Everybody loves fantasy, but nobody likes to be made a fool.
When I blogged about Spiral Moon Media Inc.’s recent viral attempt, I left it about as ambiguous as the company itself left things. Is this for real, or is this a prank? What’s going on here?
The difficulty is that people are going to get angry. If a person sees the video, spends time thinking about how stupid this whole thing is, and then discovers that it was just an ad for Spiral Moon Media, there’s a reaction at that moment. What you WANT is: “Gee, that’s great! I’ll hire them!”
In the case of the “Share The Air” viral campaign, I don’t think that’s the reaction being generated. I try not too swear too much on this blog so I won’t type out what people’s reactions are.
Take, by way of contrast, Opulence, I has it:
Dogs playing poker. Gold grapes. A miniature giraffe. Plus, as an added bonus, an entire hoax website for Sokoblovsky Farms, “Russia’s finest purveyors of petite lap giraffes.”
The website itself has gone viral, and people find it completely awesome whether or not they think it’s real. But… why?
When you “peek behind the curtain” and see the wizard back there, you smile and laugh along with him. He wasn’t trying to trick you. Rather, he was putting on a show for your benefit. This was about you, not him. More to the point:
If you call people stupid, they’ll hate you.
If you call people smart, they’ll love you.
This is true whether they are, in fact, smart or stupid. It’s also true if they actually believed the deception or not.
Also see The North American House Hippo:
Respect the audience at all costs folks.
Hmm. This has to be the cutest blog post I’ve ever done.
I think I’ll have to start doing these general “Stuff You May Have Missed” news roundups on a regular basis again. There’s just too much good stuff out there!
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:
UPCOMING: Monday, March 1st at 2pm Pacific – Anders Grondstedt, President of The Gronstedt Group, as he tells us how Schneider Electric and IBM have found a strategic planning solution in Second Life. Attend the live event here.
I’m seeing signs of the new rush into virtual worlds beginning. Let me give you a few references:
Myst Online is back! Why does this mean anything? Well, it failed twice. The game just isn’t financially viable. The creators, however, just switched the lights on and aren’t even worried about making any money out of it. That’s how cheap it has become to run these things!
Layoffs Won’t Stop Project Wonderland – The latest from a GigaOM affiliate blog about the Wonderland team’s determination, stating that the project has enough momentum to carry it forward without any need for Oracle’s help and a number of companies are taking a serious look. Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing we started seeing just prior to the first dot-com bubble?
These are three specific examples, but in general I can tell you that there’s more virtual worlds news trying to cram itself through my news reader than ever before. I’m also hearing a lot of behind-the-scenes chatter of some huge announcements coming this summer. Brace yourself folks, 2010 is going to be a big year for virtual worlds.
—
Want some hard facts, but don’t want to go through hundreds of articles to find it? I can’t blame you. Here, chew on these PDF links:
This Monday at 2pm PST (GMT -7) the first episode of Virtual Worlds Keynote will be recorded in Second Life. If you’d like to be in the audience you can click here (SLurl) to teleport to the studio. Please note: we intend to keep the live audience small and exclusive, so get there early!
Our presenting guest will be Justin Bovington, CEO of Rivers Run Red. In his talk Supermarket Planograms In 3D Justin is going to give a specific example of how virtual worlds can be used in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and Retail Sector.
I’ll have a full writeup, including the video, linked up shortly after airtime. For now though, to whet your appetite, I’ll let you know about some future talks we’ve lined up:
Real World Expos in Virtual Spaces
Why We Sold Our Real Building and Went Totally Virtual
Golfing With Clients Online
Turning Data Into Information With Google Maps In 3D
How Dell Took the Consumer Electronics Show Online
Getting involved is easy! Just email me at info [at] calebbooker.com.
I find myself adopting the role of debunker and myth-breaker lately. Yet another “nobody takes virtual worlds seriously” message from a tech blogger. (IT guys… sheesh…) I’m not quite ready to make further announcements about Virtual Worlds Keynote, so how to address this?
Tell you what, its been a few days since I hit the news reader. Let’s see what kind of highlights I can pull out:
Design goes digital in Second Life Architecture & Design does a big writeup on the recent unveiling of the National Portrait Gallery’s virtual world rendering.
Phoenix NAP Launches Virtual Data Center Tour Pheonix NAP takes a cue from IBM and creates a sales tour / orientation space to help people understand their product better. See video:
Building a 3D workspace Hypergrid Business summarizes the history of technology and interface design, various studies, and shows how it all points to a virtual environment exceeding the efficiency of a real-world environment.
That’s just four random days, two of which were a Saturday and Sunday. Please please puh-lease can we stop loudly proclaiming “I haven’t been paying attention so it must not exist” in the press now?
