Darren Herman

It’s been almost a year since I’ve posted about virtual goods, but read Mike Gowen’s recap of the Virtual Good Summit that occurred recently.  Here are some takeaways that are extremely important:

Teens expressing themselves may take more to branded items as they like to align with them.
People creating UGC are creating their OWN branded content. [...]

Sony has launched Sony Home, their virtual world enabling their community of users to interact with each other in a “game like” setting.  Apple is now toying with opening a store in Second Life (speculation).  Will this mean that ultimately, they will acquire Second Life and roll it out as their communications platform for their [...]

I took an 8 hour flight from JFK to Zurich, Switzerland to participate in a conference at the GDI Institute on digital media and my portion:  the role of video games in culture and business.  While I have history in the in-game advertising industry, I didn’t focus the presentation on this.  I tried to talk [...]

If you’re one of the millions of Warcraft fans (video game) out there, then this Toyota commercial makes you smile. In the background, you hear “there are no trucks in World of Warcraft” which adds validity to the commercial and protects the game. I’m sure the Creative Director on the account is [...]

Disney gets it, at least for now.  They’ve incubated Hilary Duff and now Hannah Montana.  Lots of press and commotion around comparing Hannah Montana to other artists and the demand to see her in concert.  In NewsWeek recently, she was compared to Bruce Springsteen as a much tougher ticket to get.
Anyway, a few months back, [...]

Any marketing maven knows there are 4 Ps’ of marketing….product, price, place, and promotion.  I’ve even argued that they exist in the virtual world as well.
Dave Armano (VP, Experience Design @ Critical Mass and A-list blogger) laid out the 4 C’s of blogging in one of his latest postings.  I have linked to his picture [...]

The video game industry is going through some monumental changes and I thought I’d shed some light on them from the inside. With that said, I decided to whip up a presentation that looks at many of the different areas of the industry including many of the trends that are occuring.
The presentation is geared [...]

I read a fascinating analysis of IAC (InterActiveCorp) this evening and wanted to share my view.  First, please read the article written by Sramana Mitra entitled Web 3.0 & IAC.
IAC holds more than 60 online properties and someone could easily mistake it for a VC with a well-diversified portfolio of Internet properties. When some of [...]

For those of you who do not have kids or nieces/nephews to play with, you probably aren’t too aware of Club Penguin.  However, if you are aware of Club Penguin, you’re probably ultra-aware of the role it plays in your childrens lives.
This week, Disney announced that it completed the sale of Club Penguin for $700M, [...]

If you’re in the video game industry or watching it closely, you probably want to have Adrian Crook on your radar screen as you probably already subscribe to Raph Koster and Nabeel Hyatt’s RSS feeds.  Adrian is head of Relic Labs (THQ), trying to figure out new ways of developing and monetizing games through different [...]