Xfire Factoid
Saul Hansell writes in The New York Times Viacom to Pay $102 Million for an Online Game Service. There’s an interesting statistic in his story.
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Xfire has attracted four million users since it was introduced in 2004. Of those, one million are active and spend 91 hours each month using the service.
That’s over 20 hours a week playing video games (and using the Xfire IM system). No wonder television is struggling. Even more worrisome, those kids may not have any time to read fine blogs such as Cloudy Thinking. [grin]
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Viacom said yesterday that it had acquired Xfire, a Silicon Valley company that makes an instant message system used by video game players, continuing its quest to build Internet businesses focused on young people.
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Xfire makes a program similar to other instant message systems in that it lets users communicate with each other while they are online. Its system, however, is designed for people who play game software on their computers. Users can see which games their friends are playing and can automatically link to join them in playing games online.