Mike Hodges shows off the new Mall Plus virtual shopping
mall website he hopes will be online again next month.
Photo by Jane Dawber.
An online virtual shopping mall being developed in
Dunedin, which collapsed after receiving ratepayers' funds last
year, finally looks set for a rebirth.
The Mall Plus website is scheduled to relaunch with a "soft
opening" next month, following an extensive 10-month
redevelopment effort, developer Mike Hodges, of Dunedin,
confirmed yesterday.
The new website would replace an earlier version which
disappeared from the internet last year, months after being
developed by Dunedin start-up company The Street, with funds
from the Dunedin City Council.
The council, through its company Dunedin City Holdings Ltd,
bought 1.2 million shares in The Street for $700,000 in 2006.
The money helped pay for several projects being developed by
The Street, including the website.
The Mall Plus was briefly online last year, but disappeared,
soon after to be replaced with a "reopening soon" sign on its
homepage.
The sign now reads "reopening March 09", and Mr Hodges has
high hopes, once the virtual doors are thrown open.
The initial rollout of the new Mall Plus website would
provide a remodelled three-dimensional online environment for
users to browse through virtual stores, buying a mixture of
real and virtual products, he said.
However, stage two would include more recent social
networking concepts, such as allowing users to create and
control their own avatars - three-dimensional models of
themselves - to use while navigating the mall and interacting
with other users, he said.
It was hoped those features could be rolled out within
months, although the timing could slip, Mr Hodges said.
The mall was being developed in Dunedin but would be
international in scope, potentially attracting users from
around the world, he said.
It was hoped franchise agreements with developers in other
countries could eventually result in other online malls being
developed, which would be linked.
This would allow users to wander from one mall to the next,
he said.
The project aimed to bring repeat Trade Me users into the
Mall Plus space, with users paying "inconsequential" amounts
of real-life money to buy and open small virtual stores to
sell their real-life products, he said.
It was expected transactions within the mall would be a "half
and half" split between real and virtual products, he said.
When stage two features were included, users could spend
their real money to buy virtual features to update their
stores, virtual homes with furniture, or gym equipment to
upgrade their avatars (characters), he said.
It was hoped the transactions would eventually add to "very
serious" revenue, with an audience eventually growing into
the millions as other malls were linked to the first project,
he said.
Mr Hodges bought the Mall Plus from The Street after its
collapse, but a revenue-sharing agreement meant The Street
would get royalties until an agreed cap was reached, allowing
them to cover costs originally invested in the website's
development last year, Mr Hodges said.
- chris.morris@odt.co.nz
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