Where Gaming Meets Social Networks - ROCKETON
By Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia
Facebook, the fastest growing online social network, is basically messaging and static pages. You get to look at friend’s page and use some utilities for sharing photos, videos, links and news feeds. One company thinks people are already tiring of seeing what their friends have done … after the fact. So they are developing ways for people to interact online in real time and do things together from any website. This is the vision of ROCKETON, a new “virtual world, social network, real-time gaming and applications platform.”
Founded by Interactive TV pioneers Steve Hoffman and Naomi Kabuko, ROCKETON aims to create the next wave in online interaction and gaming. The service, which opens in public beta in late April, will give you an avatar that represents who you are and allow you to connect with other ROCKETON members wherever they are to interact, chat, trade virtual objects and play games in real time.
“It’s about finding a great song and sharing that information with my friend, inviting them to the site check it out while I am there; we each have avatars and real-time activities that we can do together including playing games,” says Steve.
The prime target is age 15+ — “These kids are spending more and more time online. Whereas we used to hang out at the park or the mall, now teens get online and hang out with their friends every night. Rocketon wants to be their guide to the next level of social interaction.”
The first generation of virtual worlds required you to enter and experience it on a specific site or application. Unlike Second Life or World of Warcraft, this service is low commitment. No big software downloads and lots of new functions to learn. ROCKETON is not a destination or location, but rather a toolset that users can use to communicate with each other, share, chat, play games from wherever they are; it’s a virtual world without the walls. Just pop in and pop out throughout the day.
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