Wagner James Au took a trip to China recently and while there fit in a visit to the HiPiHi offices. His article on GigaOm answered a few questions that we've had for a long time about this latest Second Life contender:
1. The Name - It's pronounced "high-pee-high". I wonder if I've been saying it wrong for too long to change. "Pihi" is Chinese for “innocent child,” and the three i’s connotate the Chinese ideogram for society.
2. Virtual Goods - User-created content will be a mainstay of the world, and users will retain intellectual property rights. Integrated right into the system, however, will be the ability to publish content under Creative Commons.
3. Land - Time zones will be fixed by the system and a map will be pre-defined. Yes, the possibility of purchasing land exists.
4. Censorship - Since HiPiHi originates from China this is a concern. The parameters here are very clear: sex in private is OK, discussing politics is not. Everything will be monitored through a keyword filtering system based on the Great Firewall of China. Apparently "beta users are already voluntarily watching what they say."
5. Segmentation - Various parts of HiPiHi will be restricted to certain countries based on server location, and there will be marked differences in how content is dealt with. The keyword filtering system will only really apply to the areas confined to the Chinese, for instance.
Some allusions were made to allowing Second Life avatars to travel to HiPiHi, but we'll have to wait and see if that's anywhere near happening. We still haven't heard anything definitive about the currency either, but considering QQ's regulation conflicts, we can't blame them for hesitating.
One last thing did become clear though: they have successfully established a hardcore community of passionate beta testers. As we've seen so many times in the past, that's all a world needs in the long-term to survive.