Sigh, more negative media =(

here's what I wrote in their comments..

What Coke and other real life companies need to realise is that 'advertising' is the same in SL as it is in real life. People don't visit the HQ but they see signs and displays for Coke in their local area, they see events sponsored by Coke and get free things from Coke to promote the brand. In a nutshell, Coke needs to go to the people not expect them to visit a static display. Coke doesn't need virtual land unless Coke puts in the time to host events, dances, lectures, freebee givaways anything, but on a constant basis...
Want to promote your brand in a virtual world? get a representative to buy advertising space in every mall in SL, find the popular DJ's who broadcast live, pay them a few dollars to put your brand logo behind their avatar.
...and people cheat ALL the time on popularity statistics, it's only a matter of time before a multi-national corp realises how easy it would be to have Coke-Island (for example) become the most 'popular place' in SL, with statistics augmented with "bots". The problem is that corporations have not done their homework in SL. I wonder who will be the most popular softdrink brand in SL? It would cost hmmm 5 thousand US$ to be the most popular softdrink brand in SL. Advertising dollar for advertising dollar it is worth it but you gotta understand how to reach the avatars. The writer of this article does not.

there are SOOO MANY issues here its unbelievable,

The corporates ARE in SL but like said earlier....

If there isnt camping in your sim ... then you WILL be a failure
If there isnt Sex in your sim .... then you WILL be a failure
You cant use RL marketing ploys in a virtual world.

People dont NEED a coke, or a nissan.

The rules of SL are

People like to look good
People are greedy
People like free

If we look at the two demographics in SL all successfull business are aimed towards

SEX - MALE & SHOPPING - FEMALE

So for a RL corporation to come to SL they either need to offer something TRULY amazing which will get somebody there maybe once or twice or they need to sell sex, camping and shopping.
And the REASON the media has gone against SL is becasue Linden Labs dont seem to have a clue what they are doing with regards to business managment, SL has become a welfare state for the money hungry players and sexualy different.

So why is SL broke ...

LL opened the doors hoping that all the free players will become members and want to buy land, so LL started piling out land ... auctions started going for DOUBLE the initial bid price but then nobody bought the split parcels as in reality over 50% of SL arnt really here *lol* so theres lots of empty plots, built up areas are poisened by add farms and people arnt interested in "entertainment" some want SL as a pervy hiding place.

Its a real shame as the actual TALENT in SL is amazing with the likes of Chip, Gurl6, Dollyrock, Natalia etc... These are the folks that LL should be pushing out... to what the Common Man/Woman/Furry/Neko can do in SL. If the media picks up that some pervy little kid fiddler is here then point to the fact that AT LEAST here its virtual and no kids were harmed....can they same the same for the Web or IRC... they cant.
Is the technology holding up ..... no its not, SanFrancisco is on a major fault line.. its power system is crap as seen last night and it seems that a lot of the software engineers are just flopping about from bug to bug with the open source community fixing more than SL themselves....
but ... on a possitive
The fact that the servers in SL have a LOT of work to do.... the content isnt static like WoW, Most avatars especially woman are walking about with 1024 worth of prims just for hair and a skirt...bling scripts are on EVERYTHING and look bloody silly. People teleport for speed NOT because the servers cant talk to each other. Unless the regions get zoned again you will ALWAYS get a little house next to a casino or sex club or add farm. Unfortuantely the Mature/PG tags mean nothing as there is none to police it. There NEEDS to be Lindens in world to help the community with their problems.

These are the days of judgment....
Either SL will dump its "badlands" image or it wont... Corporations will have to learn to attract SL players into buying a product for thier RL selves. the BEST they can hope for is that they will get some exposure but certainly dont expect flocks of people comming to a corporate sim as to be honest .... there isnt anything there worth visiting

Sounds like a more sensible direction for some of the corporations to take. They could sponsor events, put ads in stores, show some presence. I don't have to travel to Coke's HQ to see their products, they need to rethink what they do. They should be organising more inworld activities rather than believing their name alone will do the job.

They do, and it works. Lucent Technologies sponsored the SL America's Cup regatta, and had a big sky disc/blimp/thingie floating over the race course.

It definitely put the corporate name before the folks who attended. At least, I find myself thinking "Lucent Technologies" very often the past couple of days...and I don't even buy anything they sell.

