The Splice 🧬 Meet Jennifer Aniston's Virtual Dog
Good afternoon and happy holidays!
Welcome back to The Splice 🧬 by VirtualHumans.org: a weekly newsletter curating the latest news, developments, and insights in the virtual influencer space.
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🧬 Core Strands from This Week
Jennifer Aniston Launches Virtual Pet ‘Clydeo’
🔎 The Synopsis: Jennifer Aniston is the latest celebrity to launch her animated character: Clydeo, the animated cousin of her real-life dog Clyde. She’s one of several celebrities such as Serena Williams and Charlie D’Amelio to launch a virtual character as an innovative way to expand their celebrity brand into new, animated territories.
🧬 The Splice: Celebrities like Aniston are leveraging massive, established personal brands to jumpstart new, owned character IP. Aniston may not be known as a chef, but Clydeo is a self-described ‘foodie’ and his brand can expand into cookbooks, food videos, and more.
The Top 9 NFTs Launched by Virtual Influencers
🔎 The Synopsis: We took a look at the top 9 NFTs sold by virtual influencers such as FN Meka, Shudu, and many more. The most expensive NFT on our list was by Miquela Sousa, one of the earliest virtual influencers to launch an NFT, which sold for 159.5 ETH—equivalent to $82,361 at the time of sale.
🧬 The Splice: Virtual influencers and NFTs are a match made in heaven considering their similar digital origins. NFTs are an optimal medium to share exclusive virtual influencer content to fans while also offsetting the technological costs to produce a virtual influencer—a win-win for both sides.
Our Top 5 Virtual Humans Articles from 2021
We wanted to shine a spotlight on some of our most popular articles throughout the year. Here are our top five articles from 2021:
Who is Samsung Sam? Why Everyone is Excited for a Virtual Human that Doesn't Exist Yet
Touring The Musical Metaverse: Virtual Concerts are Here to Stay
Superplastic Founder Paul Budnitz on Guggimon's Major Fortnite Appearance
🔭 What We’re Looking at This Week
Kevin Kelly’s “1000 True Fans” essay
🔑 Key Quote: “Now here’s the thing; the big corporations, the intermediates, the commercial producers, are all under-equipped and ill-suited to connect with these thousand true fans. They are institutionally unable to find and deliver niche audiences and consumers. That means the long tail is wide open to you, the creator. You’ll have your one-in-a-million true fans to yourself. And the tools for connecting keep getting better, including the recent innovations in social media. It has never been easier to gather 1,000 true fans around a creator, and never easier to keep them near.” — Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine
🧬 The Splice: While the essay “1000 fans” was published over seven years ago, we’re taking a look at it in a new light this week considering the rise of NFTs and the power of their fan communities. Many virtual influencers are a testament to the power of the “1000 true fan” theory and each of the 9 NFTs in our article show how digital creators can create a living by serving their fans exclusive content online.
Best,
VirtualHumans.org
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Insights by Makena Rasmussen, Christopher Travers, and Astrid Hiort.