Okay, this is a great site with a purpose. Cliff Bar has long been known as a great place to work with a decision years ago not to sell and keep quality of life under company control. This seems to have paid off handsomly and now they are working on getting quality of life for the rest of us through environmental activism. This 2 Mile Challenge seems like a good start at getting critical mass around what is typically a "complicated" issue that involved international relations, taxes, science and more.
One of the biggest issues the environmental movement seems to have had is marketing. Here Cliff Bar as simplified this with some facts and actions that are easily at hand. One being that 40% of urban travel is 2 miles or less. This sets a concrete number, puts someting easily attainable (2 miles, not switching to all uncooked foods) and puts up an interactive space with map, blog and so forth to connect all these "2 mile heroes".
Will this work? I don't know. I am sure there are other things to tie this campaign togther and other best practices out there. Let me know your thoughts.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Virtual Worlds Expo: Wrap-Up
Back home now, with the luxury of a little time to think about it, these are my main takeaways from Virtual Worlds Expo:
Interoperability/open standards: Everyone was talking about this, in all it's iterations:
* A shift from "walled gardens" to interoperability, which could mean the ability to move your avatar and/or identity from one world to another, from a virtual world to a traditional website and back again, from virtual world to mobile phone and back
* Making virtual worlds work like the Web
* Having a common client for virtual worlds
* Having greater accessibility to your online and in-world friends from any world, site, or phone
Measurement and research:
Who's there? What drives them? What keeps them coming back? There was a lot of discussion about the "early adopters" in virtual worlds, although to mind this is wrong -- the early adopter are just *now* getting there. According to the original Everett Rogers adoption curve, it's the Innovators who are currently best represented in virtual worlds populations.
Some thought-provoking numbers were put forward by those on the Demographics panel:
* Michael Cai from Parks Research had numbers (from a 9,500 user study) on what people do less of in the real world while they participate in virtual worlds. The runaway winner was "don't watch as much TV" with 60% -- implications for advertising and brands are very clear there. The number I found thought-provoking as well as amusing was "16% don't know what they do less of" which seems to indicate that a pretty large percentage of people just don't really know how they spend their time!
* Mary Ellen Gordon of Market Truths had some interesting research results (though from a small sample) that indicate Second Life is a good place for a brand, if done right: 57% of respondents considered buying a real-life product as a result of a recommendation they received from someone in Second Life (which actually speaks as much to the power of word of mouth as it does to the value of using Second Life as a marketing and branding platform). Additionally, her research showed that:
55% recommended a real-life product to someone they were chatting to in Second Life.
25% have gone to look at a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
9% have purchased a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
8% have bought a real-life product in Second Life.
Segmentation (or not) between entertainment and "serious" purposes
Across a number of different panels, but particularly in the Community and Customer Service panel, there was discussion of just what it is that "drives" virtual worlds, that makes them so compelling. The aggregate answer seems to be that virtual worlds' growth is fueled by community and narrative (or story). This would seem to suggest what at least panelist Raph Koster of Areae said out loud, which is that there is no real differentiation in virtual worlds between entertainment and "serious purposes". This is actually also true in the non-virtual world as well, but the virtual world, like gaming, is perhaps the first platform that started out that way.
To read all Awareness Is Everything posts on the Virtual World Expo, go here.
This link goes to a Virtual Worlds News wrap-up post that links out to a ton of conference coverage, including ours.
Interoperability/open standards: Everyone was talking about this, in all it's iterations:
* A shift from "walled gardens" to interoperability, which could mean the ability to move your avatar and/or identity from one world to another, from a virtual world to a traditional website and back again, from virtual world to mobile phone and back
* Making virtual worlds work like the Web
* Having a common client for virtual worlds
* Having greater accessibility to your online and in-world friends from any world, site, or phone
Measurement and research:
Who's there? What drives them? What keeps them coming back? There was a lot of discussion about the "early adopters" in virtual worlds, although to mind this is wrong -- the early adopter are just *now* getting there. According to the original Everett Rogers adoption curve, it's the Innovators who are currently best represented in virtual worlds populations.
Some thought-provoking numbers were put forward by those on the Demographics panel:
* Michael Cai from Parks Research had numbers (from a 9,500 user study) on what people do less of in the real world while they participate in virtual worlds. The runaway winner was "don't watch as much TV" with 60% -- implications for advertising and brands are very clear there. The number I found thought-provoking as well as amusing was "16% don't know what they do less of" which seems to indicate that a pretty large percentage of people just don't really know how they spend their time!
* Mary Ellen Gordon of Market Truths had some interesting research results (though from a small sample) that indicate Second Life is a good place for a brand, if done right: 57% of respondents considered buying a real-life product as a result of a recommendation they received from someone in Second Life (which actually speaks as much to the power of word of mouth as it does to the value of using Second Life as a marketing and branding platform). Additionally, her research showed that:
55% recommended a real-life product to someone they were chatting to in Second Life.
25% have gone to look at a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
9% have purchased a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
8% have bought a real-life product in Second Life.
Segmentation (or not) between entertainment and "serious" purposes
Across a number of different panels, but particularly in the Community and Customer Service panel, there was discussion of just what it is that "drives" virtual worlds, that makes them so compelling. The aggregate answer seems to be that virtual worlds' growth is fueled by community and narrative (or story). This would seem to suggest what at least panelist Raph Koster of Areae said out loud, which is that there is no real differentiation in virtual worlds between entertainment and "serious purposes". This is actually also true in the non-virtual world as well, but the virtual world, like gaming, is perhaps the first platform that started out that way.
