Hello again,
As you probably can tell from the questions below I'm currently
conducting a data-check of my book - any help is very welcome. The
reward is $ 5 per question answered - feel free to pick any of the
questions you are able to answer. Great jobs will receive an aditional
bonus ;-)

1. How many times has Microsoft changed its operating system sound
(the startup tune...you know) (counting their main operating systems
like: Windows 95, 97, 98, 2000, XP, NT, Millennium)?
2. How many online communities currently exist on the Internet?
3. How many of these are related to brands? (Brand communities)
4. How many members does EverQUest have today (or 2003)?
5. How many online gaming communities currently exist? ? and how many
members do they represent?
6. I'm looking for a good quote from Guy Laliberté on our five senses
if he has written any at all?! (great quotes can secure a bonus of up
to $20 on this one!)

Good luck - I'm sorry some of these questions are a bit boring - but
you know how it is - data-checks are essential.

Martin

Hi Martin!

Question 4.

According to an article posted in August 2003, Everquest has an
estimated 470,000 members.

?The most popular among the MMORPGs, Sony's EverQuest (dubbed
"EverCrack" by players because of its addictive nature) currently
boasts around 470,000 members, each of whom not only bought the
software for 50 bucks a throw, but also pay the $10 monthly
subscription charge.?
AVN Online
http://www.avnonline.com/issues/200308/features/feat_0803_006.shtml


An older article posted in October 2002 states that Everquest had 430,000 members.

FinanceAsia - 25 October 2002

Sony to bring "EverQuest" to Japan. "EverQuest" has 330,000 paying
subscribers in North America, where it was started in March 1999 by
Sony Online Entertainment, a unit of Sony Pictures Entertainment. The
game has an estimated 430,000 members worldwide, with up to 100,000
playing at any given time.
http://www.financeasia.com/Articles/E142FBED-E47D-11D6-81E70090277E174B.cfm

I hope this information is useful!

Best regards,
Bobbie7

Here?s some more information:


August 27, 2003
?Clan Base, for example, is one of the world?s largest online gaming
communities and consists of almost over 1 million individual gamers
forming 125,000 different clans. In 2003 Clan Base has seen an average
of over 36,000 clan wars being played on rented servers each month.?
http://www.telecity.com/news/27aug2003.htm



June 17, 2002
Strategy Direct + Interactive
Online gaming advertising opps largely untapped
It's time to snag new PC gaming community, analysts say

?Plenty of Web sites, from Bell to AOL, have used advergames and games
are the preferred pastime for millions of netizens. According to
Nielsen Netratings, online gaming sites attracted more than 28 million
visitors in the U.S. in April. And while advergames and gaming sites
like MSN Gaming Zone are a popular and well-advertised destination on
the Web, another untapped niche is arising.?

?Online gaming communities, where PC users (usually tweens, teens and
the 18-to-30 crowd) connect to play multi-player video games together
on the Web, are extremely popular and largely untouched by marketers.
Games like Ubi Soft Entertainment's Ghost Recon and Sony's Everquest
attract thousand of players every day. Ubi Soft's site announces the
user numbers daily, often well over 4,000 players. That's a lot of
eyeballs that could be looking at ads.?
http://www.tsn.ca/mediakit/news/June17Strategy.pdf



Online Functionality Boosts Console Gaming Industry
Karen Raugust reports on the growth and latest trends in online
gaming, including the the upcoming gaming network, Phantom.net.
March 19, 2004
By Karen Raugust

?Nearly 1.5 million people in the U.S. played games online using their
PlayStation 2 or Xbox console in 2003, with that number expected to
rise steadily, to 2.2 million this year and 5.4 million by 2007,
according to Schelley Olhava, an analyst with IDC.?
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=2038&page=1


?PC games also can generate large online communities. Sony Online
Entertainment?s EverQuest has sold over 2.5 million units of games and
expansions over the last five years. There are currently 420,000
people playing the game, with more than 100,000 around the world
logging on simultaneously at peak times.?
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=2038&page=3

Online Communities 
By Monika Merkes

 ?Millions of different communities exist on the Internet.?

(..)

?Commercial organisations such as Yahoo! Groups
http://groups.yahoo.com/ or ezboard host online groups at no cost to
group members. However, commercial advertising is usually part of the
deal (ezboard also offers a no-ad account for a small fee). For
example, ezboard outlines on its website
http://www.ezboard.com/about_adandpart.html that its 500,000 online
communities generate 350 million page views from over 3.3 million
unique users per month, "providing demographic and other information
useful for aggregate targeting".

The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
http://www.melbpc.org.au/pcupdate/2112/2112article6.htm


This commercial website states that there are about 350 million online
communities.
http://www.make1million.com/faq.html
 
The Top Ten Online Communities.
Ranked by number of hits. List rankings by Nielsen/NetRatings. Reviews by WiseCat.
http://www.wisecat.com/pages/communities.htm


From an Interview with Vanchau Nguyen, Founder and Chief Executive
Officer at ezboard:

?I started the site in 1999, and since then we have grown from a
personal laptop computer and a dial-up modem line to the largest
personalized community space on the web, with over 500,000
communities, 3 million registered users, and 350 million page views
per month.?
Source: Online Community Report
http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/features/nguyen/


?ezboard has over 14 million registered users on its more than 1
million communities.?
http://www.labrador.com/portfolio.html


?The popularity of ezboard's community software has attracted ten
million users, who collectively have created over a million online
communities.?
http://www.wbs.com/pages/ezb_ss.html


?Daum has some 34 million registered subscribers and two million
online communities. Moreover, Daum users view an average of 400
million pages a day. Now, that's what we call an important audience.
Daum is a Korean portal, and not all Koreans are that fluent in
English.?
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:5cUKx99cqZEJ:www.ezinedirector.com/publisher/archive/index.cfm%3Ffuseaction%3DviewTextCopy%26ezineCopyId%3D6607+%22+*+*+*+million+++online+communities%22&hl=es&ie=UTF-8

Greetings Lindstrom:

6. Here's one of his spoken quotes about the senses (citing the Cirque mission):
"According to Guy Laliberté, founding president, "Cirque du Soleil's
mission is to invoke the imagination, provoke the senses and evoke the
emotions of people around the world."
http://allearsnet.com/btp/dd_cirqrev.htm

This may be too general a statement but I wanted to include it anyway
for your review.

Best regards,
journalist-ga


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"Guy Laliberté" sense or senses