VIRTUAL WORLDS NEWS — Yesterday the virtual economy analytics firm Sometrics announced that it was adding a new feature to its platform called the Shop & Earn Shopping Feed. Similar to the also recently announced Offerpal Shopping program, Sometrics'd Shop & Earn Shopping Feed lets users earn virtual currency in a client developer's game by buying physical goods from affiliate online retailers. Sometrics announced that the Feed will contain "hundreds" of participating brand-name retailers...

In development for over a year and a half, virtual world Onverse opened its doors to users just last week. The five-person team launched on a shoestring --"on savings, family and ramen noodles," founder and CEO Steve Pierce told me today). I spoke with Steve and asked for a bit more detail on the new site...

Over the past few months, the virtual events’ industry has experienced tremendous growth and interest from corporations. The economic recession, cost-cutting and the AIG effect have all contributed to corporations canceling physical meetings and conventions and looking for alternative solutions. This has presented an opportunity for our industry to educate corporations regarding the power of virtual events to connect, educate and engage with their audiences, as well as to begin shaping how corporations can creatively use multiple virtual events to create a virtual experience that extends their brands...

The extracts below are taken from a new white paper by eModeration that looks at how moderators can encourage participation and loyalty in virtual worlds. You can find the full paper, "How to Encourage Participation and Player Loyalty in Virtual Worlds," online for free here. Today, there are two types of moderators. The first and more traditional type is the silent moderator, who stays in the background blocking offensive material from participants, warning users, defusing confrontation and reacting to abusive or illegal behaviour...

Last week the Facebook social game YoVille hit 7.8 million monthly active users, an extremely significant milestone for what is essentially a virtual world that runs on the Facebook and MySpace platforms. The 5 million MUA that YoVille draws from Facebook alone puts YoVille in roughly the same usage class as Gaia Online, which has roughly 7 million MUA, and Habbo, which has nearly 10 million. Factor in the extra 2.8 million MUA YoVille gets on MySpace and the app is actually drawing more users than Gaia...