Buzzin' round my hive

Om (whom, along with Andy Abramson, I was lucky to finally meet in person in San Jose - they both have impeccable table manners, by the way) has a fascinating post about Hive7, which is worth a read and a look, particularly the screen shots. This, in turn, reminds me that I never posted a link to the fascinating study carried out by Alice Taylor, et al, at the BBC, into gamers in the UK. They reckon that, of the 22.7m people aged 11 - 65 who have played some form of electronic game in the past six months, 8% have played a MMORPG, which implies 1.8m people - in the UK alone! It's life, Jim, but not as we know it - though it will be a commonplace experience, and more importantly, a natural user interface expectation of the future generation of consumers, or so I believe. I made a comment in my presentation at VON that I don't think there's any reason that eBay necessarily has to look as dull as it does - it's your "father's internet". I guess if they had to do it all over again, they'd go with something that looks more like Second Life, Hive7, or Cyworld - maybe someone else will.