To read all Awareness Is Everything posts on the Virtual World Expo, go here.
This link goes to a Virtual Worlds News wrap-up post that links out to a ton of conference coverage, including ours.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Virtual Worlds Expo: Visionary Panel, Where the platforms are going next
This was, quite fittingly, the last thing I did at the Virtual Worlds Expo, due to travel arrangements, though there were three more sessions after this. This one was in the Business Strategy and Investment track.
This was a full panel moderated by Mark Wallace, a blogger at 3pointd.com and featuring Corey Bridges, co-founder of Multiverse; Chris Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva; Stephen Lawler, general manager of Microsoft's Virtual Earth; Mike Wilson of Makena, Hui Xu, founder and CEO of HiPiHi (speaking through an interpreter); and Raph Koster, president of Areae.
The moderator began with a question: What needs are not being filled by the virtual worlds platforms today?
Corey: Web integration....integration with Flash, streaming media, the sort of thing we take for granted on the Web....having the same kind of connectivity and functionality in virtual worlds that we would expect on any website. We will see a lot of integration with social networks...social networking integration over the next year will propel virtual worlds into the mainstream, when until it's been video games that have propelled virtual worlds adoption.
Raph: Virtual worlds today work like Prodigy or AOL in the early 90s....we are seeing the biggest shift in the virtual worlds technology architecture that we've seen in the last 30 years...peer-to-peer growth, seeing stuff living straight on the Web...we're seeing a whole bunch of exploration...we're out to do something really radical and make it work like the Web top to bottom. It will be interesting to see what approaches shake out over the next few years. I don't think there's one approach.
Mark: What's interesting to think about is what is it going to take before we see some of these things converge, before we see interoperability?
Corey: A common client, accessibility from one client on the users machine. Consumers are going to demand that more and more.
Chris: For virtual worlds we are experimenting very heavily with social networking as a key component. There's the story of someone who goes into Everquest every night but hates the game. She's there because that's where her friends are. Virtual worlds are the content of connecting with your friends and doing things together. We can learn a lot from the social networks. The closer you bring your real friends in, the better. Two areas for improvement are usability and the mobile space. Think about when do you access the Internet -- my phone's always with me, but I don't take my laptop when I go out. Mobile longterm is a core component of these virtual worlds.
Mike: Looking at gaming...there's compelling content in MMOGs like Everquest and World of Warcraft....if you want to look for a compelling model to follow for getting people into virtual worlds and using them, look at games....also in terms of platforms, with games we started with PCs and moved to Flash and mobile....virtual worlds will move the same.
Mark: How open will your social network be? Will Google kill everything? Do you see virtual worlds running into this same debate?
Mike: We should find ways to expose your virtual identity to virtual worlds and we are doing that with there.com. I think people are overestimating -- I may not want to share everything, to let everyone know that I am a girl, etc. It's fine to talk about shared ID, bit when it's your ID, it's different.
Corey: It's about control, you control how you share your identity, what you give out. There will always be some worlds where you role-play and want to be someone else. People are going to end up having multiple avatars.
Raph: Mainstream is comfortable with multiple IDs -- they think it's fun, especially younger people. It's not a question of openness....identity is a closing kind of word and not an opening kind of word....it's a Prodigy kind of question, not a Web kind of question...on the Web we see many IDs, some federated on keychain systems.
Stephen: Not specifically coming from gaming and entertainment, for something to go broadly mainstream is relative to the number your looking at...280 million people are using IM, 400 million people are using Live ID...even the numbers that we think are large as very small. In order to bring this out to the masses we think about the Web going 3D, like going from ASCII to DOS to Windows...going to a familiar 3D world on a human scale that we use every day. It's important for advertising, 3D search, where you can explore and you have the context...social search. It's going to be an exciting transition.
Raph: 3D is a red herring.
Corey: I agree with you but there's a part you're missing.
Mark: Let's save that path...broaden the perspective...when talking about making virtual worlds more like the Web, we talk about it from a very Western-centric point of view -- the ID Federation is illegal in Europe. How do users in the East consider these issues of identity management?
Hui Xu (through interpreter): This is the first time I come to this conference and I see very few Chinese or people from other races. It's my wish to see greater representation of cultures and people from all over the world. We should let people from everywhere come together in the space. The greatest excitement comes from users interacting with small proportions of foreign users....15% of HiPiHi traffic is coming from overseas...we've created a rich experience for all users. About ID and interoperability: He believes in human rights, the rights of users within virtual worlds...commonness should be left to user communities. It extends to the content issue... how we should manage content is up in the air, the management structures and frameworks should engage in open dialogue with users in virtual worlds, not just developers. An inclination toward interoperability is more toward having a 3rd-party exchange, a platform for virtual worlds in existence today...there needs to be a common standard, a dedicated provider that looks at each virtual world and specializes in making sure these virtual worlds should start talking. The guiding philosophy is returning power and convenience to the users so they can manage their content and lifestyles across virtual worlds. Broadband penetration is increasing in many countries around the world, in South American and the Middle East...I don't know whether browser-based worlds or clients will be the future in these areas.
Mark: What about the evolution of the business model...we've recently seen business models that began in the East gain traction in the US and Europe. Will we converge on one business model or remain fractured?
