something! Last December I estimated Rec Room had 4-5 million monthly active users across all devices, but based on Shawn's wording, total Rec Room numbers is likely to be well over 10-12 million MAU.
This is quite an impressive milestone for metaverse platform growth — and more key, for usage of the Quest 2 headset on metaverse platforms. Quest 2 has an install base over 10 million, so at least 15% of that (i.e. 1.5 million) are active on Rec Room.
This is also a sharp wake-up call for Meta:
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With so much online conversation over hat's a fair revenue split between a metaverse platform and content creators on it — thanks to Meta and its just-announced 47.5% cut for Horizon — I'm curious what the share is for Second Life. It can be as little as the L$ cash-out processing fee, or as much as monthly tier to rent a whole private island (or several).
Two survey questions below. (Use a desktop/laptop for best performance.)
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Koe’s “Spring” captures the joy of sitting yourself down in a field of flowers in the spring. The air is fresh, the sun is warm but not hot. This is a picture of mimosa flowers, though, and I think they grow on trees, This picture actually makes me think of goldenrod, an infamous allergen that tortures many people in the spring. Luckily, not me.
For more, click here:
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As part of Meta's Horizon monetization announcement, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had an in-world chat/demo with several community creators (watch below). And before I get too ranty, let me start by saying that's a smart and good thing! If you want to foster a positive and thriving metaverse platform community, you definitely want to show the community that their creativity is highly valued, even and especially by those at the very top of the company.
So that's a small but solid step in the right direction.
That said, around 6 minutes in, while talking about Horizon's collaborative creation features, Zuckerberg says something so jaw-dropping I had to watch it several times to make sure I heard it right.
One of the things that we're trying to do differently is the whole co-developing experience and the fact that everything you're building is in Horizon itself… it really is just different from all the other experiences out there. [Emph mine – WJA]
Maybe I'm missing some context, but it's difficult to conceive of a context where this statement is accurate. In-world, collaborative creation has existed in virtual world/metaverse platforms for at least 20 years. Actually more like 22 years, because this was a core feature of Second Life when it was still an alpha demo called Linden World. Like some guy wrote:
As Rosedale and Cory Ondrejka spoke to their financial backers, a projector displayed a live video feed of Linden World, projected on the wall. Other Linden staffers were in-world, running a demonstration that the investors could watch. A few of them were using the building tools the staff used to create content. And as it went on, the investor’s eyes drifted away from the meeting, and to the screen… This, everyone realized, was what made their world unique.
Later on, Minecraft and other platforms launched with similar functionality.
But surely Zuck knows all this. So maybe he's just referring to in-world collaborative creation in social VR. If so, he'd be on slightly safer ground. But there are other metaverse platforms which already have this feature — including platforms compatible with the Quest in the Quest app store.
Here's what collaborative creation in VR looked like in Rec Room three years ago:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Myra Wildmist has a photographic obsession with observing her avatar from a distance that I find lovely and compelling. “The Passage” is one of my favorites, a glorious picture of her walking out of a tunnel or cave. She is not completely silhouetted, there is just this touch of light on her shoulder. I love how the darkness of the stone creates this frame for her. It’s simply wonderful. She seems to be seeing herself through the eyes of a voyeur.
For more voyeuristic self-portraits, click here:
