
A little over a week ago, Raph Koster wrote a fascinating and intelligent blog post about his views on the future of virtual worlds entitled "Are Virtual Worlds Over?". You can not read it without thinking of Raph's recent experience as the head of Metaplace, an ambitious web-based virtual world that crashed and burned in December. Raph concludes on a mostly pessimistic note that virtual worlds, at least as we understand them, are not going to reach mass audiences for awhile. As he writes:
"Virtual places as they exist now cannot be a mass medium any more than a single restaurant can."
While I agree with many of Mr. Koster's points, I do think that there are specific sectors where virtual worlds are very attractive. I would contend that virtual worlds are growth markets for the education and nonprofit sectors to reach new audiences and promote their missions.








Blondin Linden sends out a reminder that the application process for the 2010 Linden Prize are now open. The grand prize is US$10,000 for the best virtual world project that "improves the way
people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the
virtual world."