Cassie's Clips: Walkthrough of Blogotex, the Online Management System for Second Life Fashionistas

Courtesy NWN YouTube correspondent Cassie Middles, here's a hands-on walkthrough of Blogotex, the quirky name of a cool and useful web service for SL fashionistas, especially bloggers:

"Blogotex is a good alternative to blogger groups if you're ever low on group space in Second Life," as Cassie explains. "Even with a Premium subscription, I used to run out of room and would have to leave one group to join another. Aside from event groups, this is where most of my blogger items come from now. They list all new releases and normally what events they're for, or Flickr links. You can grab a limited amount and blog them, post your blog posts there to be able to grab more. You can also get redeliveries of items if needed." The delivery system, which deposits items directly into a user's SL inventory, is a particularly cool feature. There's also some new-ish features which expand on the platform's power:

"They now have chat room like features where you can talk with fellow bloggers and designers, a vacation mode for if you'll be unavailable for an exponential amount of time, and photo previews to see what you're grabbing."

After her walkthrough, watch above to see Cassie set up items from her Blogotext for a photo shoot. Part 3 here is her editing session.

Got questions for Cassie? Post below of on her YouTube, which you should definitely subscribe to.

Comments

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

This isn't a service FOR bloggers, it's a service for designers to MANAGE their official bloggers. For example the designers can set limits on items, set deadlines for posts about said items.

"Analyse each blogger's list of taken vs blogged items, list of accepted/rejected posts. Let go the ones that do not deliver"

If designers had tried to do things like that in the old days there would have been hell to pay because bloggers saw themselves as consumer advocates, not PR agents for designers who get items as their "pay". I still believe that the relationship between bloggers and designers in the mesh era has become too...cozy.

Blogotex is useless for bloggers who DON'T want to be "official" and who want to stay independent. Also certain features like being able to immediately add a blogger or remove any limits from certain bloggers are Premium features!

[Ryan Schultz]

What CronoCloud said, Wagner. Blogotex is *NOT* "a management system for fashionistas", as you describe it. It's a tool used by stores to manage their official bloggers controlling how they obtain products to blog. I used to use it when I was an official blogger for the SL fashion brand Virtue. It's been around for years.

[Fauve Aeon]

What Ms. CC said!

I love SL fashion but so many SL fashion blogs have become very Samey-Jamie because there are so many bloggers on these Blogotex deadlines blogging the same things from the same brands in the same events. Or chasing limited time discounts/freebies. I don't really want to wear the hair or the dress that 'everyone's wearing', so those kinds of posts are completely lost on me.
And I also do not really like the blogger-designer-event merry go round, so I've got a bit to say about current state of SL fashion, shopping and fashion blogging myself so maybe THAT is what I should write about on my own blog! :D

[MBle]

Meh, oldies moaning again.

The reality is SL has changed since mesh. Period. Not just the blogging aspect, but the sheer amount of WORK involved from a a designers standpoint to make something that sells for 25 cents a piece against a dwindling number of residents and increasing number of creators. Combined with the REAL world environment - heard of Instagram influencers and how they get paid with products, SL is just a very tiny mirror of that situation and virtual worlds are not immune for the shitshow of society and social media that America has fostered on the rest of the world.

So any tool which helps a designer and bloggers stay connected is a benefit in this environment, whether you agree with the state of the real world or not. Also so people don't get a skewed point of view from CC's post, many designers have bloggers on their roll as VIPs - no deadlines, no obligations to take items, and freedom to post as they wish. If you want to be