I beg your forgiveness if you’ve already seen this but I’m only just discovering it tonight via Facebook. Peter Ludlow called it “beyond viral”, and it’s true. This is the stuff viral videos are made of. (Completely safe for work!)
Bundesliga Fashion
Just… I… here’s the official description:
Germany 1970. The German moderator discuss in the beginning how boring and lame the official looks are and that the fashion and color designers came up with the following outfits to make the game more interesting and colorful. They explain very detailed the colors since at the point many did not have color tv!
Clearly they made my day with the ideas. I just keep cracking up! I have no clue why they dance so madly. latin music dancing models with soccer fashion without shoes. but even Guenther thinks that the trikot needs an update as a service and entertainment for the fans who watch soccer games
Here’s the scoop: yesterday Linden Lab announced the purchase of “Xstreet SL” (known up until a few months ago as “SL Exchange”) and “OnRez”. They’re extremely well put together and easy to navigate web destinations for purchasing virtual goods in Second Life. There’s also a currency exchange function built into Xstreet, so you can use Linden Dollars (L$) or USD in the same account. More adventurous folk actually play the currency market there as well, seeing if they can buy L$ low and sell high.
As business decisions go for Linden Lab, this was fantastic. Up to this point every virtual world on the web except Second Life has had a means to purchase virtual goods in a central marketplace. It has actually been yet another barrier to entry for newcomers when they log in, say “Ok where do I buy stuff?”, and the answer has been “Oh, you kind of look around.”
This sends people to the Classified listings and the search engine. This is a bit like handing new users a phone book and saying: “Here, find a new shirt.” Not exactly an accommodating experience.
Why was it like this in the first place? Well, up until relatively recently, Linden Lab hasn’t been particularly interested in operating Second Life like a business. This has all been a big interesting toy, a gadget that they could tinker with as they pleased. A grand experiment. The entire economy was actually just tacked on at one point.
When it was small, that made a lot of sense. It’s the kind of attitude that encourages rapid innovation, promotes creativity, and results in the creation of fabulous things the world has never seen. This is what brought the first, second and third waves of “residents” to Second Life. Come, experiment, invent.
Unfortunately (or is it?), Second Life just got too damned big for that to work anymore. Small cheap projects can grow organically, but larger projects need a definite direction if they want to continue to grow. Without direction you don’t necessarily fall apart, but you certainly plateau. Organic growth, necessarily, has a max size.
So really, Linden Lab has no choice but to change philosophies. It has investors. It’s actually illegal for them not to seek a profit. It’s grow or die. This means they have to pick a direction and make a move.
New residents are going to love where this all ends up. Integrated shopping tools (which should have been there years ago), well-run shopping websites, and a currency exchange that doesn’t have the glitches people tend to run into on Linden Lab’s website.
However, this is going to make some people really, really angry. Here’s a quick roundup of reasons why:
This takes a service out of the hands of the residents and gives Linden Lab the monopoly. The slogan is “Your World, Your Imagination”. Stop buying resident run projects!
Small in-world stores will probably start to close as it’s not worth it anymore. Malls will follow suit as they rely on small stores. Potential cascade effect on land values, affecting land barons.
People who make their money on Xstreet SL now have to trust Linden Lab to think of their best interests. The company doesn’t exactly have a track record of earning the trust of their customers.
The mere fact that Linden Lab is encouraging 2D shopping in a 3D world is a philosophical switch many will protest simply from an immersionist perspective.
etc…
This, of course, is a lot like the whole Openspace issue: when you make a mistake, people will often object harder to the fix than the original issue. Or, to put it in “philosophical net snob speak”: bugs become features, features become bugs. The virtual goods shopping experience really was broken when you compare it to the competitors. This had to happen.
I don’t envy Mark Kingdon’s position here. Being CEO of Linden Lab at a time like this means making some big changes to balance the books and get this thing running right, and while people have been clamoring for change they’ll always object when you finally give it to them. Good luck Mark, keep a thick skin!
