VWN: You mentioned at the Social Gaming Summit that your top developer was bringing in $1 million/year and the next top ten were bringing in $100,000. Is that top one Anshe Chung or an individual?

CR: These are estimates. We don't have a profit sharing.

VWN: So do you take a cut of the exchange when people cash out from credits to real-world currency? How common is that?

CR: We do not take a cut of it. Numerically we estimate that the vast majority of people that earn credits simply take those credits and go back into the catalog to get something for themselves. When they want to get real-world money, they trade those credits with other users. We don't facilitate that transfer. We do facilitate the transfer of credits from seller to buyers, but the trade is a completely private transaction. We don't take a cut of that revenue.

In the short term, we're competing with people who sell their credits for money because we do. We believe in the long run that creates the right balance of an ecosystem and attracts great talent to participate in the community and create items for the community. We believe we've proven that with the actual activity. It's a sort of free market economy. If the community grows, we make more money.

VWN: What sort of growth have you seen since you launched.

CR: I'm not ready to go into details on a month-by-month trend, but from 4 years ago at zero to today, it's been explosive. I'd say overall that's been fairly steady. We watch very carefully the number of people who stay with us, and that's going up as well.

VWN: And what's your demographic? The sweet spot of your users?

CR: The sweet spot is what we call the young adult--college age--in terms of the midpoint, roughly, of our current users. Naturally we have teens—they have to be 13 or over—and as with all new technologies, teens are the first ones to pick it up, but we have a significant number older than the college market, including a not insignificant chunk over the age of 35: 7% are over. They are, as a group, some of the most highly participating, most creative members of the community.

VWN: So that puts you at a slightly different market than some of the other Web-based worlds like Habbo or Gaia--but still generally younger than Second Life. Who do you think of as competition?

CR: I'd say that we're all helping to create a market for virtual worlds, for participation in three dimensions. There are different companies out there, different firms that are reaching this in slightly different ways. I wish success to all of them. I think that all of us are teaching the world that this is a cutting edge way to meet people, express themselves, and that there are so many ways to reach success.