Virtuality refers to things that aren’t physical but still influence us.  For contextualisation, he speaks about William Gibson and the concept of cyberspace, Snow Crash and the term metaverse and the concept of the avatar.  In philosophy, Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality.  The Tamagotchi… currency as a special commodity that we trade in markets that is now symbolic only of itself.  The work we do is generally virtual, files that don’t really exist.

Virtual worlds.  He shows Sony’s virtual world called Home and then something called b-side.  In Sept last year 6 million people were on Webkinz, 4.7 million on Club Penguin and all the big ones are for kids.

Since Sept 2k6, there was growth from 8oo to 1.3 million users and the daily spending rose from $5ook to $1.2 million.  Now the IRS and other revenue services are looking at income earned in Second Life and SL has produced at least 2 dollar millionaires.  Property sales and development is the main money spinner.  For $195 /month you can buy an island, build apartments and rent them out.  A few days ago there were about 13k private islands in the world.

The average age of an SL user is 32. Brands rushed in.  America Apparel closed, the Reebok store closed and many others.  What were the problems?  1 – rushing in for the hype, 2 – no effective ad channel, 3 – replicated real world strategies and 4 – indifference and hostility from residents.

There are still 2ook products listed in SL, mostly clothing and accessories.

What should brands do now?  1 – be aware of what is happening, 2 – see virtual worlds as evolving stories rather than technology, 3 – don’t try to conquer the world [L'Oreal sold skin in the game, and made a giant handbag], 4 – treat the virtual world as an experiment.

The average American have 4.3 virtual friends and 33% want to meet them in real life.

Avatars are have begun to exist independently of their users, e.g. the Mii.  We have movies about avatars and we are starting to have avatars in movies.  Beowulf is an interesting example of avatars created to look like the voice actors.

Patrick asks some interesting questions – will avatars represent us?  Will we acquire brands for them?  Will they influence our brand choices?

Follow real-time reporting on Twitter here