Can Second Life Become Mainstream?

In 2007 Second Life was the darling of the social media landscape.  After IBM purchasing property in the online world and American Apparel opening the first Second Life shop newspapers and blogs devoted numerous columns to it’s current and future success.  In this year the number of people joining the site jumped from 450 000 to 4 million with many new shops from real world brands opening, however since then the interest has been steadily declining and if you visit the American Apparel store now within Second Life there is a big closed sign on the front window (Hansen 2009).

American Apparel in Second Life

Closed for business after just a year

What happened?  And why does marketing seem to be unsuccessful inside this social platform as opposed to Facebook and Twitter, which have become marketing mega giants?

According to Tateru Nino, one of the world’s leading experts on Second Life, the media built the platform up as something it wasn’t and was never meant to be (Marshall 2011).  Then when it failed to become this it was either savaged or shunned by the same channels who had built it up.  While it remains today the largest virtual world it cannot come close to rivalling Facebook and Twitter which boast 800 million and 175 million users respectively.

But let’s look more closely at Second Life itself.  While many experts claim the learning curve of setting up and understanding how to operate within Second Life is a turn off with numerous accounts being setup and very quickly abandoned.  Perhaps though there is a deeper problem here and rather than not understanding Second Life the general population (gamers excluded) don’t understand or accept sims.  Just have a look at fellow blogger Lisa Dooley’s post on the issue.  

While Facebook and Twitter are an extension of the user, creating a sim in these types of world is creating an alternate version of yourself.  People have been doing this for years, through dating sites and other websites, but unlike dating sites, it is not yet considered mainstream.  To make Second Life mainstream Tateru Nino says “Mainstream doesn’t mean most people use it.  It means most people don’t think it’s weird… iTunes? We thought that was weird. Now we don’t” (Marshall 2011).

So is it possible to make a world in which users create avatars and live a virtual life away from reality not weird to the mainstream? 

Society shunned the internet when it was first invented, Parisians shunned the eiffel tower when it was first built, even Melbourniourns have only accepted Federation Square inside the last few years.. So perhaps all Second Life needs is more time.  Then again, perhaps not everything is meant to be accepted and one life may be enough for most of us.

Hansen, L 2009, ‘What Happened To Second Life’, BBC News Magazine, 20 November, viewed 29 January 2013, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8367957.stm>.

Marshall, G 2011, ‘Whatever Happened To Second Life?’, Techradar, 30 September, viewed 29 January 2013, <http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/whatever-happened-to-second-life-1030314>.

Has WikiLeaks Become The Julian Assange Show?

While Bradley Manning faces ‘aiding the enemy’ charges, with the enemy being WikiLeaks, Julian Assange is sitting down for dinner with Lady Gaga.  At the same time a paywall put up on WikiLeaks in order to help fund court cases has been met with great hostility, especially from fellow hacktivism group Anonymous who lashed out at Mr Assange in a twitter discussion (Robles 2012).

This brings up the interesting issue of personality within activism.  What level of individuality is appropriate and what does it take for the public to become disenchanted with a good cause due to inconsistencies in the personalities running it?

If we take, for example the ‘Kony 2012’ campaign…

After releasing what became the most watched video in internet history and receiving over 20 million in donations and merchandise revenue, Invisible Children’s founder, Jason Russell had a meltdown on March 15^th in which he was detained by San Diego police.  While the public didn’t necessarily lose faith in the cause (to make Joseph Kony famous).  They did lose faith in the leaders of the movement resulting in it’s quick downward spiral.  On April 20 instead of waking to posters and stickers covering cities, the world woke to an almost embarrassed silence (Ferrier 2012). 

Similarly…

When WikiLeaks began publishing throughout 2010 and 2011 the name Julian Assange was much less known than the name WikiLeaks.  This allowed for the documents leaked to do all the talking and take centre stage.  Today though, Mr Assange has become a personality and the public opinion of him is shaping the public opinion of WikiLeaks.  These opinions spread quickly through social networks and blogs.  It’s much more fun to write about whether Mr Assange is guilty or not of charges brought against him, about his meetings with various celebrities, or his intentions to create a new political party than it is to explain the complexities and possible ramifications of various leaks.

With activists relying heavily on digital media to widely distribute their campaigns or leaks, it pays to understand how the group mentality of social media can be easily swayed.  Sports people are taught this from the moment they hire an agent and have become wary when posting to twitter or other social networks as backlash can be unrelenting.  While Julian Assange seems to have the public’s interest at heart in his use of social media to spread WikiLeaks some would argue there is too much of his own personality in the campaigns.  His personality may resonate with some, however WikiLeaks minus his intense personality seemed to resonate with most.

Beckett, C 2012, ‘Why Doesn’t Julian Assange Leave WikiLeaks?’, London School of Economics and Political Science, 24 August, viewed 21 January 2013, <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2012/08/24/why-doesnt-julian-assange-leave-wikileaks/>.

