Posts filed under 'Entertainment'
Posted June 13th, 2007 by Scott
I’ve been to quite a few Second Life (SL) events in the past, but haven’t been as impressed as I was with the launch of the Offical Playboy Island last night. I think this event was a great representation of Playboy as a brand rather than the stereotypical affirmations people usually make. What really caught my attention were the greeters who made it a point to greet almost every person that teleported to the event. Xena and Zoey, members of the Playboy team, were dressed as bunnies and welcomed everyone to the event throughout the night, even ushering tours around the facility.
The first level was a mix of mingling and casual shop browsing with the opportunity to buy Playboy branded clothing for both yourself (male & female) as well as your avatar. Surrounding the island, were several tiki bars and even a replica of the infamous “Grotto” (which I didn’t have a chance to go into but heard some stories haha). I did venture to the second level for a while which was definitely where the party was. I was told that the Sim was maxed out at 85 avatars throughout the night. Now you may be saying “85? That’s nothing!” However, when you look at it over the course of several hours, that’s a high number of people continuously engaging with your brand. Not to mention all the people (like myself) who told friends and family about the event.
I want to give props to MSGiro, the developer and manager of Playboy in SL, along with his team at Sentient Services for putting on such a successful event and representing the Playboy brand so well. It’s amazing how far SL has come since my first encounter with it and I feel other large enterprises will soon begin to realize its value. To those of you who still aren’t sure or have tried it and say it doesn’t work, all I have to say is “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Just give SL time and patience and Linden Labs will do the rest.
Posted May 8th, 2007 by Andre
Don’t have a 512Mb video card and 2gigs of RAM? Longing for old school RPGs where the characters were 2D sprites? Compulsive MySpace/Facebook checker? Do you like anything Anime style?
Gaia Online is for you.
Gaia Online is a cross between an old school RPG and a social networking site. You can build a member page, ala MySpace and Facebook, communicate with friends, and meet new people, but at the same time it offers things that other social networks don’t: continuous gameplay.
That’s right, you can do quests, buy, sell, or trade items, build up your avatar with the newest and most awesome items, armor, clothes, and weapons. You can interact with other people in a 2D world, you can fish, gamble, play slots, earn money and a multitude of other prizes to gear up your avatar.
Here’s what they have to say:
“Founded in 2003 by a few comic book fans in a garage, Gaia Online has become the fastest-growing hangout on the web. Millions of teens come to Gaia every month to play games, make friends, and participate in the world’s most active online community.”
Source
Gaia has millions of members and boasts that it has “nearly two million unique visitors… each month” and that “three hundred thousand members log in to Gaia every day, and those members spend an average of two hours on the site daily.”
Two hours, that’s a ton of time when you think about it in context of daily web surfing. How long do you usually spend on Facebook or MySpace once you have been using it for a few months? You check your friend requests, group requests, answer some messages and maybe a wall post or two. Total time? For me, that’s about 15 to 20 minutes a day, every other day, then I’m gone.
What does this graph say? Well, that Gaia Online’s usage by its members per day is growing at 3 times the rate of MySpace’s usage and 300 times that of Facebook.
So what’s the appeal? Well, there is just that much more to do in Gaia Online.
From the site’s about page:
- Online Hangout: Millions of teens spend hours a day on Gaia, exploring, chatting and just hanging out. Whether they’re posting on our forums, participating in special events, or playing our multiplayer mini-games, there’s always something fun to do.
- Endless Customization: Gaia revolves around creative customization. Every member can create their own virtual character and dress it up with over five thousand items: clothes, accessories, pets, masks and just about anything else imaginable.
- Thriving Community: Gaia Online boasts one of the most active forum communities in the world with over one billion posts to date. Members can chat in our online games, post messages on our forums, or send each other private messages.
- Gaia Gold Marketplace: Gaia Online is free to join, and members earn free Gaia Gold for everything they do on the site- posting, playing games, or just hanging out. Members can buy thousands of items in our virtual stores, or they can set up their own shops. Our virtual auction house lets members buy, sell and trade their items– over 50,000 auctions are completed every day!
- Fun and Games: Members can interact, have fun, and earn Gaia Gold with our quick and casual online games. They can also go head-to-head in our Avatar Arena to see who can make the coolest virtual outfit, or test their talents in the Art Arena, where thousands of members vote on the best original artwork.
With a thriving economy, endless items and engaging games, there’s always a reason to stay an extra 10 minutes on Gaia.
Here’s my avatar:
He likes to rock the Scythe, but he has a softer side, shown by his love for his “mimzy,” one of the collector items that were introduced to Gaia Online to promote “The Last Mimzy” movie.
A social network exploding in size is nothing new, but now that they are aging, keeping those same users interested and logging on will be the make-it or break-it for many fledgling networks.
Link to my original post
Posted March 23rd, 2007 by Scott
Does anyone remember the movie Edtv? Well here is a real life Edtv sort of show covering the life of one man and his friends 24/7. I came across Justin.tv and figured I would throw my two cents in. Being in the social media industry, I think this is a perfect example of how companies need to utilize online audiences to promote their products. Justin.tv has only been live for a little over four days now, but the number of sites linking in and the countries they are located in shown by Technorati, depicts how far this campaign has reached so far. I think this is an ingenious way to draw in a crowd, keep their attention and have some fun while doing it.
Check out this Wired News article if you want to see what life on Justin.tv has been like so far.
Posted January 30th, 2007 by Andre
For the last few months, we here at DIG have been reading up on something that has been called a New or Social Media Press Release (nmpr) for short.
So here’s the scoop, as some in the Blog-o-sphere have been ranting: Old Press Releases stink. They don’t work for some blogger-journalists and other new media aficionados who want interactive, media rich content.
Solution: How do you please everyone? Well, let’s not reinvent the wheel. Let’s make it out of rubber instead of wood so that it grips better, has more traction, and lasts longer.
But the wheel is just the content. Everyone agrees that there has to be some amount of it that must be present: contact information, the headline, news facts, quotes, a boilerplate. But then comes the hard part: link? RSS feed? photos, video, multimedia? Del.icio.us? Technorati? DIGG?
If the wheel is the mandatory content, then the car is the extra. So here’s the question: What kind of car do you get?
Examples:
- Ferrari: The nmpr is bright and shiny and gets you from point A to point B with all the bells and whistles (Ajax, tabs, commenting). Hot bloggers love this nmpr, but could we be overcompensating for something?
- Volvo: Take the nmpr onto the safest route. Make it bulky and full of information so no matter what quote the person reading the release finds a crashing need for, there’s an airbag in a video ready to comment. This nmpr should also have a long lasting and enduring presence, maybe a boxy layout, too. This is the nmpr your parents might buy.
- Ford: This nmpr is very fast to build. It may have some sort of assembly line tool that makes it inherently easy to use. Just change the skin and shoot it off for a new client with good results. This nmpr is “blogger tough.”
What I would shoot for (and it’s maybe it’s a little biased since my family owns 3 of them):
- Toyota: Good design, reliable and affordable. This nmpr has the long lasting appeal of a Volvo and some of the bells and whistles of the Ferrari, but they don’t all come standard. This is more of a “mix and match.” It can also learn from Ford: it should be done in a way that creating more of these nmprs is easy and intuitive.
Finding the right mix is what we are all about, and you can be sure that DIG won’t be left behind. On a side note, here’s an idea: what about an organic nmpr? Release an nmpr with all the intended content, but let people who know about the topic and industry build it out for you, let them find those videos that tell the story, the photos that are important, the quotes that they need and let them Wiki it. It could work… Right?
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