On Tuesday, Tokyo-based Cyber Agent's subsidiary in Silicon Valley, Cyber Agent America launched a metaverse called Comic World as a Facebook app basically targeting international users.   In the app, you can dress up your own avatar with clothing you've purchased with a virtual money called ComicCash.   The user account for Comic World is compatible with that for Ninja Trick which is a war game and has been introduced last May on Facebook as well.   The company expects one million users will join Comic World by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, last month the company launched Ameba Pico(see this Asiajin story for more) on Facebook, the Americanized version of Japanese popular virtual avatar service called Ameba Pigg[J], more than 500,000 users have joined the service in a month.   Recently they started running a TV commercial[J] campaign in Japan for promoting Ameba Pigg.   As for Ameba Pigg, more than 8.5 million users have joined the service as of April 11th.

See Also:

• Virtual world Ameba Pigg to go English next spring in Americanized version

• Comic Games Blog: Here comes ComicGames and ComicWorld!! (Cyber Agent America's official blog)

Author Information  Masaru IKEDA has co-founded several system integration companies and consulting firms in Tokyo. He has been contributing serial columns to nationwide newspapers and IT periodicals, also he's currently serving as tech consultant for several web companies. His biography is here. His private blog is here.

Tags: Japan, New Service, USA // 1 Comment »