Ferrier, A 2012, ‘Kony 2012: The Biggest Social Media Experiment In History Ends In Failure - So Why Is Nobody Talking About It?’, mUmBRELLA, 23 April, viewed 21 January 2013, <http://mumbrella.com.au/kony-2012-the-biggest-social-media-experiment-in-history-ends-in-failure-so-why-is-nobody-talking-about-it-86939>.

Robles, J 2012, ‘WikiLeaks and Anonymous: Will they kiss and make up?’, The Voice Of Russia, 19 October, viewed 20 January 2013, <http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_10_19/WikiLeaks-and-Anonymous-Will-they-kiss-and-make-up/>.

Respect For Politicians Easily Swayed By Social Media

As the saying goes; trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair.  

In the political arena of yesterday when a politician broke the public’s trust the party would convert to damage control, doing all they could to spin the event in a positive outlook for themselves.  This was generally one way traffic and could therefore manipulate the public without strong public opinion to counter it.  Not so anymore, social media has given the public a very loud and oftentimes boisterous voice with which to air their misgivings with political figures.  Nowadays trust is not just broken with an individual but with a large community and those individuals in the community are only a click away from the truth, or the opinion of others who have built up there own amount of trust within the community.

This means for today’s politician to remain relevant it is important to have a clear, concise overview of what they stand for and be able to stick to this path.  It is far too easy for the public to discover inconsistencies in an individuals promises and use social media to show this.  Opposing political parties use of this tactic has flooded websites like Facebook and Twitter with these shortcomings contributing to the cause of a lack of interest in politics today.  It seems the Australian public is becoming either dis-engaged or negative towards our politicians and their various campaigns (Keane 2012).

To counter this lack of interest and involvement politicians need to take a positive outlook when it comes to social media and use it to connect with communities.  Creating a static website is no longer a valid strategy and whatever forms of communication are used they need to be monitored (Howard 2012).  Web 2.0 has setup a system where the public expects to have there concerns addressed when they are raised within a social media context.  By answering the public through this medium and keeping a concise agenda a dedicated politician can earn the respect of the public themselves and hopefully separate themselves from the backstabbing and rumour mill that has caused this disconnect with public and politicians in the first place.

Howard, A 2012, Connecting With Communities, Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government, viewed 13 January 2013, <http://www.acelg.org.au/upload/documents/1345603527_Connecting_with_Communities_ANZSIG-ACELG_August_2012.pdf>

Keane, J 2012, Social Media Protects Democracy, The University of Sydney, viewed 12 January 2013, <http://what-matters.sydney.edu.au/topic/keeping-politics-honest-with-social-media>

Interesting Analysis Of Social Media In 2008 and 2012 Elections

Can Cute Cats Help Your Cause?

What do LOLcats and successful digital activism campaigns have in common?  

While the answer to this is unlikely to feature in any standup comedy routine it could be vital to the success or failure of your cause’s campaign.

Digital activism campaigns are more extensively taking advantage of the internet and how easy it is to spread an idea.  From Greenpeace and World Vision to more controversial political campaigns, these organisations are diversifying their message across multiple platforms.  Bur what happens when a government dislikes the message and tries to shut you down?

This is where promoting your campaigns on Facebook and the like can have huge advantages.  In 2008 Ethan Zuckerman began discussing his ‘cute cat theory’ which states activists should promote their campaigns in the same domain that people post pictures of cute cats.  Why?  Zuckerman claims most internet users use the net and social media for harmless activities.  One of the most popular of these being looking at or posting pictures of cute cats, turtles, or any other creature deemed potentially adorable.  Therefore for a repressive government to block your campaign on these websites they would also have to block access to the cute cat pictures potentially causing much more of an uproar than if they were just blocking your website or local network.  This allows potentially controversial campaigns to continue to exist without threat of closure by an authoritative organisation.

Shutting down a popular public platform can cause a much larger backlash than shutting down a smaller one which means while a website dedicated to a cause with an active community may be beneficial, by moving the discussion to a larger platform any chance of it being taken down is diminished.  A small community of passionate political supporters unfortunately will not cause as big an outcry as a worldwide community of cute cat lovers.

Combining this with social media’s sharing capacity and it seems very appropriate to build a campaign using these mediums.  A facebook page or youtube channel has the ability to greatly widen an audience, and the more people in your audience the more people may decide to involve themselves in change.  While social media is still very new, it is already becoming an increasingly popular tool for activism and one that can potentially change the world.

Heninger, N. (2011) Telex and Ethan Zuckerman's "Cute Cat Theory" of Internet Censorship. Freedom to Tinker, [blog] July 22, Available at: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/nadiah/telex-and-ethan-zuckermans-cute-cat-theory-internet-censorship/ [Accessed: 6 January 2013].

Kessler, S. (2009) Why Social Media Is Reinventing Activism. Mashable, [blog] October 10, Available at: http://mashable.com/2010/10/09/social-media-activism/ [Accessed: 6 January 2013].

Life, Possible 140 Characters At A Time?

What the hell is a tweet and why on earth do we need it?

