Categories: Articles

Weblo – First Montreal And Now The World… Virtually

Antennas up!
This is a prime example of me not listening enough. A former client of Twist Image got involved in a new online company called Weblo. At the time, the website had nothing more than a Flash intro on it that came off (to me) as a lot of hype and little else.
Imagine my surprise to see an article about this new website on the cover of the Montreal Gazette yesterday and then a heap-load of PR, emails and news about the soon-to-launch online world.
What is Weblo? I thought PC World.ca did a great job in their article, I Just Bought Ottawa, of describing it:
“The brainchild of Montreal’s Rocky Mirza, Weblo.com is best described as a parallel universe where players can buy assets with real money and reap real returns for everything from advertising to celebrity management to property taxes. For example, you can buy a domain such as computers.com and share in ad revenues from the site (weblo is wooing real advertisers for this). You can even link this ‘in game’ site to your actual real world website and use it as a promotion tool. Any non-brand specific domain which exists in the real world is available to buy in the Weblo world. The same goes for provinces and cities – you can buy Ontario for a mere US$16,000 and, believe it or not, Rocky tells me he has a waiting list to buy this virtual province when weblo.com launches on September 26.”
If you thought Second Life would melt your brain, how do you feel now?
Online alternate realities are taking shape. They’re driven by real traffic and people with real money.
Learn more about Weblo here: PC World.ca – I Juts Bought Ottawa.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.