Niche Virtual Worlds
A growing part of the virtual world market is niche virtual worlds. While worlds like Second Life will take anyone and cater to many diverse interests, others are built around a specific interest right from the start.
What is the advantage to doing it that way rather than be all-inclusive?
While Second Life and others might have those niche things within them, they also have a lot of other things. So everything is a bit thin on the ground so to speak. Niche worlds, on the other hand, are filled with like-minded or at least like-interest people. So while they might be smaller overall they will have more people in a given subject area.
For example, Muxlim.com is launching a virtual world within a couple of months. This will be built for people of the Muslim faith. Currently Muxlim is a social network that brings Muslims around the world together to discuss news, events and other items important to Muslims everywhere.
With the launching of their own virtual world they hope to bring this virtual reality to Muslims in nations that might not normally have access to Second Life and other broad virtual worlds due to content and other restrictions.
That is just one example, there are others like Barbie Girls - which is exactly how it sounds: A virtual world for little girls based around Barbie dolls. This is not a small site either - in its first three months of existence it hit over 3 million users.
Perhaps you are really into creepy-looking dolls. If so, there is a virtual world for you! The Doll Palace let’s users create dolls and interact with each other with them.
So if you are considering jumping into a virtual world and are worried at the size and scope of what is out there, don’t worry - there is a virtual world out there for you!
Note: This was written by me and originally posted at the Rising Tide blog.
