It was great to see everyone at the Virtual Worlds Conference last week in New York. Thanks to all that came to my Platform Shootout presentation.

For those that are interested, I have added some notes to my slides and have it posted here for download. The white paper that was mentioned during the presentation will be published very soon.

The “What Teens Want Online” panel consisted of one adult and a half dozen teens talking about their online and mobile habits.

The panel started out with the young panelists listing the websites they like to use and why. The common theme was personal interests (finding music), personal expression (profiles), and news (gaming, music).

“I don’t really use that avatar stuff,” said one teen panelist.

The panel reinforced a trend I’ve seen elsewhere that teens are not a rich demographic for virtual worlds.

Runescape and GAIA were the only specific virtual worlds/MMOs liked by the panelists, but it was clear they don’t use them much. Zwinky was mentioned by two panelists as being dull. Pay to play was a common objection to other worlds and games.

It was clear that the teens do not use social software for broadening their network of friends. While MySpace and FaceBook were ubitquitous, specialized social networks like Last.fm, iLike.com, Flickr, Twitter and Photobucket are not popular. When I asked a few of the panelists afterwards about these sites, only a few knew of Photobucket and made limited use of it.

On the mobile front, there was consensus that instant messaging has been replaced with unlimited SMS messaging. Aside from SMS, panelists use their phones for wallpapers, ringtones, games and photo sharing.

Presented by John Bates of Entropia Universe, Eyjólfur Guðmundsson Chief Economist of CCP, and Craig Sherman of GAIA.

Some Gaia statistics:

5 million visitors/month, 3 billion page views/month, 1,000 auctions closing daily, 1 million forum posts per day (second only to Yahoo!), $1 million/month in digital goods, and “many thousands of dollars” per day is being made off prepaid cards sold in Target stores.

Gaia is launching an MMO this summer that will be Flash-based. It has been in development for two years and they expect it to almost immediately become one of the top MMOs.

Panelist discussion:

Can a virtual world or MMO exist without an economy? Panelists agree it’s not likely because any time users perceive value in the world, a market will emerge regardless of terms of service.

Things without dollar value still have value. The acceptance of these MMO and virtual world economies will continue. They look just like traditional economics (inflation/deflation, economic utility) just a different currency.

Taxation on virtual world revenue is not really that exciting. When people pull money out of a virtual world, it is income and therefore should be reported as income to taxing authorities.

There will be a fundamental switch to micro-transaction economy in place of subscriptions. This change is well underway in Asia and is starting to happen here in the U.S.