Most of today’s virtual worlds are set in mythical places, with landmarks that no newcomer would be familiar with. While this may suit most people just fine, it can be unsettling for those who have never been exposed to a virtual world. Today sees the launch of Journeys, a mashup that hopes to appeal to these users by leveraging Flickr and Yahoo Maps APIs to create what it calls a “virtual world based on real Earth”.
Right now, there doesn’t seem to be much of a point to Journeys (though the same could be said of nearly every virtual world). Users can fly around the world to a handful of destinations, including the Louvre, New York’s Central Park, and the Golden Gate Bridge. After landing, they can chat with their friends in front of their favorite landmarks. And, in a somewhat bizarre twist, their avatars will continue to travel the world and meet people while they’re logged off, sending an email digest of its daily activities (I couldn’t see this in action because nobody was logged in when I tested the site, but I can’t imagine it working well).
Besides its social aspect, Journeys also aspires to be a basic travel guide. When users fly to the dozens of cities littering the world, where they can get a brief synopsis of each locale. Unfortunately, the amount of information is very limited, and serious travelers will likely look elsewhere for their travel guides. Founder Guy Bendov says that the site is still a work in progress, and that many of the features including sharing trips, missions, and games are on the way.
I could see Journeys appealing to someone like my mother, who hasn’t been exposed to many social worlds and would love to log on and tell me to meet her at the Louvre in five minutes. But because of its extremely barebones feature set, Journeys is going to have a tough time competing with well-established virtual worlds like Second Life - even Google hasn’t been able to compete with the established players, as its recently launched world Lively has been a flop.
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Looks simply cool though still in the alpha stage
Will register and try it first, to see what exactly it is and how it works.
some day people might like to actually hang out in the real world =)
Soon we might have games with virtual no ending, for instance you put on the glasses and just say travel to Paris and you do exactly the same things as you would in real life. Prepare your baggage, get a cab, go to the airport and at the same time meeting virtual people who happen to travel to Paris too… strike a conversation… go out on dates… etc. etc.
just for curiosities sake,
chetan,
how do you manage to be first commentator here??lol
Found it irritating to use. Graphic and browser intensive, slow loading and at least in FF, the top and bottom portions of the page exceeded the browser window with no scroll bar, thus couldn’t read a lot of the screen, nor what it was I was supposed to be doing. Lost interest.
I am posting from the Virtual World Conference in LA. They just wrapped up the venture investing panel. All the exhibitors look the same. The VC guys say they are done investing in the virtual world 1.0 space as we know it today.
Opened up a full size screen and I immediately lost interest.,…
Good to see Journeys on Techcrunch
I’m not surprised to hear the comment from Jason saying that VC are done investing in virtual worlds for now, a lot of money has poured into this space over the last few years. Sadly none of that has come our way
It’s a map. A map with some vague controls, no POIs, no documentation, and limited zooming. Oh, and you can travel - but only while logged OUT? A map you can travel. While logged out.
Am I the only one who doesn’t get it?
Remember when you 1st heard about Friendster (1st Social Network) and you thought, “This is some kids thing, a fad, etc.” and probably had some skepticism.
Well, as we all know, Social Networking has taken off. We are parasitic to it. It’s ingrained into every part of our lives in some way.
Today Social Networking transcends age, race, gender, location, sexual orientation, even social class. The trends show it only growing exponentially. It will not stop, only evolve to an even more immersive experience. In fact, the current social networking platforms only scratch the surface of what we are positioned to experience in the coming years (like 5-10).
This leads into what will be that “more immersive experience”. Virtual Worlds (VW). We have seen the power. The new “found” revenue streams are like finding “gold in them there hills”. If executed with precision, VWs can be extremely lucrative. Kids spend over an hour a day in most. The same kids who use fashion and music as primary social identifiers, who also spend vast amounts of money (rather, their parents) on these mediums. We can capitalize.
Imagine being the first band music page on myspace, but marketing it the way its done today. Could have made millions and lead the industry. Yes, its a risk, but with ambitious moves come high pay off.
Particularly with “Journey’s” VW I have some big ideas here….
It seems a basic application which might appeal to some but it reminds me to google lively and that didn’t get the response everybody was expecting. Many new virtual worlds are making their entry these days.
I was excited at first to take a look. I love traveling and thought that this might be an neat way to see and learn about new sites. However, I was disappointed. You can only see one picture of each location and there’s no information to learn more. I wanted to be able to “explore” the location and learn/see more.
Overall, I lost interest quickly. Also, the journeys part is wierd. Why would I have to logoff for the “trip” to begin? Journeys has a long way to go.