MetaverseU Follow-Up #1

To kick things off, Raph Koster posted some interesting highlights from a presentation by Dmitri Williams:

* People who use voice-over-IP make stronger interpersonal connections in virtual worlds, but also tend to be more insular and meet less strangers. People who use text make somewhat weaker connections but talk more to strangers.

* The older you are, the more hours you spend per week in the world. That’s right — it’s not college students who spend the most time. The graph shows a nearly linear relationship between age and hours spent per week.

Williams is an assistant professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication who scored some of these research tidbits thanks to data from Second Life and Sony Online Entertainment. His personal site has a treasure trove of studies from online worlds.