Actually, Ciaran, I was thinking more along the lines of corporate sponsors for sims that have jaw-dropping and/or worthwhile content: Numbakulla, Svarga, the Luna Bliss sims, The Wastelands, Robbie Dingo's lost VanGough sim, etc., etc.. Corporate sponsorship could be in the form of a cash subsidy towards tier & startup costs in return for a few sensibly placed adverts. Sponsorship of that sort would go a long way towards maintaining worthwhile and inspiring content in SL for the benefit of all residents.

Lindal, Lucent make modems.. or at least the chipsets. They're everywhere.

Sensibly placed ads may be an oxymoron for a lot of companies.
/me shudders at the idea of Corporate logos all over the grid.

"Dude you're not supposed to say that out loud"

I've always liked Andrew's candidness.

First, anyone notices that the link url for that article ends inthe word "sheep"? Says a lot for how the writers think of their readers *smirks*

Problem with coke is my Avatar doesn't get thirsty (well, she does, but I have an endless supply of coffee in a self-made cup. Long live the Cult of the Cup!! [_]D )

Besides, I prefer Pepsi.

If Coke would offer something ~worthwhile~ in their SL venture, they might see more traffic/sales. They don't. They are thinking their name alone will carry them here as it does in RL.

Too bad, so sad.

We have three main types of people in SL, imo. The curious; comming to see what this is all about. The escapist; those who use SL to escape RL for a bit in a multitude of ways *raises hand for this group*. And the Geeks; the tech-heads that live, breath and sleep code and hardware.

The curious group is realitively small. Mainly because they get absorbed into one of the other groups fairly fast.

The Escapists are found in huge numbers and I think represent the largest number. However, too bad for RL buisnesses, most of these people are more intrested in items within the world and created by fellow Residents, if not creating the content themselves.

The Geeks (and btw, I don't mean "geek" as an insult), are the ones that come up with marvolous creations/ideas/improvements. They are the scriptors that breath life into the world, the artists that texture and color the world, the animators that move the world, the builders that are the world.

What is Coke in our world?

A name. Nothing more meaning than "air" within SL as niether exist, nor have a purpose.

Andrew did have it right (if he wasn't mis-quoted or the quote wasn't jsut made up. I don't hold much credit for that news site). SL is behind the times in hardware and the physiic engine.

Two years ago, when I joined, there were only 300,000 Residents total. To see more than 3,000 online at a time was during peak times. Now we have millions of Residents with 45, 000 online at peak times. That's a 1500% growth in two years, people. Go ask Coke if they grew that fast, and then tell that "news site" to STFU.

~Jessy

Well, sorta.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/07/unwired.html#more

Mari

Brenda, I wasn't thinking of corporate ad farms, spinners or whatever. I would hope that their advertising agencies would be intelligent enough to tell the difference between what grabs eyeballs and what sends people running away.

<w00t! 1000 posts >

/me would rather her eyeballs were left unmolested.

I've been to the IBM sandbox- it's actually pretty nice if you're not in need of scripting (they turn that off). I thought a nice big well moderated sandbox was a really nice way to get the community on the sim without big logos or sponsored events- it's something your average user is looking for and supports itself in the popularity based search engine. (and it's moderated because IBM employees actually *use* it- just providing a blank area isn't enough) I'd happily visit *any* corporate sim if they offered a nice semi-moderated sandbox. I'll soak up their advertisements happily as payment for the clean space to play.

Instead I find myself most often in a deserted payment-on-file only script enabled sandbox with no more advertisement than the owners shop. Don't get me wrong- it's nice to have so much open space, especially since my linkRez scripts work best in a low pop environment... but I have no particular allegiance to the sandbox I use.

Hell they could probably hire a goon to fly a blimp with advertisements around the mainland and get more brand exposure.... but the number one rule of advertisement should be to put it in the face of the audience.... not expect your audience to come to you without motivation.

I think the silicon holds her breasts up without a bra.


Anyway. the 70 Avatar limit is meaningless untill you actually have so much traffic that people cant get on your island.

Yeah, I know...like TRW makes engine valves and seatbelts for cars, or Dow Corning makes plastics. Everyone uses their stuff. What I meant was, I don't go out looking specifically to buy their products.