Corey: Everyone thought the Time Warner sub-based model would be the model for the Web, but it's ad and web-based. We will see a lot of ad-subsidized worlds.
Chris: Virtual worlds offer a unique opportunity, we will see more and more of the worlds being opened up in a free trial or free overall, and to upgrade you have to buy things....virtual worlds offer the opportunity to buy real estate, clothes, etc...we are seeing worlds with subscription models for those who want to have a VIP level...there's growing demand for people to buy something tangible. Like gift cards -- kids are now handing out gift cards to each other at birthday parties. A huge percentage of iTunes revenue comes from gift cards that you see in retail outlets. So I see huge tie-in with retail....look at a blended model, retail, subscription, combined models.
Stephen: Local search advertising model -- $15 billion moving into digital community over 5 years....offering in-game advertising. A transactional model.
Mike: I see four rivers of revenue -- subscription, in-game currency micropayments, sponsorships, and links to e-commerce or white labeling. We do not yet understand how to charge for advertising in virtual worlds. And the world can trigger advertising based on what's said and done. How do i charge for that ad impression? How do you study it and tell advertisers how to use it the best?
Chris: It's CPA, cost per action....
Stephen: CPA is what we are looking at....if there's multiple advertising value-add, how do you value that once they click? how does it build up to action?
Hui Xu (through interpreter): We see real a mirror between virtual worlds economics and real world economics...the first wave in virtual worlds economics has been about sales....land sales, etc. The 2nd and 3rd waves are coming -- 2nd wave is about production in the real world, and in virtual worlds. The 2nd wave is also about goods creation, how can we go about providing an infrastructure for virtual goods.The 3rd wave about services. New sevice models in the real world have reached mature stage, but services are very nascent in virtual economies. In China, a big market in 2nd wave -- trading of emoticons, wallpapers, etc in qq IM services. We are seeing innovation in Japan in the services industry, banking in mobile phones, CyWorld in korea .... in Asia users are used to purchasing goods over the Internet and digital platforms like mobile phone.
Mark: My cousins from Queens fly around in Microsoft's Virtual Earth for fun in the evenings. What do you think about mirror worlds and their role in entertainment?
Stephen: MS Virtual Earth is ranked in top 10 websites to waste your time on, a nice backwards compliment, along with MySpace and Facebook....what kind of utility do they provide? The media has gone from newspapers, to radio, to tv...and we wanted all the same things, sports, what happened, local news, international news. We took a huge step back to the newspaper when we went to the Internet so now we can move back up when you take a combination of video-rich real-world interactivity.
Mike: It's interesting, I can imagine watching on the evening news, a bank robbery occurring...and we can get reenactments now from bloggers, but what is the authoritative version.
Raph: These are blind spots -- the assumption that this may not be the same industry. There is no segmentation between entertainment and serious purposes. We are in the bookstore business, not the fiction aisle or non-fiction aisle business. Media accrete, they do not replace. The idea that the entire Web will be stuffed into 3D is ridiculous. What's going to happen is a diversity of interfaces and using the appropriate interface for what needs/wants to be done. Blogging in 3D is dumb. The place we're going to move to will be representation-agnostic, will show up in different ways depending on the user need. The value in virtual worlds resides in servers....the clients are windows and we will have a lot of windows, including running around slaying dagons in downtown Palo Alto using your cell phone....3D as the holy grail is a red herring. Right now even today when we look at the largest user environment in user numbers and concurrency, 2D websites are on the list... 3D is hard for kids, hard for older people.
Stephen: 3D going to scale out way beyond gaming, but won't replace every UI out there. The point is it's going to be big. All the studies we have seen is that the reason people like 3D shopipng is people can visually make correlations. 3D is difficult to navigate, but yet more intuitive. People have investment in real world 3D, while they don't in forms like spreadsheets. Interiors are best represented in 3D, so are urban corridors. There's no 2D representation of this room than would represent it. Yet the brain can parse 3D in a very intelligent manner. When you scale in to 2half-D, bird's eye view, it gets easier.
Raph: It's about what the user wants and needs. There are a ton of useful apps in 3D, but let's not forget all the other devices and mechanisms out there.
Audience question: The Wii brought a new kind of controller that expanded the game audience to more casual users....do you foresee any similar type of new interface for virtual worlds?
Stephen: Microsoft is constantly looking at different mechanisms.
Chris: Some of our designers use a 3D mouse to develop some of the content....we are a software creator....so until a Wii for the PC becomes more prominent we won't be able to drive it....it needs to be hardware and software working together. We will see more integration between more natural human movement...the Wii is a precursor to what's coming. If you could buy a mocap for $200 and run around in the worlds I think we'd have a big hit tomorrow.
Corey: Multiverse is built to take into account different input devices. I've seen prototypes using Wii interfaces in Multiverse, and different output devices as well, like heads-up rigs. If a platform is built well it will take these things into account so it will be ready when the application is appropriate for it.
Chris: You'll get a more human connection when you are able to use a mocap.
Audience: How rich an experience does the mobile user want?
Raph: It's application dependent. There are virtual worlds apps where someone just wants an auction update, not necessarily to see the avatars. Mobile is a bit of a tangled mess, different standards, a huge variety of handsets. It will take awhile to sort that stuff out, and you have to structure your platform to be as agnostic as possible.
Chris: We will see mobile evolve. The market share is not there for a lot of the really high-end apps, but there are a lot of low-end apps that would be valuable for our community, and should make those available first.
