Hi All, A report I coauthored for the World Bank's InfoDev programme about the "virtual economy" has just been published. It contains some new research on gold farming in MMOs, but also tries to expand the virtual economy concept to digital microwork, the real-money trade of Facebook likes and Twitter followers, and similar phenomena. Comments/views would be more than welcome! PDF: http://www.infodev.org/en/Document.1056.pdf My blog post/summary: http://virtual-economy.org/blog/world_bank_virtual_economy_rep Washington Post article (focusing solely on the gaming side): http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/world-bank-says-online-gaming... Best wishes, Vili -- Dr Vili Lehdonvirta Researcher, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT Visiting Scholar, University of Tokyo http://vili.lehdonvirta.com/ tel. +358 50 384 1530 ------------------------------------------------------------- Virtual Economy Research Network - http://virtual-economy.org