New World Notes

How to Use Virtual Currency for Real World Marketing

My new article, "How to Use Facebook Credits for Online Marketing" is up on The CMO Site, edited by Mitch Wagner. an in depth look at how the Western world's largest virtual currency, Facebook Credits, are being used to market -- and now buy -- real world goods. Thanks to social media marketing expert and excellent geeky chick Tameka Kee and major player SocialVibe for the great background and quotes.

Open Forum: Mesh Finally Goes Gridwide Across SL, What Do You Think & What Have You Seen?

Mesh is finally here across SL, Linden Lab just announced, fulfilling a Linden promise that it would arrive this month, but after many delays and false starts. I've written about what mesh will do for SL fashion, and just earlier today, for avatars and machinima, and now we finally get a chance to see it in action across SL. Please share links (screenshots and video) in Comments, as I'll be highlighting this evolution as much as possible in coming weeks (or months.) Just be sure to download the latest viewer, to get your mesh on.

Update, 11:40PM: Added what looks like the first YouTube video of a mesh object for sale in SL, a pretty cool looking alien avatar, shot by Blaze Borgin, which he reportedly bought for L$300.

2 Ways Forward For Second Life: Evolution & Preservation (Highlight NWN Comment by SL/iOS Innovator Dizzy Banjo)

Last week, Linden Lab announced that it was launching a “light” separate version of an SL experience for web and tablets, though it’s still not clear what that means. The news made me think about an NWN comment from Robert “Dizzy Banjo” Thomas back in July, which now seems prophetic, and consequentially, even more worth reading now. As the SL avatar Dizzy Banjo, Robert created a number of incredible metaverse music projects, like this one, and this one, and now as a lead developer with RJDJ, a major iOS developer, helped create last year’s hit Inception app, among others. What should Linden Lab do with its light version of SL? Perhaps Dizzy has the solution, read on: - Hamlet Au

The more I think about this discussion the more I think that there are two ways forward for Second Life and Linden Lab:

1. EVOLUTION: Attempt to evolve Second Life into something more relevant to todays market, aiming to achieve mass market adoption that could sustain the current business model.
2. PRESERVATION: Leave Second Life how it is and change the business model, possibilities within the world.

Let me explain what I mean:

DeviantArt's Top Artists Get Tens of Millions of Views

For a long time I've thought that DeviantArt, the online community site for art sharing, is one of the biggest but most under-appreciated sites for user-generated content online. (I mean, in the last few years, how often did you read major news stories about Second Life, versus DeviantArt? I don't recall even reading one.) Some numbers from a presentation by DeviantArt's CEO makes me think my sense isn't far off:

DeviantArt is one of the largest social networks in the US with with 250+ million artwork submissions a month... Online reputation spreads quickly in [DeviantArt] communities – [users] PearlEden gets 30-40 million hits and RainCookie 100 million hits, and they are under 21. They have a hard time adjusting to this.

Amazing when you think about it. The work of this artist here, PearlEden, is seen by more people than works by some of the world's top illustrators. And she's not even an adult. And few probably know her real name. Definitely needs deeper looking into. NWN readers, who among you are DeviantArt users? Would love some of your insights in Comments.

Image credit: pearleden.deviantart.com. Hat tip: Andrew Chen.

Life 2.0, Acclaimed SL Documentary, Makes Cable Debut on Oprah Winfrey Network This Thursday, 8/25 at 9/8c

Life 2.0, Jason Spingarn-Koff's well-reviewed documentary about Second Life, is making its cable TV debut in the US this week, on Oprah Winfrey's network OWN, which picked up the movie last year. If you have OWN, set your alarm for Thursday, August 25th at 9/8c. Here's its Oprah-fied trailer:

More on the OWN page for the movie here, including a very interesting viewer discussion thread. A number of hardcore SLers have complained that the movie dwells too much on the more sordid or controversial aspects of Second Life (real marriages broken up by virtual sex, age and gender play, and so on), but I think that somewhat misses the point of Jason's movie: These are very true, very substantial parts of the SL experience, and for that matter, express deeper longings that are an essential part of life online. These deserve just as much consideration as the positive applications of SL, especially since those -- for instance, art, education, therapy, research, architecture, and so on -- are not necessarily how SL is primarily used. I tried to cover both sides of the SL story in my own book, but as Jason told me, his goal was to tell the stories he found in SL, not tell the story of SL. At any rate, I absolutely recommend watching it, it's powerful, provactive filmmaking.

