VentureBeat, a Silicon Valley blog that provides news and information about private companies and venture capital, has a write up about VastPark. VastPark, for those not well informed, is a "virtual worlds platform that lets anyone create their own virtual world that they can own and share with others" and is being developed locally in Melbourne.
The article discusses some very interesting aspects about VastPark, particularly the plans to make it compatible with OpenSocial, the api that Google announced recently which allows vendors to develop widgets and functions that can be used across a whole range of social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, and Facebook, therefore opening it up to a massive user base in the hundreds of millions. Also worth a mention is that by sheer coincidence, Bruce Joy (CEO at VastPark) had registered the domain OpenSocial.com (which points to VastPark) long before Google's announcement of the api, and on the day of the announcement, the site received a whopping over 170,000 hits.
I always thought that VastPark had great potential, and with news of it embracing the OpenSocial api, I have to say that what it can achieve for social networking websites is mind boggling. VentureBeat reports that VastPark is looking into venture capital and an open beta soon...
VastPark is bootstrapped. However, Joy says he realizes he needs to seize the day, and is planning to travel to Silicon Valley to visit venture capitalists in short order. He may seek to raise as much as $15 million.He plans to deliver an open beta later this year, with a first official release early next year.
For for full article, head on over to VentureBeat!