Stephen: We're not trying to reproduce 3D on the small screen at all....we need things like, how can I help myself navigate where I'm going, is there anything available at a better price nearby, etc.
Audience question: Is it like the Las Vegas monorail story -- for virtual worlds that have a lot of users, open standards will be like an exit, while for smaller ones it will be like an entrance. So bigger ones will not adopt open standards.
Mike: If open standards succeed....if someone tries to jail their users, they'll get out anyway and may not come back. There's never really a barrier for anyone to leave a world.
Corey: This is a growing new medium, and there's room for everyone to move around....everyone should embrace those open standards. That's what the users are going to want, that's what we've seen on the Web....walled gardens are not tenable, consumers are smart enough and know they can put pressure. Anyone who's smart is building that in right from the beginning. People who are not are cutting themselves off from growth.
Mike: It worked pretty well for eBay.
Chris: Standards is a pretty broad term....there's a lot of great languages and standards out there (python, etc). Being able to move avatar from one world to another is not a big Kaneva user request. If it becomes one, we will need to do it. You have to recreate your account on eBay, Amazon, etc., and I don't see a lot of demand for that to be different.
Audience question: How do virtual worlds overcome human language differences?
Raph: The first world to do that was in 1998 through machine translation)...there wasn't a lot of demand for it. Reducing the balkanization of virtual worlds and bringing cultures together are one of the things that viritual worlds can accomplish. But people pull apart. International warfare happens a lot in virtual worlds.
Hui Xu (through interpreter): HiPiHi is currently in Mandarin Chinese...when foreigners enter the world, there is a volunteer team that's self-organizing, that welcome foreigners into the world and provides translation. There's no quick fix. Big companies like Google are trying to fix that problem. The focus now is on what we can do, which is to enable the user communities to be welcoming to people from different cultures. Chinese HiPiHi users are beginning to learn English and vice versa, which we think is of value.
This was a full panel moderated by Mark Wallace, a blogger at 3pointd.com and featuring Corey Bridges, co-founder of Multiverse; Chris Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva; Stephen Lawler, general manager of Microsoft's Virtual Earth; Mike Wilson of Makena, Hui Xu, founder and CEO of HiPiHi (speaking through an interpreter); and Raph Koster, president of Areae.
The moderator began with a question: What needs are not being filled by the virtual worlds platforms today?
Corey: Web integration....integration with Flash, streaming media, the sort of thing we take for granted on the Web....having the same kind of connectivity and functionality in virtual worlds that we would expect on any website. We will see a lot of integration with social networks...social networking integration over the next year will propel virtual worlds into the mainstream, when until it's been video games that have propelled virtual worlds adoption.
Raph: Virtual worlds today work like Prodigy or AOL in the early 90s....we are seeing the biggest shift in the virtual worlds technology architecture that we've seen in the last 30 years...peer-to-peer growth, seeing stuff living straight on the Web...we're seeing a whole bunch of exploration...we're out to do something really radical and make it work like the Web top to bottom. It will be interesting to see what approaches shake out over the next few years. I don't think there's one approach.
Mark: What's interesting to think about is what is it going to take before we see some of these things converge, before we see interoperability?
Corey: A common client, accessibility from one client on the users machine. Consumers are going to demand that more and more.
Chris: For virtual worlds we are experimenting very heavily with social networking as a key component. There's the story of someone who goes into Everquest every night but hates the game. She's there because that's where her friends are. Virtual worlds are the content of connecting with your friends and doing things together. We can learn a lot from the social networks. The closer you bring your real friends in, the better. Two areas for improvement are usability and the mobile space. Think about when do you access the Internet -- my phone's always with me, but I don't take my laptop when I go out. Mobile longterm is a core component of these virtual worlds.
Mike: Looking at gaming...there's compelling content in MMOGs like Everquest and World of Warcraft....if you want to look for a compelling model to follow for getting people into virtual worlds and using them, look at games....also in terms of platforms, with games we started with PCs and moved to Flash and mobile....virtual worlds will move the same.
Mark: How open will your social network be? Will Google kill everything? Do you see virtual worlds running into this same debate?
Mike: We should find ways to expose your virtual identity to virtual worlds and we are doing that with there.com. I think people are overestimating -- I may not want to share everything, to let everyone know that I am a girl, etc. It's fine to talk about shared ID, bit when it's your ID, it's different.
Corey: It's about control, you control how you share your identity, what you give out. There will always be some worlds where you role-play and want to be someone else. People are going to end up having multiple avatars.
Raph: Mainstream is comfortable with multiple IDs -- they think it's fun, especially younger people. It's not a question of openness....identity is a closing kind of word and not an opening kind of word....it's a Prodigy kind of question, not a Web kind of question...on the Web we see many IDs, some federated on keychain systems.
Stephen: Not specifically coming from gaming and entertainment, for something to go broadly mainstream is relative to the number your looking at...280 million people are using IM, 400 million people are using Live ID...even the numbers that we think are large as very small. In order to bring this out to the masses we think about the Web going 3D, like going from ASCII to DOS to Windows...going to a familiar 3D world on a human scale that we use every day. It's important for advertising, 3D search, where you can explore and you have the context...social search. It's going to be an exciting transition.
Raph: 3D is a red herring.
Corey: I agree with you but there's a part you're missing.
