Antennas up!
This is a prime example of me not listening enough. A former client of Twist Image got involved in a new online company called Weblo. At the time, the website had nothing more than a Flash intro on it that came off (to me) as a lot of hype and little else.
Imagine my surprise to see an article about this new website on the cover of the Montreal Gazette yesterday and then a heap-load of PR, emails and news about the soon-to-launch online world.
What is Weblo? I thought PC World.ca did a great job in their article, I Just Bought Ottawa, of describing it:
“The brainchild of Montreal’s Rocky Mirza, Weblo.com is best described as a parallel universe where players can buy assets with real money and reap real returns for everything from advertising to celebrity management to property taxes. For example, you can buy a domain such as computers.com and share in ad revenues from the site (weblo is wooing real advertisers for this). You can even link this ‘in game’ site to your actual real world website and use it as a promotion tool. Any non-brand specific domain which exists in the real world is available to buy in the Weblo world. The same goes for provinces and cities – you can buy Ontario for a mere US$16,000 and, believe it or not, Rocky tells me he has a waiting list to buy this virtual province when weblo.com launches on September 26.”
If you thought Second Life would melt your brain, how do you feel now?
Online alternate realities are taking shape. They’re driven by real traffic and people with real money.
Learn more about Weblo here: PC World.ca – I Juts Bought Ottawa.
Weblo – First Montreal And Now The World… Virtually
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Never another podcast episode or article 
Wow, my brain is really melting. After 5 minutes thinking about it, I don’t know if this is the dumbest idea since .tv or the most brilliant thing I’ve seen in a long long time… I’ll need to let the concept sink in some more…
Maybe this is the new 1 million pixel page…
I feel the same way. I just wonder if one company, like Weblo, can make it in a saturated market or is the play to get this up and running and hope that a Yahoo!, MSN or Google comes by and snaps them up.
My second thought is all about how do you make this play in a market that requires it to have many, many users for it to truly “be” something. Would Second Life or Habbo Hotel work if no one used it? How many companies like MySpace have little to no users?
In case anyone missed it the first time they visited…check out the brand center. “Open Source Branding lets you control the Weblo.com image. People are smarter and more creative collectively than corporations alone. Make logos, slogans and advertising for us… and then keep making them better. Right now, you can win big money when you help create our brand.”
They are asking for submissions of logos, slogans, and advertising that will be posted and voted on. Didn’t we hear this somewere else? Anyway, open source branding…. Is it just me, or isn’t the brand already open source?
A week and a half of hurry home from work
and sleepless nights and I’m on top of the WebloWorld. Not in money but in freinds and acquaintances.
The format, in theory, should work but like others have said it’s community driven. How about having a look at weblo.com from my view.
Just click on my name and it should take you there. Add me as a freind and I’ll show you around.
Peace
^0^
Well the community is in the thousands, and great assest are becoming rare at Weblo. I am the mayor of Nashville, and own Business.com and Mobile.com for starters. I would imagine Yahoo…. hmmm probably Google is looking closely at this one.
There is even a user-driven forum already. It has some of the big-wigs and hundreds of posts already. ww.WebloForum.com
David
I tried it for a couple of months, at the beginning its fun, but it get boring so fast,
So you bought virtual New York , then what?!!
On weblo forums, they are a bunch of nazis, whatever comments are written against weblo, are immediately erased and distroyed and the user is blocked.
If youre stupid enought to invest money into a second wikipedia, good luck!
I made 300$ in 3 mounth….No bank give me that kind of interest.Many questions can be ask but for me its a reason of money and whit my virtual city of Montreal,I made 55$ US yet….I don’t think that any game can make that kind of money…
I was around when Weblo.com launched and can’t believe that Allainet is still out there with this SCAM.
This is just the creation of a greedy company trying to make a buck off of people by selling them “virtual property” that has NO TANGIBLE VALUE!!!
The only way that the value goes up is if other suckers buy into the scam…but usually, these suckers are people who are trying to make a quick buck anyway.
Don’t waste your money!