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Does Second Life make my ass look big? |
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Wednesday, 02 May 2007 |
There will be a lot of folks checking out the forum today since we "officially" released the CPT survey data. I thought it would be a fantastic time to revisit a piece from October. It was well into the time frame when exploring brand managers started jumping into second life for their "ultimate" experiential campaigns. Experiential? I wish I had a chance to speak to the brand managers at Nissan, Pontiac, Toyota or any of the other forward-thinking strategists that jumped into the new world because there are so many questions to ask before making the choice to do so.
- Do you understand that setting up a corporate presence in second life is very different than buying outdoor in Los Angeles?
- How many people inside of second life want you there?
- Did you take any time to understand that Second Life is essentially a real world with real people that might really wish that you'd simply disappear?
- Do you know that running a marketing campaign in Second Life is like trying to run a field marketing campaign in Iraq?
- That the odds that you'll get "virtually nuked" are about 50/50?
- If your campaign is meant to connect me with your vehicle in a meaningful and relevant way - to compel purchase - then why does it take 8 seconds for the car to take a left hand turn when I've been pounding my mouse forever?
Those questions are all in good fun, but very real questions that I have been dying to ask. The real deal is that we are months away from web 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0...not to mention TV 2.0, 3.0 etc..etc... When Linden Labs opens up the source code it will be the web equivalent of girls gone wild. The 2-D web will shift to 3-D, and virtual travel agencies will thrive!
Moving right along with my typical A.D.D flow……..
As expected the social networking and virtual world craze has led everybody to go "all in". What's next? Companies that were there first will be bought for silly amounts of money, and then the buyers will realize that the got screwed. Screwed you say? Yes. Mark Cuban style. There is a reason why people bail when they do - It's called the smart money.
Hyper-saturation is here only to be followed by hyper-fragmentation. AHHHHHHHHHHH.. The paradox of choice. Soulless properties like MySpace that have been homogenized down to the lowest common denominator will realize that they can’t be everything to everyone like they thought they could be. New sites will fold.
The media will declare the death of Web 2.0, and then the smart and innovative people will emerge with the right formula. The perfect corner coffee shop formula. Give them what they want.;) They'll select an audience that they want to cater to, and they’ll empower that audience by providing them tools to pursue their passions. Sure, people will maintain their MySpace accounts. But.......let's be real. It's now FOX’sSpace, and the folks that made it what it was have drifted to these smaller passionate communities. It's the difference between Del Taco and the taqueria with your favorite salsa - where ya' gonna go?
And now to our regularly scheduled programming........................
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