ExperienceCurve by Karl Long

As I had reported a while ago Dr Nora Barnes of the University of Massachussettes Dartmouth was doing a survey that was designed to go behind the scenes of business blogging. Well the survey is finished and is now being distributed, and let me tell you it is a must read for any one that wants some data to back up any discussions about social media.

You can download the PDF here

Some nice takeaways were the “4 blog truths”

1. Blogs Take Time and Commitment
2. Blogs Must Be Part of A Plan
3. A Blog is a Conversation
4. Transparency, Authenticity, and Focus are good. Bland is Bad.

and some nice titbits:

Also Steve Rubel has noted it at micropersuasion

(BTW I’m sorry to say that I didn’t fill it out after all my effort promoting it, my bad)

Nokia in Canada is trying out a gapingvoid tactic, send out some free stuff to some bloggers. Sounds like a winning idea to me (I just got an N80 from Nokia for my T-shirt 2.0 blog at tcritic.com).

Anyway, many may lump this into the schwag category, but actually, Nokia is smart sending out camera phones to bloggers, especially if they can get more conversation around the tools, techniques and processes for getting pictures from your camera phone onto a the blog.

I’ve currently got flickr set up to post directly to my blog when it recieves email with a photo attached at a certain secret email address. I send the picture from the phone as an email, and the subject line is used as the title and any text in the body is used as the blog post.

Anyway, here’s the criteria that Nokia Canada laid out for you to get a free 6682 phone (which BTW is a pretty sweet smart phone with a 1 megapixel camera, and joy of joys a lens cover).

Actually not bad criteria (I hope they didn’t really say hits? That’s so Q4 ‘97).

In many ways the criteria they laid out demonstrates a pretty good understanding on Nokia’s part about how even smaller blogs can contibute to influence and spreading an idea.

Tip of the Hat

Just reading Chris Lawers blog, The Empty White Coat, and noticed a story he’s written about a bank in the UK that has a podcast. When I read that the world seemed to go out of focus for a moment, and I got rather dizzy. Anyway, when I recovered I went to check out the site. The bank is First Direct, which is a rather innovative online bank in the UK, here’s a link to their podcast page and here’s the RSS.

I Love the graphic they use, the juxtaposition of the anachronistic old phone on the podcasting page. Brilliant.

Oscar Wilde once said:

And in the realm of social-media and new marketing, I can’t think of a more appropriate mantra. Take for example heateatreview.com which is a collection of reviews of microwave meals, a concept so brilliant and so simple the mind boggles. How many office workers are eating a microwaved lunch everyday? Well FMCG’s need to take notice of these blogs that are becoming the new intermediaries that are gradually gaining more influence in the marketplace.

HeatEatReview.com The Trusted Guide to the Microwaved Meal

There will come a point where some industries will realize they are no longer driving the conversation, but some teenager in nebraska is now the main influencer in their market.

Cheers,

KK

June 23rd will be SecondLifes 3rd birthday, and it finally SecondLife seems to be gaining traction in the marketplace of ideas, and more importantly for its financial viability it’s starting to gain the attention of businesses. Micropersuasion noted yesterday that American Apparel has opened a store there, and in september last year, Wells Fargo bought and island, and created an educational game.

It’s Not A Game

Now Steve is lumping this into the category of Advergaming, as has the Times (UK). On the surface, it may seem similar to Nokia putting billboards in Splinter Cell, but SecondLife is not by any means, a video game. Marketers are clearly still trying to figure out what SecondLife is for, whether it be product placement, or avatar based marketing. Business week, for one, seems to grok that this is beyond advertising:

(as of right now it’s about 250,000 people)

The Co-Creative Business

SecondLife is actually more akin to the internet than it is a game. Buying land in SecondLife is equivalent to buying a web server (buying and island is like buying a huge server), building things with the 3d tools and scripting them with LSL (Linden Scripting Language) is equivalent to building web sites. Like the internet it is an endlessly “co-creative” environment, with a rich, user accessible scripting language etc. What American Apparel have done here is the equivalent of creating a web site. To kind of support the co-creative meme, it turns out the creation of the American Apparel store creation was headed up by a Second Life resident, Amy Weber, and she actually worked with the American Apparel architects for floorplans and layouts (see a related article from Clickable Culture.

The Foundation of Trust

Now, the comparison to the internet holds well up to a point, the major difference is ownership of the infrastructure. The 3d world of SecondLife is owned by one company, and that represents a risk that needs to be considered, especially for companies that want to invest heavily in building amazing destinations. The company right now, lindenlabs is very independent, transparent, and social media centric. They seem genuinely interested in building an open environment with as few controls as possible, demonstrated by this transcript of one of their town hall meetings. My question is how do they guarantee that for the future. Trust is the fundamental foundation of a co-creative relationship, and they need to continue building that.

Usability & Autonomy

As it turns out building things in secondlife is actually amazingly accessible. I built and object and attached some scripting behaviors to it so it would say hi to people that approached it, and i even gave it a price so people could buy it if they were that inclined. You can also integrate somewhat with the real internet because objects/land/locations can have SURLs (SecondLife URLs) that you can put in regular webpages. In fact someone that left a comment on my post about the SecondLife t-shirt give away left a SURL for me to follow.

(I personally think they have got the autonomy part of this down, if anything needs work it’s the usability)

So what next? Well it’s early days with 250,000 members, but it’s worth checking out, basic membership is free so you should check it out. As for me I think I’m going to save up some money, buy some land and build a casino, and hey, no stealing my idea Mr Trump

Doh! Looks like some small time casino’s are already at it, the question is, how long ’till a version of The Sands, or The Belagio (hey, at least the artwork will be cheaper Mr Winn).

Call For Participation

I’m thinking about Second Life as a topic for my podcast “The Co-Creative Business Show”, so if you have any ideas, or would like to participate please drop me a line at karl.long [at] gmail dot com

Thanks,

Karl Berry (my secondlife name)

Resources:

New World Notes - Wagner James Au Reports first hand from Second Life

LSL Scripting wiki

(BTW I’ve borrowed heavily from and I highly recommend CC Chapmans podcast “managing the grey” where he gives a secondlife primer )

SecondLife History Wiki

Related:
Customer Experience for a co-creative business