Mark: Let's save that path...broaden the perspective...when talking about making virtual worlds more like the Web, we talk about it from a very Western-centric point of view -- the ID Federation is illegal in Europe. How do users in the East consider these issues of identity management?
Hui Xu (through interpreter): This is the first time I come to this conference and I see very few Chinese or people from other races. It's my wish to see greater representation of cultures and people from all over the world. We should let people from everywhere come together in the space. The greatest excitement comes from users interacting with small proportions of foreign users....15% of HiPiHi traffic is coming from overseas...we've created a rich experience for all users. About ID and interoperability: He believes in human rights, the rights of users within virtual worlds...commonness should be left to user communities. It extends to the content issue... how we should manage content is up in the air, the management structures and frameworks should engage in open dialogue with users in virtual worlds, not just developers. An inclination toward interoperability is more toward having a 3rd-party exchange, a platform for virtual worlds in existence today...there needs to be a common standard, a dedicated provider that looks at each virtual world and specializes in making sure these virtual worlds should start talking. The guiding philosophy is returning power and convenience to the users so they can manage their content and lifestyles across virtual worlds. Broadband penetration is increasing in many countries around the world, in South American and the Middle East...I don't know whether browser-based worlds or clients will be the future in these areas.
Mark: What about the evolution of the business model...we've recently seen business models that began in the East gain traction in the US and Europe. Will we converge on one business model or remain fractured?
Corey: Everyone thought the Time Warner sub-based model would be the model for the Web, but it's ad and web-based. We will see a lot of ad-subsidized worlds.
Chris: Virtual worlds offer a unique opportunity, we will see more and more of the worlds being opened up in a free trial or free overall, and to upgrade you have to buy things....virtual worlds offer the opportunity to buy real estate, clothes, etc...we are seeing worlds with subscription models for those who want to have a VIP level...there's growing demand for people to buy something tangible. Like gift cards -- kids are now handing out gift cards to each other at birthday parties. A huge percentage of iTunes revenue comes from gift cards that you see in retail outlets. So I see huge tie-in with retail....look at a blended model, retail, subscription, combined models.
Stephen: Local search advertising model -- $15 billion moving into digital community over 5 years....offering in-game advertising. A transactional model.
Mike: I see four rivers of revenue -- subscription, in-game currency micropayments, sponsorships, and links to e-commerce or white labeling. We do not yet understand how to charge for advertising in virtual worlds. And the world can trigger advertising based on what's said and done. How do i charge for that ad impression? How do you study it and tell advertisers how to use it the best?
Chris: It's CPA, cost per action....
Stephen: CPA is what we are looking at....if there's multiple advertising value-add, how do you value that once they click? how does it build up to action?
Hui Xu (through interpreter): We see real a mirror between virtual worlds economics and real world economics...the first wave in virtual worlds economics has been about sales....land sales, etc. The 2nd and 3rd waves are coming -- 2nd wave is about production in the real world, and in virtual worlds. The 2nd wave is also about goods creation, how can we go about providing an infrastructure for virtual goods.The 3rd wave about services. New sevice models in the real world have reached mature stage, but services are very nascent in virtual economies. In China, a big market in 2nd wave -- trading of emoticons, wallpapers, etc in qq IM services. We are seeing innovation in Japan in the services industry, banking in mobile phones, CyWorld in korea .... in Asia users are used to purchasing goods over the Internet and digital platforms like mobile phone.
Mark: My cousins from Queens fly around in Microsoft's Virtual Earth for fun in the evenings. What do you think about mirror worlds and their role in entertainment?
Stephen: MS Virtual Earth is ranked in top 10 websites to waste your time on, a nice backwards compliment, along with MySpace and Facebook....what kind of utility do they provide? The media has gone from newspapers, to radio, to tv...and we wanted all the same things, sports, what happened, local news, international news. We took a huge step back to the newspaper when we went to the Internet so now we can move back up when you take a combination of video-rich real-world interactivity.
Mike: It's interesting, I can imagine watching on the evening news, a bank robbery occurring...and we can get reenactments now from bloggers, but what is the authoritative version.
Raph: These are blind spots -- the assumption that this may not be the same industry. There is no segmentation between entertainment and serious purposes. We are in the bookstore business, not the fiction aisle or non-fiction aisle business. Media accrete, they do not replace. The idea that the entire Web will be stuffed into 3D is ridiculous. What's going to happen is a diversity of interfaces and using the appropriate interface for what needs/wants to be done. Blogging in 3D is dumb. The place we're going to move to will be representation-agnostic, will show up in different ways depending on the user need. The value in virtual worlds resides in servers....the clients are windows and we will have a lot of windows, including running around slaying dagons in downtown Palo Alto using your cell phone....3D as the holy grail is a red herring. Right now even today when we look at the largest user environment in user numbers and concurrency, 2D websites are on the list... 3D is hard for kids, hard for older people.
Stephen: 3D going to scale out way beyond gaming, but won't replace every UI out there. The point is it's going to be big. All the studies we have seen is that the reason people like 3D shopipng is people can visually make correlations. 3D is difficult to navigate, but yet more intuitive. People have investment in real world 3D, while they don't in forms like spreadsheets. Interiors are best represented in 3D, so are urban corridors. There's no 2D representation of this room than would represent it. Yet the brain can parse 3D in a very intelligent manner. When you scale in to 2half-D, bird's eye view, it gets easier.
Raph: It's about what the user wants and needs. There are a ton of useful apps in 3D, but let's not forget all the other devices and mechanisms out there.