That simple statement sums up most everybody’s first impressions of Twitter and it’s strict 140 characters or less status’s or updates.  What can I say to all my friends and followers that I don’t already say on Facebook.  And why would anyone want to follow me anyway?  Come to think of it why would I want to follow any of my friends?

Unless you happen to be friends with Nelson Mandela or Richard Branson there doesn’t seem to be much point checking what all your friends are up to every minute of the day.  But this is where people’s opinion of Twitter starts to change, because it’s not only setup for you to follow friends, but more importantly for you to follow the individuals or organisations you find most interesting.  It’s a mini news service from the people you actually care about getting your news from.  By adding these respected and interesting people to your feed you can create a network that includes whomever you would like to include.  How exciting…

The twitter platform, created by Jack Dorsey is now considered the SMS of the internet.  By limiting posts to 140 characters it solves one of the largest problems with the internet.  People’s limited attention span.  With a huge amount of content on the web people’s attention spans are at an all time low and quick bites have become the way to grab your share of this attention.  An average tweet only takes a few seconds to read and can therefore be readily consumed by busy internet users.  By learning to say what you need to convey in under 140 characters the potential amount of people the message can reach will multiply.

Now with easy access to Twitter from mobile devices the platform has become the world’s largest platform for sharing real time data.  This could be in the form of business information, sports scores or emergency procedures during natural disasters.  With businesses taking advantage of this and building large followings branding through Twitter is now one of the premier communication channels for marketing.

As Twitter continues to mature a fine line is beginning to be drawn between what is acceptable and what is too much advertising or self-promoting.  The backlash of the latter can be brutal and damaging to an already established brand.

So as you setup your twitter account and choose who to follow, just remember that these big and popular feeds are being followed by millions and therefore the people on the other end are very careful and methodical about how they use the 140 characters.  Takes a bit of the fun away, but it’s a far cry from everyone’s first impressions of sending each other tweets about that mornings flavour of oatmeal, or whinging about the guy next to you on the train.

McIntyre, D 2009, 'The Future Of Twitter', Time, 29 May, viewed 9 December 2012, <http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1901188_1901207,00.html>

How Your Mobile Device Is Creating Unprecedented Opportunity

It’s 8:15pm and having cleared away dinner I’m sitting down to watch a movie and enjoy my well earned time off… well that’s what I thought until once again I give in to temptation and check the emails on my iPhone.  Three minutes later I’m on a call to a client in China who’s having issues with one of our products with another two emails to be replied to when I finish with the call… Some might think this is not normal behaviour, but for many this is becoming just another average Tuesday night.

But while more and more people are complaining about not having privacy (Sharwood 2012) or stringent working hours, a select group are instead discovering a new kind of freedom not previously possible without the extended connectivity mobile devices and social media networks are offering them.  

Welcome to the world of the remote worker…

Mobile Devices + Undefined Working Hours = Remote Workers

With easy access to the internet and social websites through phones, tablets and laptops the remote worker is able to keep in touch with employers, co-workers and clients from anywhere.  Whether this means being able to stay at home with their children, travel the world while working or living in a cheap economy while working in a richer one these workers are trading defined working hours for freedom of location.  Something that would not have been possible without the immediate connections these mobile devices allow us to have through social media.

With work responsibilities becoming more and more fragmented a recent survey showed 54% of business owners believe the majority of their workforce will be working online by 2017 (Orsini 2012).  Which means mobile devices are only going to become more important and integral to daily tasks.  

But one major issue companies currently have with remote employees is the difficulty in managing an employee you rarely see (Ewbank 2009).  To work around this issue we may see in the near future a shift towards more video style conferencing in mobile devices.  With iPhones facetime feature now working with a WiFi connection (Apple 2012) meetings can be held face-to-face (though still through a screen) on a regular basis, and other devices are quickly following suit with their own conferencing applications.

Is It Time To Change?

Whether you already have the ability to work remotely or are currently sitting in an office booth it may be time to re-evaluate the way in which you communicate with clients.  For me that means being available in the evening to work through problems with overseas clients, but on the other hand I’m now able to watch my nephews karate class on a weekday morning.  With mobile devices continually becoming more evasive in our lives you too may soon be in the position where your working hours become more diverse and unattached to an office environment.  

Now grab your phone, kick back on the couch and go check those emails…

Ewbank, K 2009, ‘Remote Working’, SoftwareKnowHow.info, 2 January, viewed 2 December 2012, <http://www.softwareknowhow.info/Buyers-Guide/Remote-working/103>.

iOS: Using Facetime, Apple, viewed 2 December 2012, <http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4319>.

Orsini, P 2012, ‘The Great Shrinking Office? More Companies Hire Remote Workers: Survey’, CNBC, 14 June, viewed 2 December 2012, <http://www.cnbc.com/id/47815587/The_Great_Shrinking_Office_More_Companies_Hire_Remote_Workers_Survey>.

Sharwood, A 2012, ’10 Ways Smartphones Are Destroying Our Lives’, News.com.au, 19 November, viewed 2 December 2012, <http://www.news.com.au/technology/smartphones/ways-smartphones-are-destroying-our-lives/story-fn6vihic-1226519813913>.