Philip Rosedale in High Fidelity via Oculus Rift

High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale's next generation virtual world (all our previous NWN coverage on it here), just got $11 million in new funding from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, TechCrunch just reported. That's noteworthy, because it gives his company more than enough capital to launch High Fidelity and devote a year or two trying to get traction. Also noteworthy in the TechCrunch post are some hints about how High Fidelity will monetize, two which Philip discussed with me off the record awhile ago, another which might shock some:

Rosedale plans to monetize High Fidelity at the points where the community provides value to itself. While you can generate a temporary name to send to friends so they can quickly jump into a world with you, you’ll also be able to pay a fee to keep a distinct name for longer-term use — kind of like reserving a good URL for your site or username on Twitter. Since users can make all kinds of content for their worlds, High Fidelity also wants to host the go-to repository for models and code in a digital store resembling Unity’s Asset Store. Given the product’s open source approach, generous users can give out their offerings for free if they’d like, but if they want to charge money, High Fidelity will take a small cut.

So monetizing with virtual name sales, much like Second Life monetized with virtual land sales, and also taking a cut of virtual content sales, a bit like how the Second Life Marketplace works. That, plus another potentially controversial revenue stream: