Cloud Party Shuts Down

On January 24, Cloud Party announced that they had been acquired by Yahoo, and would be closing down on February 21. Daniel Voyager was there, and took a few pictures that he posted on his Flickr and his Facebook page. Regular and infrequent users of the virtual world had gone online to say goodbye.

Earlier, Hamlet Au had commented that Yahoo's acquisition of Cloud Party's team was a strong hint that it would soon be going into the virtual world market (link), "given that Yahoo! is one of the very largest consumer-facing sites on the Web, we could soon see a massive growth in virtual worlds."

Someone posting in Daniel's Flickr comments suggested, "Hopefully, much like Glitch, it will find a way to be reborn! CP had too much promise to simply disappear." If not however, the image just above will be the last moment of "the Cloud" ever shown.

Image credit: Daniel Voyager

Cloud Party Bought By Yahoo, to Close

While Second Life residents delt with the surprise news of Rod Humble resigning as the CEO of Linden Lab, there was an announcement concerning another virtual world: Cloud Party. They announced on their blog that they had been acquired by Yahoo.

We’re excited to announce that the time has come for the Cloud Party team to start our next adventure. We are joining Yahoo! The last two years have been an incredible experience for everyone here. We’ve been continually amazed by your creativity and the worlds you’ve built and shared with us.

Cloud Party will close on February 21st.

The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWPBE) has annouced because of this, they will no longer be part of their conference. Daniel Voyager speculated this could mean another virtual world could be taking it's place there.

Sources: Daniel Voyager, Prim Perfect 

Bixyl Shuftan