There is a lot of people out there who just can’t wrap their mind around OneSeason and the idea of trading synthetic, virtual, online goods. Let me see if I can help you with this phenomena. I am not trying to change your mind, or talk you into it. This article is to just help those folks understand the booming online virtual goods industry where people do indeed spend MILLIONS BILLIONS of dollars for pixels of light on a screen. Did you know that people buy and sell “gold” from World of Warcraft, and “plat” (platinum) from Everquest (multi-player, online fantasy role playing games)? There are businesses set up where people “farm” gold on these games, then sell the gold on websites such as PlayerAuctions.com. I myself took advantage of this in 2003. I had an account on a game that I had played with some friends for a couple years called Everquest. When I became bored of that game, I discovered that people were selling platinum on that PlayerAuctions site for $55.00 per 1000 platinum. I had a lot of platinum. I sold all of my characters gear in the game to get more platinum. I liqudiated the platinum on PlayerAuctions. Then, I sold the character. Final take? About $5,000. This was the down payment for my first house. Fast forward to today, and this is a booming industry. Can I tell you why people spend hundreds of dollars to get stuff to fight skeletons and zombies in a video game? Nope. But they do.

Have you heard of the website SecondLife.com? According to their Wikipedia article they have been around for about 5 years. It’s a virtual world. People pay real U.S. Dollars for currency in the game, and people just….live a second life. Buy clothes, cars, land, and anything else you can think of. People go on vacation, get jobs, are fired from jobs. Religions have even come into second life now, and opened up churches. It’s a trip. Here is what you need to pay attention to. As of March 2008, it is being reported that SecondLife.com is earning $1.4 million dollars a month in revenue. Wait what? You heard it right. They have a $500 million market for nothing but pixels of light on a screen. People buy and sell currency, land, cars, PEOPLE (yes slaves) in that game. Second Life already has a person who made a million dollars.

I’m sure little education is needs with regards to Facebook, and the thousands of dinky little applications on there you can add to your profile. Bar fight is my favorite where you can pay real money for upgrades to your player and buy weapons. Also on facebook, for a fee, you can send unique, limited edition gifts to your friends or flowers to your girlfriend. Yes. People do it. And they do it a lot. Have I spent money on facebook applications? Hellllll No! I can’t see value in that! It’s absurd!

So here we are with OneSeason. I am a sports fan. I am a fantasy sports fan. In the age of the internet, and online entertainment, OneSeason is giving people who don’t want to spend money on Longswords of Dragonslaying, or Pink Mohawks for their avatar, a different platform for their online entertainment needs.

If you don’t believe in it. Fine. Don’t spend your money on it! I wouldn’t spend money on SecondLife.com. I can’t see value in that! But I have fun on OneSeason, and I see a value in that, even though, it’s a similar idea.

If you don’t believe in OneSeason. Fine. Just go away and let the rest of us have our fun!

Online virtual goods are the future, and there will be many more things like this coming in the future.

If you need more proof that virtual goods are here read this article from techcrunch.

http://oneseasonnation.com/2008/01/virtual-goods-the-next-big-business-model/

Congratulations to Tomarken, AGAIN with his hilarious SHOCKING comment to the OSN Caption Contest #3 photo. Honorable mention to Jayhawks who had a great one as well. Tomarken won for the second time, raising his credit at Art to Shirt’s online store to $10. You can view the archives of the hilarious captions and posts here.

Here is your photo for OSN Caption Contest number 4! DO YOUR WORST! Enter as many times as you like! Winners announced next Saturday.

No, we aren’t going to talk about 50 Cent OR Justin Timberlake. (Sorry TheBrett). The time has come that we need to discuss the alert programs. What are your thoughts on them? There are several tools out there to use. OneSeasonAlerts, Bob’s Tool, OneSeasonTools, and OneSeasonPro have been the tools of choice people use to get IPOs, other than manual refresh. Once a way to get an edge on the competition and secure yourself an IPO, now it has become a must have for everyone. Before everyone and their hamster had these great alerts, the average reaction time was around 5 minutes. If you got in, in under 5 minutes, you were good. Congratulations! Now with all of the promotion and use of these tools by nearly all active traders, you needed to have your IPO order for Shaq in approximately 1 minute and 30 seconds after he was posted. The IPO allocation system has proved to be tried and true on OneSeason’s part. What have we done by creating these tools, and distrubuting them freely to everyone? What are your thoughts for the future? Would you like to see these tools become more exclusive? Would you pay for the ability to keep using these tools to get IPOs? We have a poll up on the left side asking you this question. Feel free to leave a comment and discuss.

Shaq’s shares were released today at about 4pm PST today. He came out of the gate selling for $14.25, but no time jumped into the $30 range and as if the time of this writing, he is trading for $30.00  Only 772 shares of Shaq were released, and the word in the nation forums is that it seems you had to be within 1 minute and 30 seconds of his announcement to get shares allocated to you! Bullpup was indeed shut out on this one with a 14:18:37 timestamp. How’s that for the conspiracy theorists? Chew on that and get back to me.

