eightbar hits jyte, making claims

Roo has been getting us all into jyte. A way to make claims, ideas etc and vote and comment on them whilst applying reputation and credibility to things.

So as something a bit more than “Second Life is …..” i thought I would try this and see where jyte gets us.

“Whilst people may be scared of things like Second Life, it is in fact opening up more human communication than our basic web mechanisms we use today. Metaverses are in fact an added evolutionary layer on the web.”

RL brands in SL – study

Market Truths Ltd released the third of their reports on Second Life this month, entitled Real Life Brands in Second Life (Q1 2007).

The study will be interesting to anyone weighing up what effect Second Life can have on a brand. Some might argue that the sample size could have done with being a little larger, but even the 201 responses used give a useful insight into what SL residents think about the impact and effectiveness of real life brands. To give you some idea of the findings, here’s the table of contents:

  • Executive Summary
  • General Attitudes Toward RL Brands in SL
    • Overall Attitudes
    • Expected Effects and Consequences of RL Brands in SL
  • Exposure to RL Brands Currently in SL
  • Marketing Tactics
  • Marketing Implications
    • Link RL and SL
    • Give Residents Things to Do
    • Provide a Quality Experience
    • Make a Contribution
    • Tread Lightly
    • Try to Work with Small Content Creators
    • Increase Awareness
  • Appendix A: Methodology
  • Statistical End-Notes

I was pleased to see that IBM comes out pretty well, with a good score for positive brand impact and 20% of respondents being able to name it as an RL brand in SL, making it the leader in terms of awareness and putting it ahead of Adidas, Dell, Toyota, Reuters and Coca-Cola in that order. (The latter is fascinating, because as far as I can tell the presence of Coca-Cola textures in SL is unfunded and unofficial).

The study also lists some of the key features of what each brand is doing in SL, along with some detailed discussion of the implications for marketing in SL, and suggestions for what to consider and what to avoid.

If you’re reading up about this area and trying to gather evidence for whether it’s worth getting involved you may well find this an interesting and useful study. You can buy it for US$200 from their website or for L$25000 from their SL office.

An SL motorbike powered by twitter

One way and another I ended up watching my twitter feeds tonight and caught a twitter from Rueben at millionsofus saying “reubstock Opening up a new project with Intel and the guys from American Chopper.. come on in and spread the word. http://tinyurl.com/yojogx
The grid was misbehaving so it took a few jumps to get there, and when I did our little predlet was making feed me noises. (he has gone to sleep again whilst I write this post)
Anwyay, I managed to get to the island, and quickly built a bike and I will be popping back to explore the rest of it post feed (baby not RSS). I like bikes, and bikes in SL are great fun. So, this is better than visiting a website. Heck yes, and I millionsofus had greeters there too. Another example of the sort of thing that makes this stuff work. Its all about people!
map

bike1

bike2

bike3

Ballet in Second Life, live perfomance another key use of the metaverse

Over on the IBM islands Jessica Qin pointed out that we now have the Second Life Ballet. Now demographically you would not expect to see epredator at a ballet. However, I am looking forward to seeing a performance.
We have all been talking about how the metaverse is about people, and people connecting. It is therefore no surprise that we need to consider artistic live performance in that too. Doing things live and to an audience is what is missing from many of the other ‘social’ experiences in the Web 2.0 world. Games of course with coop missions and tasks, live competition online, have long had this element of performance.
ballet

ballet stage
pictures from snapzilla

So pop on over to IBM 10 (just type that into the main map), this is now my favourite way to find things. Slurls are great but sometimes it seems to take a while. Going to the map, and getting a visual prompt on the surroundings seems to add to the experience of where I actually am in the world.

The following is the part notecard information, recreated here for your convienence. Visit the website for links to reviews, pictures and more information.

From the notecard:
INFORMATION ON SECOND LIFE BALLET
Group = Second Life Ballet
http://www.slballet.org/

Second Life Ballet produces professional works that creatively utilize the Second Life environment; we produce neo-classical, contemporary, and eclectic ballets for and with the residents of Second Life.

3pointd is 1 year old too, future predictions for the metaverse?

I am just telling my roadie off because I specifically asked for the blue M&M’s to be removed, but I caught mark wallace’s twitter and subsequent post on the future of the metaverse.
I had a chart I made about 6 years ago with some linkages of technologies and concepts, a sort of mind map for the future. On it I had MMORPG obviously, but I also had 3d printing and Augmented Reality (and a few other things).
The hunt for immersion and escapism is certainly one track that will continue, but the need to add to the world that we already have and connect people and information feels like an important road to take too.
As we have all learned, we talk about virtual worlds, but the people are very real.
We are also still constrained by Qwerty keyboards designed to stop old typewriters jamming, cursor buttons to enable us to move around spreadsheet cells and a mouse to let us resize 2d windows. The commercial games controllers, the wiimote and the ps3 sixaxis are showing that there are other ways to engage with content, we need to re explore the ways to render that content. 3D printers are one very solid way, and real headsup displays and personal awareness projections are another. Many people will look back at the ealry explorations of Virtual Reality and say “but that did not work all those bulky head trackers and data gloves”, but that is no reason to not push forward now that much of the technology has got very much easier and commercial. We also now have killer apps for 3d that are not killing apps such as most of the games have been.
I remember sitting in my room at college, modelling a Lotus Esprit on my Amiga. Creating a flypast movie, a bit of lighting etc. It was an interesting technical and creative challenge, but in some respects there was no point. I could not easily share it. Now we can share anything with almost anyone at any time. There are reasons to share, entertaining, informing and impressing.
So the world has moved on, so we can now bring back all those things tried before and see if they work now, and also invent some new ways of engaging. Its going to be a very interesting year methinks.