New World Notes

UNCANNY VALLEY EXPO: HEIDI STURM

"Deep in Thought" is an Uncanny entry from Heidi Sturm (who also models).  The pose/gesture is by Iris Ophelia; her skin is from Tete a Pied.

Can your avatar believably engage us on a human level?   Details for submitting an Expo entry are here.

THE LONG TAIL OF LONG TAIL CONVERSATIONS

On his own blog, Chris Anderson has a fascinating response to this and this post:  "Why I gave up on Second Life"; Chris e-mailed me a couple questions, which I reply to there.  Between that and the post's extended reader commentary, it makes more a fascinating conversation-- read it all.

GOING GREEN

The view from Greenies' ironing board

Amid so much controversy over the myriad failures of real world advertising in Second Life last week, two regions sponsored by real companies were busy attracting steady waves of visitors.  As featured last week, there's the astoundingly beautiful Kowloon city, from a Japanese design studio which recreated the setting of a cult Playstation game, so fans could rent space to "live" within it, while also integrating real world brands with the companies' official approval as a potential revenue stream. 

Then there's "Greenies" [direct teleport at this link], from a small British development company called Rezzable, which plans to use it for retail and events.  But where SL sites for large corporations like Dell, Sun, and Reebok attract but a few hundred visitors, Greenies is, with little official promotion, already bringing in several thousand visits per week. 

The difference? Like Kowloon, Greenies leverages Second Life at its best and most essential, creating a fully-realized place that is open-ended enough for freeform exploration and improvisational creativity, a locale where Residents can respond to the vivid and wonderful strangeness with their own imagination. As the video above suggests, it's not enough to have a 50's-era living room expanded to mountainous size, nor that it's infested with mischievous aliens.  To make it a true Second Life experience, you need to bring your own sense of manic fun: explore the place with two Transformers, say, then a dancing fly and a silent crow on a WWII fighter plane, then maybe later on a flying hotdog, with reggae music streaming around you all the while.

But make no mistake, Greenies is still part of a company project-- just a rare one where the company's marketing demands don't choke out any possibility of genuine delight.  This is the insight gleaned by Greenies' lead developer, Pavig Lok, who's traded notes with fellow 3D builders who've created marketing sites for other real world clients.

"The feedback I've been getting from many of the folks that do commercial builds is that in the process of realizing the clients' requirements, they usually end up watering the build down 'till it's of limited interest," she tells me. "So it's not that there isn't a whole population of SL artists champing at the bit to produce cool fun builds, it's that the people who could let it happen don't.

RACE FOR RELEVANCE

Back in January, Rik Riel predicted a non-profit group would do it, and so it has come to pass: the American Cancer Society's SL Relay for Life has raised well over the Linden Dollar equivalent of $100,000 USD. SL-based academic Aleks Krotoski has powerful thoughts on how this real world organization has succeeded in Second Life where so many others have fallen short:

The SL Relay for Life has consistently offered a template for successful engagement with the new digital consumer. May it continue to succeed until we have found a cure.

Read it all here.

Tateru's Mixed Reality Headcount

How well did real world corporate sites engage the community?  Tateru Nino counts the heads...

Site (* Native reality site)	Est avg hourly visits	Est avg hourly visits (peak hrs)	Estimated total weekly visits (from 356,007 Residents in-world over last 7 days, according to the Lindens)
* Phat Cat's Jazzy Blue Lounge	159	176	26,868 (down 1%)
* City of Lost Angels	84	91	14,172 (up 3%)
* New Citizens Incorporated	76	87	12,804 (down 7%)
IBM	48	45	8,196 (up 1%)
The Pond	39	17	6,672 (down 7%)
Pontiac	34	34	5,820 (down 4%)
The L Word	31	40	5,208 (up 1%)
Greenies Home	29	34	4,896 (up 36%)
The Weather Channel	17	23	2,988 (down 5%)
Nissan	17	12	2,928 (down 10%)
Microsoft	16	24	2,736 (up 6%)
Virtual Holland	12	22	2,172 (up 2%)
ABC Island	11	12	1,920 (stable)

The people at Greenies Home have raised the population limit on the region, and the crowds have certainly come. Greenies Home is up 36% on the previous week - though there was some talk of closing the site temporarily for some refitting. I'm hoping that means yummy new content!