You’ll have no trouble finding a few dozen pundits weighing in, I’m sure. I’ll be sure to link articles in the next Business in Virtual Worlds News Roundup.
Headlines about virtual worlds just from the last week. See the archive page for past weeks.
Funny week for reposts. Last week’s stories about Levono, Multiverse, taxes and prostitutes got a lot of follow-up press this week. I’ve spared you the duplicates, and that leaves us with a very reasonable amount of news to get through. Love it when it works out!
Disclaimer: As with everything on my blog, the opinions expressed here are mine and do not reflect on Clever Zebra, the vBusiness Expo, my friends, my family, my blip channel, any of the other “Jack of All Strange” stuff that I do, etc etc etc… k here we go:
RRR Launches Immersve Tool for Retail Planning and Management
I may delete this… story summary: A new tool is available in that application you can’t try unless you ask permission from the software manufacturers whose track record of virtual world marketing disasters speaks for itself. Um… ya… ? Isn’t this what Qwaq is for?
OpenLife Grid to Adopt Virtual Currency
OpenLife is a grid of independently owned servers running the freely distributed code from Linden Lab based on Second Life. Let’s hear it for ad hoc currency.
How do you picture yourself in a virtual world?
Research from the University of Leicester in collaboration with London South Bank University discovers something about education in virtual worlds. This gets into the nitty-gritty of how avatars are perceived and how conversations are affected as a result.
First Virtual World School
“A school in North Yorkshire, England has become the first to use the virtual world to educate students.” Oh that’s just too funny!
Tomorrow is shaping up to be rather complicated as it’s my wife’s birthday. Happy 30th Sandra! (Poor dear!)
It starts with breakfast and keeps on going from there, so I’m not certain when I’ll get to the Business in Virtual Worlds News Roundup this week. Might have to bump it a day.
Meanwhile, how about some strange and wonderful stuff? Yes? I thought so!
Wikitude AR Travel Guide (Part 1)
This video demonstrates the augmented reality camera view of Wikitude AR on a G1 phone from a beautiful viewpoint looking down on Salzburg.
Wikitude is a mobile travel guide based on Wikipedia and Panoramio. Search landmarks in your surroundings and view them on a map, list, and on an Augmented Reality (AR) camera view: What you see is an annotated landscape, mountain names, landmark descriptions, and interesting stories.
The device displayed is a G1 Google phone, running Android.
Yellow One interviews an Agent after an operation.
Always nice to see that things continue to progress in this arena.
Johnny Lee: Wii Remote hacks
http://www.ted.com Johnny Lee demos his amazing Wii Remote hacks, which transform the $40 game piece into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer. A multi-ovation demo from TED2008.
The YouTube playlist I created a few months ago for this is called “Johnny Lee Is So Cool”. Man, it’s getting so that I barely even remember a time when being a nerd was UNcool… I’m sure my brother in law can remind me.
Mega64: EGM Metaphors
IGN Insider video
http://mega64.com/
ugo more like uggo if you ask me BUT I’M JUST SAYIN
Gee, I wonder what they’re alluding to? I wonder? Gee?
Pigbag – Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag
This was the theme for CityTV’s “The New Music” in the 80s, and it drove me insane for YEARS trying to remember the band’s name and song title. Doesn’t help that there are no lyrics and I only really remembered just tonight that it was the old theme for the show. Those stupid “sing the song into the mic” apps never find it. I’d still be looking for it except that someone had posted an old intro to the show from 1984 and in the comments the title of the song was mentioned. I love you Internet!
Super Mario Rescues The Princess: Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade
Mario finally overcomes his enemy and rescues the woman he has been fighting to save. Too bad the princess is not impressed by what she sees.
From the mind of Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy and American Dad comes a comedy too big for your T.V. Welcome to Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy!
Cuz he’s a funny guy.
Was this a bit random? Yes, yes it was… but my excuse was that it was collectively tells the story of our age and how different it is from life a decade ago. Was some of it a bit weird? Ah, well… depends. You should see what I edited out. I am a Jack-of-all-Strange in my spare time, after all. How do you think I got into virtual worlds in the first place?