Audience question: The Wii brought a new kind of controller that expanded the game audience to more casual users....do you foresee any similar type of new interface for virtual worlds?
Stephen: Microsoft is constantly looking at different mechanisms.
Chris: Some of our designers use a 3D mouse to develop some of the content....we are a software creator....so until a Wii for the PC becomes more prominent we won't be able to drive it....it needs to be hardware and software working together. We will see more integration between more natural human movement...the Wii is a precursor to what's coming. If you could buy a mocap for $200 and run around in the worlds I think we'd have a big hit tomorrow.
Corey: Multiverse is built to take into account different input devices. I've seen prototypes using Wii interfaces in Multiverse, and different output devices as well, like heads-up rigs. If a platform is built well it will take these things into account so it will be ready when the application is appropriate for it.
Chris: You'll get a more human connection when you are able to use a mocap.
Audience: How rich an experience does the mobile user want?
Raph: It's application dependent. There are virtual worlds apps where someone just wants an auction update, not necessarily to see the avatars. Mobile is a bit of a tangled mess, different standards, a huge variety of handsets. It will take awhile to sort that stuff out, and you have to structure your platform to be as agnostic as possible.
Chris: We will see mobile evolve. The market share is not there for a lot of the really high-end apps, but there are a lot of low-end apps that would be valuable for our community, and should make those available first.
Stephen: We're not trying to reproduce 3D on the small screen at all....we need things like, how can I help myself navigate where I'm going, is there anything available at a better price nearby, etc.
Audience question: Is it like the Las Vegas monorail story -- for virtual worlds that have a lot of users, open standards will be like an exit, while for smaller ones it will be like an entrance. So bigger ones will not adopt open standards.
Mike: If open standards succeed....if someone tries to jail their users, they'll get out anyway and may not come back. There's never really a barrier for anyone to leave a world.
Corey: This is a growing new medium, and there's room for everyone to move around....everyone should embrace those open standards. That's what the users are going to want, that's what we've seen on the Web....walled gardens are not tenable, consumers are smart enough and know they can put pressure. Anyone who's smart is building that in right from the beginning. People who are not are cutting themselves off from growth.
Mike: It worked pretty well for eBay.
Chris: Standards is a pretty broad term....there's a lot of great languages and standards out there (python, etc). Being able to move avatar from one world to another is not a big Kaneva user request. If it becomes one, we will need to do it. You have to recreate your account on eBay, Amazon, etc., and I don't see a lot of demand for that to be different.
Audience question: How do virtual worlds overcome human language differences?
Raph: The first world to do that was in 1998 through machine translation)...there wasn't a lot of demand for it. Reducing the balkanization of virtual worlds and bringing cultures together are one of the things that viritual worlds can accomplish. But people pull apart. International warfare happens a lot in virtual worlds.
Hui Xu (through interpreter): HiPiHi is currently in Mandarin Chinese...when foreigners enter the world, there is a volunteer team that's self-organizing, that welcome foreigners into the world and provides translation. There's no quick fix. Big companies like Google are trying to fix that problem. The focus now is on what we can do, which is to enable the user communities to be welcoming to people from different cultures. Chinese HiPiHi users are beginning to learn English and vice versa, which we think is of value.
Virtual Worlds Expo Christian Renaud Keynote: The Age of the Avatar
This was something of a two-part keynote -- a long scene-setting introduction by Reuben Steiger of Millions of Us, then the "official" keynote by Christian Renaud of Cisco.
First, Steiger:
Virtual worlds -- that term sounds isolated, niche-y, and doesn't do justice to the profound nature of what's going on...I believe it's a much larger societal movement that's very wedded to what's going on online.
Avatar = in Hindu lore, an early form of a god.....today, = an online persona you take. What I love is that it's sort of an inversion...traditionally meaning going from an ethereal place to a prosaic one, and today meaning going from a prosaic place to a more ethereal one. Avatars are about giving a face to an online identity and to facilitate face-to-face interactions in an online community.
Some numbers: Only 25% of US residents trust conventional advertising (Yankelovich 2007), while 31% of consumer internet usage is in online communities (Comscore, 2007). Second Life is the virtual world that's most talked about, but majority of the market is not SL only, it's web-based and youth-focused, about 100 million users.
Predictions: By the end of 2008, social networks will become avatarized; virtual worlds will become more like social networks; television tie-ins will increase for virtual worlds.
Philo Farnsworth invented the electronic TV in 1928, in a building that is across the street from where Linden Lab's offices are today.
Through the advent of TV our society transformed, and that informs the way virtual worlds may transform society. Autos changed the way we formed communities. Community has been embedded in our lives, but modern marvels have eroded the bonds of community. This makes people profoundly sad. Virtual worlds offer a way to get that back.
Aside from me: OK, while I don't disagree with much that he said, this guy is the poster child for virtual worlds koolaid drinkers!! There is still community out there in, well, real-life communities. He's overstating the problem that needs to be solved. And he also overstated the number of active virtual worlds users as well.
All of this was to introduce Christian Renaud, the official keynote speaker.
His topic: What's next?
Renaud: This is not the first attempt at making virtual worlds and virtual worlds communities a business tool or a mainstream user tool. Prior attempts have been made at virtual worlds communities, viritual worlds and avatars. Here's my perspective on what we need to do next, to go from a boutique, a few hundred people like in the 1988 meeting on interoperability, to thousands of people. I want to enjoy this time before hundreds of people we don't know enter this market.