Playboy (1,368) has got the feel of a long-tail curve about it at the moment. After a surge of visiting interest, the traffic has tapered off. The in-world manager, MSGiro Grosso, tells me that neither he nor Playboy (formerly an NWN advertiser) is concerned about the present low traffic levels and are concentrating on community building over time. They plan to take the long view with a minimum one-year plan.  The traffic isn't fantastic, but it's hardly embarrassing either.

WIRED AND THE LONG TAIL OF SECOND LIFE MARKETING (Updated)

Update, 7/31: Chris has a reply to this post (and quotes my rejoinders) at his blog here.

Last Friday I contacted Wired Magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson about my critique of Frank Rose's article on failed marketing in Second Life, to get his perspective.  Chris told me he agreed with the article, and Rose's subsequent defense of it.  Fair enough, though I still maintain the piece doesn't begin to offer a full and nuanced consideration of the subject. 

Why?  Well, consider the time when Chris Anderson himself used Second Life to market a product.

Last October, Chris appeared in SL to sign virtual copies of his excellent book, The Long Tail. I was honored to host the interview session with him, in an event produced by NWN partner Millions of Us.  About 30 Residents showed up.  Not a lot, but then again, about what you'll often get at an appearance in a real world bookstore.

After that, however, my illustrated transcript of the SL chat log of Chris Anderson's appearance garnered about 90,000 page views, and is still often read; a subtitled YouTube video of the appearance produced by Millions of Us has been seen 2657+ times, and when you Google "Chris Anderson", it currently comes up as the 61st hit out of 1,270,000 returns.

So here's the question:  when considering the effectiveness of marketing Chris Anderson's Long Tail in Second Life, how many pairs of eyeballs should be counted?  Just 30?  Or another number?

WEEKEND OPEN FORUM (Updated)

So if you have an SL-based topic you want to talk about, or an announcement, project, event you want to promote, post here.  Monday, I'll mention noteworthy Comments and discussions in an update.

Update, 7/30:  Clement Rosher has started a group to advocate renaming Second Life.  Sean Voss is looking for great SL locations for his upcoming book; an anonymous poster sends word of a declaration of avatar rights. 

READER SURVEY: WHY DID THE LINDENS END GAMBLING IN SECOND LIFE NOW?

Opinion Polls & Market Research

I was busy preparing for a metaverse think tank event, when the Lindens up and eliminated an entire industry from the metaverse.  Namely, casinos and gambling:

But why now?  Unlike May's age verification announcement, which occurred after a rash of controversy, this move seems unexpected; indeed, a visit from the FBI in April set no clear legal prohibitions against wagering in SL.  Robin Linden cites "a variety of conflicting gambling regulations around the world" as a reason; many Residents have suggested other motives at play. So once again, I put the question up to the wisdom of the crowds-- you have until August 4th, to be a part of it.

COVER ME!

Urbane and incisive SL-based academic Tom Bukowski (last seen in NWN creating a virtual headquarters for a real world political campaign long before it was cool) has a contest to illustrate the cover of his upcoming anthropological exploration of Second Life, to be published by a very prestigious university press.  Details after the break.

UNCANNY VALLEY EXPO: MIRIEL ENFIELD

Miriel Enfield's cool gaze is this Friday's Expo entry; her pose is derived from a walk animation found in Nephilaine Protagonist's Empire AO; her skin is by Tete a Pied.

Can your avatar believably engage us on a human level?   Details for submitting an Expo entry are here.