Visit King Tut's Tomb online now and make your own discovery of the most amazing artefacts ever discovered.

Tech Radar did a nice little piece on Heritage Key recently saying:

It’s a mainstream application of a once niche feature that reminds us why we all thought it was such a good idea. While Heritage Key is predominantly an educational website aimed at amateur historians and fans of archaeology, its heart is the 3D virtual exhibit.

They hit the key point really here, about what will bring virtual online to mainstream users.  At the core of any community-site there must be something to do and for Heritage Key that is about exploring and understanding more about ancient world places.  The virtual online experience will give people a great insight into places, artefacts and the overall history.  Virtual Tourism is becoming an interesting area also. It allows for a better visit or give a sense of place you may never have the chance to really go to. When people GoVirtual they will also meet other explorers and then the real-time social interaction kicks in.

Dinah Greek commented about Heritage Key for Computing.co.uk:

An interactive website devoted to historical studies offers visitors more than the chance to explore ancient civilisations using historical recreations.Wonderful those these 3D reconstructions are, the Heritage Keysite also offers people the chance to join live online lectures, ask questions and join forums where they can meet like-minded people.

Dave Bailey in his write-up about us asked a question more about how virtual online can be used by CIOs in future:

So the question for businesses is how big is the opportunity to monetise commercial web sites by introducing a virtual world of online activity?

UK firm Rezzable is one company pushing the boundaries of virtual world technology, both technically and in identifying how such a business model could work.

virtual online environments can deliver high photo-realistic objects and immersive activities now.

What are some of the issues blocking mainstream adoption for online virtual experiences?

So why isn’t everyone with a computer and good broadband trying out a virtual online experience? Well, they are doing other stuff online that sucks-up a lot (maybe too much even) of their time. More specifically there are some issues in the way:

• Lack of quality 3D content – 2.5D just isn’t good enough for non-kids. We think there are some interesting changes in flow now that will make it easier/faster to create photo-realistic content that can be streamed online. Watch Unity. Watch for the SL mesh viewer. Watch Web Alive.
• Variety — one thing that SL sorta has right is the way in which you can zap between different experiences. People don’t want to have to log-in/out and remake their accounts just to look at something for a quick blast. We are looking at this issue now and expect to have a good enough solution to move between our grids = Rezzable and Heritage Key with one identity and consistent avatar. Once this is in place we can extend to other grids.
• Something fun enough to do – We have released King Tut Virtual on our OpenSim-based grid and in general someone can wander around for 1-2 hours checking out some of the most amazing objects ever discovered. They can be seen in incredible detail. But we also think mainstream users and gamers need more goal oriented activities, like quests or contests.  Our new work on Stonehenge Virtual is starting to address this, but I think there is still a long way to get the mix of realistic content and activities right.
• The Avatars are not good enough — sure they move around in a jerky way that actually you can get used to. But the avatars are not the online proxy for real people ye. Mainly they are not expressive enough or smart enough to do stuff.
• Tech Stack is still unstable — it has gotten dramatically better, but we still suffer from random crashes and lag and generally high enough levels to exhaust enthusiasts. It seems clear though how to make the tech work better. It will just need focused work to improve key things like physics, viewer, scripting. See my OpenSim issues list here.

Visit King Tut online here.

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Example: UGC problems at YouTube. While they are serving 1.2 billion streams per day how much of it is worth watching or not infringing?  YouTube has a commercial partner program to try to sift out the good from the bad and reward stuff that adds value. It is hard to imagine just how many take-down notices they process each day? Millions? When YouTube kills an account for breaking the community standards,  there is a flare of angst against them.

CIC = Community Inspired Content . How to get some of that?

UGC is random (which is most interesting) and repetitive, dumb and/or unrelated (which is not at all interesting).  UGC is also full of problems like spam, hate, porno  and copyright infringement. In fact, I think the days of UGC as an objective are over as Media Convergence heats up.

We did a lot of work in the Second Life virtual world environment where we created and ran in-world brands, sold digital goods and hosted more than 2.5million avatar visits (our Greenies Home is still there).  SL claimed to be a online environment created by its users. This was a powerful concept. Some people came and made their own stuff, their house, art, avatar clothes but also made a lot of useless crap (UGG = user generated garbage). Not fun junk, but broken, incomplete, uninspired and boring digital leftovers.