Interesting that you mention the worthwhile content as LL have actually started to recognise that promoting worthwhile content is a good marketing tool. I can see issues with sponsoring a whole sim but I agree that this would be a positive way of engaging the platform. Maybe the logo of the company who sponsor the sim could appear in the location bar at the top of the screen or something.

I just think RL companies are missing a trick or two here, they should be engaging residents to help them promote their products, maybe even ask residents to design exclusive inworld marketing or have competitions ...are they allowed to run competitions here?

I have to say that it is early days yet. After the massive population growth, we have a huge number of people in a steep learning curve (like me). Its the same with a company. SL is not TV and too many corps treat it like a 3D magazine or TV ad.

They don't get SL, its their fault and the ones that do will be glad they did...eventually.

SL has to change you for it to work for you.

This also tells me that the 7million population hypefest LL went on is coming back to bite them in the ass.

I've been seeing a lot of articles saying the same things we all said a few months ago about how inaccurate those figures were. Now the companies LL was trying to attract with those numbers are feeling "betrayed" because they had the wrong impression of SL...in part because of the population statistics fudgery but also because they don't get SL overall.

Now you're seeing the same news agencies that were all about how cool, hip and new SL was essentially retracting their statements and pointing at the population numbers as the reason for companies' failure. It doesn't matter if that's true or not, it's what the perception is in general.

One thing I find interesting is how none of these mainstream articles seem to interview anyone that actually KNOWS SHIT about SL. I bet someone already mainstream and "corporate" like Anshe Chung could give a good commentary on why these businesses are failing in SL. Hell I bet even the average "Ruth on the Street" that's been in SL for more than a year could give some telling observations!

But no, all we can do is hope there is a comments section!

It just seems that they're going in with a bizarre strategy.

They seem to think that Second Life is all one big virtual space, so that if they have a build somewhere, that means they are "in" Second Life and will be part of the experience, in the same way that you might have a banner ad on Facebook. The idea that in fact SL is different, that your avatar has to be in a particular place and that you have to choose to go there, and thus have to have a REASON to choose to go there, doesn't seem to be working with them.

The horrible fear, of course, is that this negative publicity is actually a tactical move. Coke, etc, have decided that rather than trying to build appealing content for SL (which is difficult because Coke, as a product, is meaningless in a virtual world), they can do better by using their business weight to producee this negative publicity about Second Life in order to force the Lindens to do something drastic.

I like this idea...seems reasonable and supportive of individual creative effort as well, without clogging up the grid with lame empty builds. I'd prefer the sponsorship to be subtle, though, like upon first TP'ing to the build, we'd see a little billboard saying "This area sponsored by Blah; please see us online at www. blah.com and mention you saw us in SL for a free Blah!" (e.g. Snickers bar or something)

Actually the article is wrong. I have been on on Island SIM (a nightclub) with 100 other avatars (admittedly they were limiting what scripts you could run). However everyone was dancing and nobody was vanishing or suffering extreme lag.

Bottom line the avatar is the limit (under controlled conditions) is 100.


I found this part of the article funny:

"Second Life is made up of thousands of disconnected "regions" (read: processors), most of which remain invisible unless you explicitly search for them by name"

So it's just like the normal Web then. Given the success of the normal web, how is this necessarily a defect ?

Yep, something like that, Oryx, as well as Ciaran's idea of placing the company logo up on the viewer's location bar. It could work if some of the corporates would bite at that idea. Who knows... we might end up with a vampire themed sim sponsored by The Blood Tansfusion Service (dunno what their US equivalent is)! "Come to the blood bank" Who said that worthy need not be fun?

I think performance and stability will have to improve by an order of significant magnitude to freely enable many of the things you can do (in theory) within SL.

One comment I noticed within this thread was that IBM are perhaps trying to develop a software app to allow your avatar to move seamlessly between virtual worlds. That idea may possibly take off if it works

...and not even factually correct. Region != processor

Mari

I've been on one too (even Phil failed to rez and crashed at this event: http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=180396) and the quality of the experience depends on a couple of factors.

1) Is it a Class 5 sim?
2) Are there many AO powered, high-prim, bling-tards around?

A class four sim containing over 30 people at any time, is not a sim I'd like to own land in.

Hehe. If only we had decent search engine technology, rankings might be more fair. One reason I like the idea of a Google buy-out.