Virtual worlds just could be huge. If you have time on your hands, you can spend 5 hours a night tricking out your avatar. What’s going to bring virtual worlds the masses? Ease of use, cool content, and time. And, I think only time will tell how huge they will actually be.

*Moderator
Rafe Needleman – Webware, CNET

*Judges
Chris Carvalho – LucasFilms
Simon Hayhurst – Adobe
Alexander Marquez – Intel Capital

Doppelganger – to enable immersive, emotionally connected entertainment. They want to amplify the youth demographics’ real-world experiences and interests: music, pop culture, fashion, celebrities, self-expression, community, and social networking. Users take tools like dance competitions or DJs or performances. They have a huge number of partners such as Intercope, MTV, and Jay-Z’s Rocawear. User count is 150,000 about 40% per month.    

Kaneva – Kaneva is the first virtual entertainment world that unifies the 2D web with a 3D experience. Built for the masses, Kaneva integrates social networking, shared media, and collaborative communities into a real-world, immersive 3D virtual world. Kaneva has partnered with YouTube and will offer Kaneva game cards at Target.

Meez -Meez provides a web-based, 3D, way users to create avatars of themselves, and then export them all over the Internet to represent themselves on blogs, IM, and social media sites. We partner with branded advertisers to offer their virtual goods to our users on a sponsorship level. They are partnered with Photobucket. It’s all about transportability and portability for them.

Multiverse – creating a network of online video games and other 3D virtual worlds. It’s empowering development teams to create high-quality, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and non-game virtual worlds – download their tech for free and “mod” your own world. If you charge the consumer to play, they take 10%, and you take 90%. Partners with Fox and James Cameron (director of TITANIC) is on the board.