Yet, as SL was also a microcosm for the larger online dynamic—we noticed something else more interesting than the obvious UGC headache. We began to understand that some people really cared quite a lot about their status in an online Community.

Identity, role, assets and recognition have significant value in the online realm. I think the virtual world crucible accelerates this as you come into real-time contact with people, make friends and perhaps engage in some activities that enhance (or destroy) your online identity. (If you are a noob—get an alt if you are going to do something out-of-character.). Your online trail is easy to catch and easy to follow in most cases. So actually rather than seeing people hide behind their online identity, we began to understand how important that identity is as a part of your real self. Hence, how other people respect you and understand you within a Community is very important.

People who care about being in a Community then will make a special effort to contribute to it and even regulate it.  This is both content creation on one side and moderation on the other. This is the virtous circle—but it isn’t without effort and attention.

I seem to think of it as Community Inspired Content (CIC). CIC is not random, it is complimentary to the Community. People add comments to express something that displays their online persona so they are in fact sharing something of at least marginally value—and on occasion some serious insight. CIC also implies some respect for other members where UGC is more often about screaming really loud. Is CIC the mature version of UGC then?

Net net = CIC is more valuable on-site and should be scalable. If it is relevant, it should also be better to monetize.

My point is this really, if you want to get CIC you need to run your site very differently than if you only want UGC (with a little moderation on the side). UGC works well enough in the traditional make–>push content creation model. Either your commissioned staff “make–>push” content or you get the users to “make–>push” content from their side.  It is one-way with a little feedback in the comments.

CIC I want some on my site!

So how to get CIC rolling then? Well, we are trying to figure that out right now as you can see over at Heritage Key with some of the lessons we picked-up at Rezzable.com. There seem to be some basic drivers worth noting now though.

5 Top CIC Drivers

• Content-oriented site. CIC is around specific content—ie cool motorcycles, exotic travel. Some domain where people want to learn, interact and share their experiences. Something to do is essential. Check Livestrong.com

• Quality core. Quality inspires more quality. So you need some commissioned core content that raises the bar. You can pay the Community members btw, which might be a good game plan—if you can get the monetization flowing to keep the cash flowing. But be careful, most people don’t really do it for the money, so the ones that do will also leave when the money is better elsewhere.

• Star Power. Find some well-known, outspoken people from the domain and get their presence into the mix. Also though, video killed the radio star—so beware false idols and find ways to popularize your native Community members. The biggest stars of Media Convergence have not been discovered yet.

• Fun Events. You can focus people on something time-based where they can make an impact or just share the experience. Events also deliver the most important online element – meeting new people. A good event will mix a lot of people together if done properly.

• Reward the right UGC. It could be as simple as sending a note or giving some site points. You could do a lot more—like send members on exotic trips or send them real gifts. Online in the age of google has become impersonal—change that and drive CIC.

The other big issue for CIC is can big brands even begin to be a home for it? Do the people that run a CIC site actually need to be very visible/active on it? Ultimately the web while making somethings scalable, still might be bound by the limits of what people can do—actually that doesn’t seem like too bad a thing!

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It looks like it is more than just for reading and they suggest there will be quizes and games. So really what EA is doing is to use the publishers back-catalog and their platforms relationships to claw their way into education market.

One of the most interesting aspects is how kids already associate gaming with being active — not passive readers. So it is obvious that the content creation challenge will be for a gaming business to deliver quality without trivializing it just to make it snappy. Can the gaming companies really deliver on that challenge? For me it seems unlikely as they have more expertise in shooting/violence than education. So probably this first step is about enabling the channel and then the gaming distributors will be looking for new content that is more on target with eLearning and have stronger web user experience integration.

Things to watch –> Xmas sales for Amazon Kindle, Microsoft Xbox Portable

It still seems that the eBook market is way early. There are some devices, but the compelling reason has not gotten beyond the book reading techno-geeks yet. The eBook market just isn’t that big yet (see AAP stats). Consider how enormous iPhone apps vs Kindle reading/flip products. Let’s also watch the new eBook readers, some of which will be in color and have sexier screens. Will the Xmas run-up push more users over the fence? I would rather have a better iPhone or a flash-memory video camera than some dorky book reader. Microsoft also potentially will have some big impact in this space as they are most likley to link the device to the content to the web. So you could have some continuity of experience/content management from MSN to Xbox=Home to Mobile. But also like many things with MSFT it seems more like potential to follow hard and long than lead.

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