What's different from times before is that we have all this creative energy. We have all the momentum from MMOGs, and all the production capability from unified communication tools, and slamming them together at a high rate of speed and getting all the energy we have in this industry. An "aha" moment for the industry is that you could take something like World of Warcraft and use it as an everyday business tool. This does fill a need in the technology toolbox. I would like to see this succeed this time around.
There are 6.6 billion people on the planet, of which 2.3 billion have mobile phones, about one-third. There are 1.2 billion with Internet connectivity -- mash those together and that's the addressable market for virtual worlds -- 465 million.
How effective are these virtual worlds? How commonly used is this tool? Take that number and divide by ten -- 40 or 50 million (in contrast to teh 100 million the first speaker mentioned). That's a very small percentage of mainstream adoption. We need to take it from what it is right now to a mainstream thing. Compare it to the 37 million people who in the early 90s were in online communities such as Compuserve, AOL, EWorld, The Well, etc.
We're at the inflection point where we can decide, are we going to go the IM route....do we all want a piece of VHS or do we want to be IM with different platforms? We don't need one platform, we just need interoperability...a common identity so we don't have to have different avatars and stuff. There's too much switching cost, and companies right now have to bet on one of 36 numbers -- which world or worlds will succeed?
If we have to wait for companies to hang back we'll potentially die. We need hybrid vigor -- breed all the best aspects of these virtual worlds together and get the best experience. If we had had these conversations about standards instead of just developing HTML we would still be debating the standards and there wouldn't be a Web.
Commonness is the theme...not just one platform...there are different tools for different jobs. There should not be discrete silos, should not limit connectivtity to everyone I know and all of the resources available to me on the Internet.
The market will have a number of forms, and we need to be able to be multimodal, move between modalities. It's about not wanting to pave over the diverse culture of virtual worlds and make it a big-ass strip mall. I want to take the fun to work. If you can harness the attention and apply it to work, would be great. As IBM says, what if we could get people addicted to work as they are to these games. How about if we could go to a virtual worlds to get our work done instead of to this flat soulless spreadhseet, so I don't have to go from this engrossing experience to a non-engrossing experience.
Beware of the false dichotomy between work and fun. We can make work a lot more fun than it is, we have an opportunity here to change and update the current manner of work. It's incumbent upon us to do better and this is one of the ways we can.
It's almost a fallacy and doing the industry a disservice to say there are these discrete segments -- there's lots of overlap. Think about the good of the industry and everybody's slice of the pie will get larger.
In order to have the overlap between types of environments, you must have a strong concept of identity. When you step back it's about trust. People are looking at solutions like Open ID....I know we haven't solved this for the Internet yet, but maybe virtual worlds can help with that too. Then I can move the goodwill and the reputation I have established for myself across the board, without having to prove myself in each site/world. something else that's a facet of ID is presence (ID with tags) the sanity function....how do you make presence an integral part of the experience and let it follow you around....how do you make that more of an implicit rather than explicit (example: marking every email as urgent, devalues it)?
[Some examples of work being done to help develop virtual worlds along the lines he's talking about, all links that can be found on his blog:] Coventry University in the UK has a Serious Games Institute that is working on wifi triangulation....putting your avatar where you actually are, mapping the real and the virtual -- a way that you can be in two places at once.
Sensible Organizations from MIT MediaLab put "lojacks" on engineers, tracked them online, and got really good contextual interaction, though no one really wanted to be lojacked. Someone is working on making this a piece of bling in Second Life -- the opportunity to add that where-are-you kind of contextual information to the virtual worlds experience.
In virtual worlds, we don't have to be as good as a physical interaction. We often overlook the things we can do in virtual worlds interactions that are better than real-life interactions, such as, augment the meeting by bringing in relative data, have the metadata floating around...we can do better than real life meetings in many ways that more than make up for the ways we are less than real life. We can put people on a continuum according to their opinions, augment and instrument physical reality (MIT MediaLabs again).
And we need metrics -- if it's just amongst us, we can throw around any numbers we like for users...but we have to give those outside the industry numbers they can use. They want to know real metrics, facts and figures. As an industry we should step forward and start putting forward universal metrics that outsides can understand. I'm announcing here the Metaverse Market Index, spearheaded by Nick Wilson of Metaverse and Robert Bloomfield of Cornell...they are going to be building the same kind of info as you would get from the Wall Street Journal stock index.
To be able to go from 40 million true believer, early adopter numbers to something bigger, we wil need common platforms -- not the lowest common denominator, but interoperability between platforms, content when applicable...we all agree in principle to move this forward (do you want all of Beta or a piece of VHS?)...There is an announcement from IBM and Linden Labs about this that is a complement to this and will benefit all of us.
And finally, the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT....we got so tied up in if we could do this, we sometimes overlook "should we do this" (as in Jurassic Park)...Tom Malone founded the CCI to look at things like prediction markets, etc. They are going to look at how you have a "campfire" across these worlds, what do we gain in collective wisdom, collective intelligence. They will be doing a multi-year study to see how these environments are helping us and where they are deficient, understanding where virtual worlds will always be deficient to real-world interactions.
To sum up, we need these four things to grow virtual worlds: common identity (the Open ID project), common denominators (the Metaverse Market Index), common platforms (The Virtual Worlds Interoperability Forum), and common understanding (the Center for Collective Intelligence) to know, when is this the best tool for the job and when is it not? Where is the real societal impact?