I interviewed Jason about the movie a couple years ago at SXSW (albeit with a major hangover), which you can also watch below:

What Mesh Will Do for SL Avatars -- and Machinima

Second Life will soon become fully mesh-enabled (the functionality is rolling out across the grid even now), so here's another look at what it'll do for custom avatars, and for that matter, machinima:

I love how much more richly detailed and responsive to the light this avatar is. But even more exciting to me is how much more richly detailed this machinima is. It's just made to illustrate the custom-made mesh avatar, but imagine when this kind of quality goes into fully formed SL machinima -- we're talking footage that'll be quite competitive with the best 3D modeling/animation/machinima platforms, perhaps even surpass it. The avatar, by the way, is for the Dirty Lynx fashion line, created by Bytegang, a web design studio based in Prague I wrote about last year. More like this please, more like this.

NWN in Japanese: Linden Labは、SLとは別に、新しいWeb/タブレット対応のSL-Light版をリリースする。(SLCC2011基本方針のハイライト)

Linden Labは、創造性と別のアイデンティティーを持つことを重点とするSecond Lifeとは別に、ウェブやタブレットでも動くように設計された、ゲームのような体験が出来るライトバージョンを間もなく開始する。

Google Profiles Adding Twitter-Style Verification Badges for Identified Users; Backdoor Solution to the Pseudonym Mess?

Google is starting to roll out verification badges to users of its Plus social network, one of their engineers announced last Friday, which look like those "Verified Account" badges that Twitter bestows its real world celebrity users. (Like the Google Profile of country star Dolly Parton, who has that badge next to her name, when you mouse over it.) And indeed, other well-known Plus users will be able to use this first:

For now, we’re focused on verifying public figures, celebrities, and people who have been added to a large number of Circles, but we’re working on expanding this to more folks.

In case you missed that last part, Google's Wen-Ai Yu repeats it again:

[K]eep in mind that this is just the beginning. We’re working on expanding this to include more people in the future, so hang tight!

No word on how far they plan to expand it, but I think this suggests a great solution to Google's ongoing mismanagement over pseudonyms. Or at the very least, should be. Here's why:

High Noon, Innovative iOS Shooter With MMO-esque Features, Now Has 1 Million Monthly Players

My next SocialTimes Pro report is on virtual goods in free-to-play iOS games, which gives me a chance to write about one of my favorites: High Noon (iTunes link here), an innovative multiplayer shooter/mini-MMO hybrid. Set in the Wild West, you advance in the game by dueling other players in short, real-time combat sessions which make really clever use of the iOS’ internal accelerometer. To “draw” and “reload” your weapon, you have to hold your iPhone at a specific position, then aim with a tilt-controlled crosshair. This makes shoot-outs much more physical, and visceral, and in my opinion, much more exciting than any old school FPS I've played. Win the draw, and you can earn virtual currency to buy upgrades and vanity customization for your gunfighter avatar, such as better pistols and fancy hats. (That's one of the MMO-lite aspects, along with a leveling and player-to-play messaging systems.)

Just as impressive is how popular High Noon has grown since launching last year. It currently counts 1 million monthly active users and 250,000 daily active users, Bjørn Stabell, Managing Director at Happylatte, the game's developer, tells me. Those numbers make High Noon about as avidly played as Valve's Team Fortress 2 and Counterstrike.

Hat tip: My cousin Nathan McKay, who first got me into High Noon.

Mesh-Based Fashion Starts to Appear in Second Life

Though mesh is still in Beta in Second Life, we're starting to see mesh-based fashion items appear in SL -- and in the lines of established fashion designers. Metaverse celebrity Angie Mornington just passed along this photo from a larger shoot she posted to her blog, and while we've already noted what mesh will do to SL fashion, here's a closer look at an actual item you can now get. This is the Eau De Hucci Jumpsuit (!) the first mesh release from Eboni Khan, a longtime SL entrepreneur. [SLurl teleport to store at this link] Normally, the shadow folds you're seeing would be "baked" into the textures of the item, but with mesh, that's not the case -- these shadows are real, so to speak.

"Yup that [photo] was on one of mesh sandbox sims," Angie tells me. "I used the regular default daylight setting, I didn't have shadows enabled in preferences, and I didn't edit the pics at all except to crop them in size." She used the Beta Viewer 3, which is mesh enabled. "So all of the detail you see is in plain SL daylight." See more from Ms. Mornington here. We're likely to see much more mesh fashion soon, and then start transforming the broader industry soon after.

Update, 11:35am: For fellow designers, Damien Fate now is selling full permission mesh fashion clothing templates.