Billboards; they largely fretted over billboards. Back in 2004 when the real world first pushed its nose into the walled garden of Second Life, in the guise of a British branding agency, billboards were what many worried about most. When companies sense in Second Life a marketing opportunity, the prediction went, they're going to paper the world with billboards. You'll want to live an alternate life, one that was more fantastic and free than the one you had away from the screen, but you'd look out from the balcony of your virtual home, and you wouldn't be able to avoid them: billboards for coffee and softdrinks and sports shoes, and all the other advertising we already get inundated with, in the world outside.
For now, at least, that fear hasn't manifested, because the companies that've established a presence in Second Life have so far preferred to keep on private islands of their own. So if you want to shop at American Apparel or drive a Nissan or whatever, you actually have to opt into that experience, by teleporting to them-- voluntary corporate immersion, in other words. (Albeit with limited success.) And unless I missed it, none of them have thrown up a billboard on any of the established continents.
So it's striking that the first virtual billboard evidently sponsored by a large real world organization to appear there doesn't come from a company at all. Rather, it's from a British non-profit that wants to tell you about all the starving children that are dying while you're spending your time in Second Life.
And so real world billboards have arrived, though decidedly not in the form originally anticipated. As such, it tops this week's installment of Mixed Reality Mondays, my selection of recent and upcoming SL events and projects funded by real world companies, persons, and organizations. Other highlights after the break: Cisco Systems launches amid glowing green detritus, SL meets Hinduism, and NBC joins Second Life (though under Google's radar.)
Sponsored by the World Development Movement, their billboard in Warmouth features a dynamically updated ticker that shows how many children have died from global poverty since Second Life's launch in 2003. NWN contributor Rik Riel has a thoughtful and opinionated analysis of the site, and the thesis is contained in the title: "Global Poverty Death Counter: good cause, shitty implementation".
Mixed Reality Business
Cisco System just launched a 32 acre campus with a baseball field, product information, and video overviews.
Caught in a Cisco commercial loop with Xuesal Opus
Interactivity is decidedly minimalist at the moment, but if you are interested in watching your avatar watch an infinite loop of a 20 second commercial for Cisco's Telepresence techology, then this is the place to go. Also: free T-shirts.
Inspired (or infuriated) by the video loop, someone left several green and glowing fairy figurines, along with other detritus, hovering near the demo video.
Mixed Reality Media
Have corporate-sponsored Second Life events reached a saturation point? Last week, one of the three major television networks sponsored an expansive SL event. Created by occasional NWN contributor Aimee Weber along with Bedazzle, with help from The Electric Sheep Company, NBC's virtual tree lighting ceremony was, by most accounts, a lovely and glamorous event, and according to some reports, the largest single event in SL's history. It was featured on numerous SL blogs, and considering it was from NBC, I expected to see a vast mainstream media spread, in its aftermath.
Curiously, however, a Google search for "nbc tree lighting in second life" now turns up all of two hits, while "nbc in second life" turns up none. (By contrast, "american apparel in second life" returns 120 hits.) Perhaps we're at a stage where "Big Company X does Y in Second Life" no longer counts as a story in itself. Or maybe it was just a busy news day.
In other Mixed Reality Media news, Adam Reuters conducted in-world interviews with Nintendo executive Reggie Fils-Aime and Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman. One of Bronfman's answers on "stealing" music online on attracted an angry rejoinder from Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing, which is not surprising. What is surprising is that the fact Bronfman conducted the interview in an online world was scarcely mentioned. Media saturation? We seem to be reaching a point where Second Life's status as another media channel is already taken for granted.
Mixed Reality Religion
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