In fact, if you want to research an interesting article, you might want to look at the sites that have ‘informed themselves’ by observing Whyville — which was one of, if not the first virtual world (depending on your definition), was launched as one of the first totally browser-based 2 1/2 D worlds (now becoming very popular), invented bubble chat, user made avatars, free virtual world economies, and multiple other devices now common in the large and growing number of virtual worlds being generated (especially after Disney’s purchase of Club Penguin for fabulous sums of money).

In fact, one thing that one can say for sure is that myspace is emphatically NOT a whyville knockoff – For example, given our focus on younger children, Numedeon, the company that built Whyville, explicitly invested in the development of sophisticated community control software so that ‘our space’ was the kind of space where kids felt comfortable, and parents could rest assured — not a trivial task given that our kids are free to express themselves.

Also, just for the sake of accuracy, Whyville’s users explicitly don’t make their own websites – their representation in Whyville is much more complex than that, and Whyville currently has 3.6 million users.

But thanks for mentioning us — And have fun looking at the influence of WHyville on the growing virtual world landscape. I look forward to the article (soon could be a Ph.D. thesis, probably).

Jim Bower
Founder Whyville
CVO Numedeon Inc.