Second Life's Cousin Gets Movie Deal

There.com is what Second Life wants to be, however instead of letting users create all the content, the Mateo, California based company assists in ensuring there is an actual purpose to logging on with your avatar. At There.com, users can play online poker, race friends in various racing games or simply interact with friends through text/voice chat. With all these features engaging users, Paramount Studios (a unit of Viacom) has decided to grant There.com use of various clips in a proprietary program called VooZoo. VooZoo allows avatars to use clips from, for example, Grease or Footloose to convey emotions or simply add some fun to conversations. The cost of these interactive 'emotes' costs $1.00 a piece, similar to the cost of a ringtone. Ringtones are use to make someone's self phone personalized and this VooZoo service is no different.

Another interesting feature of signing users up for VooZoo is Paramounts ability to virally reach audiences for upcoming releases. Paramount's tentpole blockbuster of the summer is Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and with VooZoo, Paramount could release free sound effects and 'emotes' for There.com users to download and use. And since There.com is fairly new and the company wants as much content as possible to attract users to join their site, one could easily assume there to be no fee for Paramount in regards to dispersing their content if they want to offer it for free.

Lastly, although I feel that this content licensing is an interesting next step for the studios, There.com is staying tight lipped as to whether this venture has been even a remote success. The main point to take away from this story is that Paramount has given the green light for their content to be use in social networking sites - showcasing that perhaps studios are getting closer and closer to realizing that profit potential does not completely rely on theatrical release, dvd release and then tv rights. Studios are now realizing that the interest can disperse their content cheaply and effectively. The real question remains - when will a tentpole feature length film be available for purchase online? There are several factors that must be focused on - The Walmart Factor, the distribution channel, piracy, etc etc etc. All I know is that over the next decade, all of these issues will be resolved in some way or another.

BELOW IS A SCREENSHOT OF A VIDEO 'EMOTE' PLAYING ABOVE AN AVATAR


(There.com is a free service.)

If you are interested in more on the subject, please follow various links below.

VIDEO DEMO of THERE.COM:
http://www.there.com/there_movies/aralsdayout_mpg.html

CNN ARTICLE:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/03/paramount.there.ap/index.html

ORIGINAL VARIETY.COM ARTICLE:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983418.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1