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Interview With Lauren Bigelow of WeeWorld

Posted: 15 Apr 2009 09:19 AM PDT

-Lauren Bigelow Headshot- Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Lauren Bigelow, the General Manager of WeeWorld. Recently I’ve become increasingly interested in following the ways that virtual worlds are generating revenue as virtual worlds and social networks have become increasingly integrated. I’m also interested in them because I want to know how social networks and virtual worlds are making money since that’s a fairly important factor in running a business.

While Lauren wouldn’t talk about the specific amount that the company is generating she mentioned that they have relatively strong monthly growth which is great considering the current economic environment. As with most other virtual worlds, WeeWorld generates revenue through the sale of virtual goods as well as advertising.

All of WeeWorld’s growth has been organic. I discussed the potential for integrating with Facebook Connect and other services and Lauren said the company doesn’t have plans to integrate. Currently WeeWorld users can share their personalized avatars across a number of services (including Facebook) with the primary distribution channels being AIM and Skype.

The various forms of advertising that WeeWorld has developed are pretty interesting. One of the primary advertising models is through branded virtual goods, something that we’ve seen Facebook adopt in recent years. For actual virtual good sales, the company is growing at a rate of 16 percent a month, the vast majority of which is taking place domestically.

Rather than outlining the whole interview, I’ll let you listen to my conversation with Lauren below!