Second Life’s First Millionaire based in Wuhan?
Posted on by Jason Li
ESWN links to the Red Herring’s article on “Second Life’s First Millionaire.” Bullet-point summary:
- Anshe Chung has declared herself a “virtual millionaire,” which I assume means she’s made a million US dollars on Second Life.
- Anshe Chung, real name Ailin Graef runs Anshe Chung Studios with her husband.
- Anshe was born & raised in Hubei.
- The studio manages virtual real estate.
- It has offices in Wuhan, and currently has less than 50 staff members.
So perhaps the title of this post is wrong. The surname Graef doesn’t exactly sound Chinese, so they may be headed elsewhere and merely have an office in China. However, the studio’s website design suggests otherwise, and the jobs section is a Hubei-based website.
Great catch! Anshe is SL’s most famous and wealthy real estate tycoon and I believe lives in Germany, but is definitely a mainland native. You can read more about her in the BusinessWeek profile, “Virtual Land, Real Money” (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/
content/06_18/b3982009.htm) Her avatar was on BusinessWeek’s cover. My guess is that she’s leveraging the cheap labor in China–creating a distributed business whose assets are virtual. Very interesting stuff.
I should have thought of that. Damn.
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