Thoughts on Virtual Currencies and Economies

This morning going through all my RSS feeds and all the backlog of starred feeds I’ve been putting off reading till I had more time to go through them more thoroughly, I’ve come across 3 more sites with their own virtual currency.

Askville – Amazon’s new Q&A site where people earn Quest Coins for answering other peoples questions.

OPENSTUDIO – Where you can earn Burak’s by selling your (collaborative) artworks online.

A Stock Market In Life – doesn’t have a virtual currency has a virtual stock market.

Also with the hugely successful Second Life where people can trade with the Linden Dollar and thousands of people are earning quite a lot of ‘real’ cash from trading on Second Life’s virtual economy. Then there’s other things like trading virtual goods on eBay and royalty systems, Mobile applications (e.g. Mixt’s Moola) and countless other applications of this virtual economy trend.

So, here’s my thought. What about blogs or any other internet applications? Why not try to encourage your visitors to participate by commenting, subscribing to feeds, or whatever by rewarding them. It might not be worth anything now, but maybe in the future visitors can start trading you blog royalty points or your site’s blog dollars to gain access to beta testing opportunities, premier party invites, etc.

Let your imaginations wonder a bit 🙂 The opportunities are endless. Especially here in the South Africa.