Enjoy your free Shaq Mask as a trophy from today. Click it, print it, glue it to a cardboard backing, and tape it to a stick, and viola! Instant hit at a party. The market is closed tomorrow, but you know we’ll be here chatting in the forums, and delivering you great stuff from the world of sports, chicks, and OneSeason!

Amar’e Stoudemire hits the IPO Pipeline next. This BEAST is a real force to be reckoned with, and a legit MVP canidate in the future. His career averages of 21.9 points 9 boards, and 1.5 blocks are pretty much exactly what is he doing this year as well. This will be an interesting IPO because as we all know so far, his fellow teammate Beetlejuice Steve Nash, a multiple time NBA MVP, hasn’t gotten much love from traders. Is it because of the Suns? Is it because Nash is Canadian? Is it because Nash makes commercials like this?

It will great to see what happens with Amar’e when he hits the pipeline. What are your thoughts?

Our OneSeason Nation Official mascot is back to wish everyone a Happy New Year, and Congrats on today’s market!

We were told at the Nation this was coming, and it’s finally here. This one is pretty important. There is a lot of talk about the quality of IPOs coming out. (Darren McFadden? Derrick Rose? Michael Beasley?) The IPO request process is SUPPOSED to pull the players who we want to see traded most into the market. One of the things that was happening was hundreds thousands a ton of people were trying to create the top upcoming IPO list in their own accounts. They did this by requesting everyone under the sun, copying the list posted here at the Nation, copying lists posted elsewhere, and tracking the IPO list from their account. Well because of this, every time someone wants to make this list in their account, Derrick Rose, Michael Beasely, and everyone else get another vote. There would be zero movement. Everyone on the list would get 1 more vote. OneSeason, by user feedback, has added an upcoming IPO list to their home page in the bottom right. Now you can take some serious action in the quality of IPOs that are coming out.

IMPORTANT!

Right now, go into your account in OneSeason and click “watch list”. Cancel every player who you don’t care about. Only leave up the players YOU want traded. This will adjust the IPO list, and as new IPOs roll out, only the players who the majority of folks REALLY want to see traded will be released as IPOs.

Shaq hit the IPO Pipeline today at approximately 11:17AM PST. The Nation forums has a timestamp thread going.

Good Luck to everyone and their requests!!

Have you checked your account today? Odds are your account has doubled. With the combinations of reverse splits, the Boston Metro article, and an apparently glitch in the $2500 max deposit per year rule…the market is ablaze today. We’ve seen the market cap double! The forums are on FIRE today with tips, tricks, strategies, and everything else you might need to help capitalize in the current market conditions. We hope you were able to take advantage of this nice upswing!

Check out this amazing article that Nation member TDPenny found and posted in the forums. The Metro is a HUGE publication that is read by millions of people. Do what you will with this information!

Update from JCarlon: So, it appears that OS made all three of the Metro editions in the U.S. - NYC, Boston and Philly.

It makes good sense. The Metro target, according to their Web site, is “is a free daily newspaper written and designed for young and ambitious professionals. Designed for a 20-minute read, the paper gives metropolitans all they need to know, Monday through Friday, during their morning commutes.”

This is our OS guy: “young and ambitious professionals.”

I guess the big question is, will this spike get even bigger when that Metro reader tonight, at the local watering hole with his sports fan buddies, tells them all about OS and how frickin’/wicked great it is.

Who knows. But I am back in the market, albeit at different stakes than before, and it’s nice to see a seven-figure market cap again.

When do YOU think we’ll see the “Big Diesel” roll his 18-wheeler into OneSeason?

Impatient traders are starting to see why there is no rush for massive amount of people on OneSeason. They are soliciting our feedback, and making improvements to the site. They have cleaned up their message boards, removing the folks who were lying, acting malicious, and/or slandering OneSeason. They also put in a big change tonight to our beloved ticker. Notice that the ticker is now in alphabetical order as well as having more information, a cooler look, and if you hover over the player you get a mini profile. Here is a screenshot for you.

This is great news. Expect more changes and improvements after this! What features would YOU like to see?

Imagine this with substantial prizes. Thoughts?

4:43PM PST

The Nation Forums has a thread going with the time stamps, the majority of the time stamps being around the 4:43 to 4:45 Range. Good Luck everyone on getting your IPO shares! Great to see the positive market activity today too.

Here are some of the Nation’s time stamps.

2009-01-06 18:44:49

2009-01-06 18:45:14

2009-01-06 18:44:47

2009-01-06 18:43:03

2009-01-06 18:44:50

2009-01-06 18:45:20

2009-01-06 18:45:38

2009-01-06 18:45:13

2009-01-06 18:44:47

2009-01-06 18:46:42

2009-01-06 18:44:10

2009-01-06 18:45:39

2009-01-06 18:47:03

Feel free to post YOUR time stamp as a comment to this article.

You heard it here first. Monday January 5th, 11:30PM PST.