Social Marketing and Online Gaming: Colossal Market Growth

Social Marketing and Online Gaming, now there's a combination.

I've never been one for playing online games and until my brother-in-law mentioned that he regularly plays online games, spending as much as 2 or 3 hours a night online, I'd never really been aware of how popular online gaming has become.

With broadband now reaching more and more homes, many more people are now spending their leisure time in “Cyberspace”.

In June 2006, in Britain alone, 7.6 Million people visited the online games sector with the average visitor playing games online for an hour and a half at a time!

Even in less developed countries, internet cafes are commonplace and heavily frequented, meaning that online entertainment and games are now being played, every day, around the globe. Internet cafes derive around 30-40% of their revenue purely from people playing games online.

The online games sector has been identified as the next step in online entertainment with people from all over the world, and all ages playing in their millions.

Many online games networks have hundreds of thousands of players online at any one time and major TV networks such as SKY TV and MTV Networks are now getting involved as online entertainment is now eroding TV viewing figures and therefore advertising revenue.

Social Networking has become another online phenomenon and is now often referred to as "the reality TV of the internet". This is not a fad that is about to disappear and if anything, is likely to become more ingrained into mainstream websites just as reality TV has become ubiquitous in network TV programming.

In it's report (May 2006) Nielsen Net Ratings stated that Social Networking sites grow 47% year on year, reaching a massive 45% of web users.

Searches for top 10 methods of social networking has increased by 279% over the past 12 months and search queries for MySpace have risen by 1,347%.

Blogs are another phenomenal internet success with entire blog communities springing up, focusing on certain topics and connecting people with common interests.

People from around the globe are now connecting, making friends and even doing business with each other. There are now over 70 million blogs on the internet with 120,000 new blogs being set up each day!

Social networking is interactive and fun and visitors keep coming back for more and more.

Clearly the online gaming and social networking markets cannot be ignored by anyone involved in running any sort of business that uses the internet. And what business doesn't nowadays?

One company that has identified the colossal business potential of these markets is the Uk company Virtual World Direct.

The company are about to launch a new combination of social networking and online gaming which they are labelling as 'Social Marketing'.

It is a system to allow users to have fun playing online games as well as having their own web space/blog and a system where they could talk to each other live.

With a new platform that enables the user to see when their friends are online and challenge others to play live games 'instantly'. It also involves a new communication device that allows the player to not only challenge individuals, but also send group challenges to hundreds, even thousands of players instantly.

Many commentators are predicting this new combination of three of the biggest markets and trends online today, along with a new communications platform allowing for total immersion and interactivity, to be the next 'big thing'

The launch of the new platform which has been code-named 'Project e-Play' is due towards the end of 2007. There is to be a pre-launch on July 15th. where full details of the workings of the platform, which will be kept a closely guarded secret until then, will be revealed.

One thing is for certain though. Any online business simply cannot ignore the colossal figures that come to light when you examine the markets we have talked about.

Any business at the forefront of these trends and which is prepared to invest in the evolution and development of them is set to reap massive rewards in the future.

Bryan Morris Internet Entrepreneur at future lottery