Laguna Beach

by Geea

Posted in Official forums by Michael Wilson

Today, I have a very important announcement about Makena Technologies and There.

Actually, I have part of an announcement. For reasons that will become clear in a moment, I can't tell you everything, yet.

Later today, or this week, you will hear an important announcement about There and a well-known media company. Since this is really the their announcement, I’ll let them provide all the details.

However, I wanted to give you an early heads up, even though I can't tell you everything just yet.


First, let me repeat something which I've told you many times: Since Makena technologies spun out There as its own company and service, one of our core strategies (which I shared with you at the last "State Of There" address) was to "Opportunistically explore partnerships." This meant that we would very selectively work with partners in various countries and industries who we felt were a good match for both our bandwidth (as a company) and our community.

Due to the nature of our business, we also told you that we would not always be able to talk about these things in public, but we would do our best to make sure your were the first to know about it. Finally, we also said you may see us delivering features which you'd never asked for, and they may be tied to things which we could not talk about right at that time.

This is one of those cases.

I'm very excited, in fact, no, I'm ecstatic, to announce that Makena Technologies has entered an agreement with this well-known company to develop not one, but two "places" in virtual worlds associated with their hottest properties. I can't tell you what "properties" means exactly, but it could mean a magazine, a movie, a TV show, a band, or any number of other media properties. In both cases, this is a natural fit for There and it's technology.

In fact, I can't imagine a better partner. As you will see, there's probably no other company on the planet that can bring us the audience, the content, and, most importantly, the innovation that the place we call There deserves.

When you see these new places, you're going to see new technology you haven't see in There, and you're going to probably wonder "Do we get that?" The answer is a resounding "yes." In fact, we specifically passed up on income we might get for the technology portion of the deal just so we could use the technology in There. I can't tell you specifically what these technologies are today, but I can say that two of them have specifically to do with scaling -- the ability to get more stuff in the world for less cost. I can also tell you that you're going to see a major, 3-phase upgrade to our profiles system, again developed in conjunction with this relationship.

I'm also sure you're going to ask if these places will compete with There. The answer is yes, and no. Why? Because, in comparison to our world, these places are thematic. We are planning on doing cross marketing between these places, so we hope to see an increase in traffic as a result.

Although I can't tell you more right now, rest assured that you will find the news as exciting as I do.

Talk to you soon.


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I popped over to Laguna Beach and created an avatar to check it out.   If you are looking to use your There name don't count on it.  Seems it's taken everyone I spoke with was unable to recreate their There names.  Maybe it's a database thing.

You get 5000 to start with and the shopping is pretty cheap.  I will say the hair is pretty cool.  The spas work the same.  So if you are a Thereian going over the Laguna is a snap.

The avatars faces look different but everything else is pretty much the same with emotes, shopping, walking, spa and chatting.  No voice yet so you have to type.  It's something you definitely want to check out.

We will have more tomorrow on Laguna so check back.

http://www.vlb.there.com/