To find out more about these, visit Christian Renaud's blogs at:
http://blogs.cisco.com/virtualworlds or http://xianrenaud.typepad.com
First, Steiger:
Virtual worlds -- that term sounds isolated, niche-y, and doesn't do justice to the profound nature of what's going on...I believe it's a much larger societal movement that's very wedded to what's going on online.
Avatar = in Hindu lore, an early form of a god.....today, = an online persona you take. What I love is that it's sort of an inversion...traditionally meaning going from an ethereal place to a prosaic one, and today meaning going from a prosaic place to a more ethereal one. Avatars are about giving a face to an online identity and to facilitate face-to-face interactions in an online community.
Some numbers: Only 25% of US residents trust conventional advertising (Yankelovich 2007), while 31% of consumer internet usage is in online communities (Comscore, 2007). Second Life is the virtual world that's most talked about, but majority of the market is not SL only, it's web-based and youth-focused, about 100 million users.
Predictions: By the end of 2008, social networks will become avatarized; virtual worlds will become more like social networks; television tie-ins will increase for virtual worlds.
Philo Farnsworth invented the electronic TV in 1928, in a building that is across the street from where Linden Lab's offices are today.
Through the advent of TV our society transformed, and that informs the way virtual worlds may transform society. Autos changed the way we formed communities. Community has been embedded in our lives, but modern marvels have eroded the bonds of community. This makes people profoundly sad. Virtual worlds offer a way to get that back.
Aside from me: OK, while I don't disagree with much that he said, this guy is the poster child for virtual worlds koolaid drinkers!! There is still community out there in, well, real-life communities. He's overstating the problem that needs to be solved. And he also overstated the number of active virtual worlds users as well.
All of this was to introduce Christian Renaud, the official keynote speaker.
His topic: What's next?
Renaud: This is not the first attempt at making virtual worlds and virtual worlds communities a business tool or a mainstream user tool. Prior attempts have been made at virtual worlds communities, viritual worlds and avatars. Here's my perspective on what we need to do next, to go from a boutique, a few hundred people like in the 1988 meeting on interoperability, to thousands of people. I want to enjoy this time before hundreds of people we don't know enter this market.
What's different from times before is that we have all this creative energy. We have all the momentum from MMOGs, and all the production capability from unified communication tools, and slamming them together at a high rate of speed and getting all the energy we have in this industry. An "aha" moment for the industry is that you could take something like World of Warcraft and use it as an everyday business tool. This does fill a need in the technology toolbox. I would like to see this succeed this time around.
There are 6.6 billion people on the planet, of which 2.3 billion have mobile phones, about one-third. There are 1.2 billion with Internet connectivity -- mash those together and that's the addressable market for virtual worlds -- 465 million.
How effective are these virtual worlds? How commonly used is this tool? Take that number and divide by ten -- 40 or 50 million (in contrast to teh 100 million the first speaker mentioned). That's a very small percentage of mainstream adoption. We need to take it from what it is right now to a mainstream thing. Compare it to the 37 million people who in the early 90s were in online communities such as Compuserve, AOL, EWorld, The Well, etc.
We're at the inflection point where we can decide, are we going to go the IM route....do we all want a piece of VHS or do we want to be IM with different platforms? We don't need one platform, we just need interoperability...a common identity so we don't have to have different avatars and stuff. There's too much switching cost, and companies right now have to bet on one of 36 numbers -- which world or worlds will succeed?
If we have to wait for companies to hang back we'll potentially die. We need hybrid vigor -- breed all the best aspects of these virtual worlds together and get the best experience. If we had had these conversations about standards instead of just developing HTML we would still be debating the standards and there wouldn't be a Web.
Commonness is the theme...not just one platform...there are different tools for different jobs. There should not be discrete silos, should not limit connectivtity to everyone I know and all of the resources available to me on the Internet.
The market will have a number of forms, and we need to be able to be multimodal, move between modalities. It's about not wanting to pave over the diverse culture of virtual worlds and make it a big-ass strip mall. I want to take the fun to work. If you can harness the attention and apply it to work, would be great. As IBM says, what if we could get people addicted to work as they are to these games. How about if we could go to a virtual worlds to get our work done instead of to this flat soulless spreadhseet, so I don't have to go from this engrossing experience to a non-engrossing experience.
Beware of the false dichotomy between work and fun. We can make work a lot more fun than it is, we have an opportunity here to change and update the current manner of work. It's incumbent upon us to do better and this is one of the ways we can.
It's almost a fallacy and doing the industry a disservice to say there are these discrete segments -- there's lots of overlap. Think about the good of the industry and everybody's slice of the pie will get larger.
In order to have the overlap between types of environments, you must have a strong concept of identity. When you step back it's about trust. People are looking at solutions like Open ID....I know we haven't solved this for the Internet yet, but maybe virtual worlds can help with that too. Then I can move the goodwill and the reputation I have established for myself across the board, without having to prove myself in each site/world. something else that's a facet of ID is presence (ID with tags) the sanity function....how do you make presence an integral part of the experience and let it follow you around....how do you make that more of an implicit rather than explicit (example: marking every email as urgent, devalues it)?
[Some examples of work being done to help develop virtual worlds along the lines he's talking about, all links that can be found on his blog:] Coventry University in the UK has a Serious Games Institute that is working on wifi triangulation....putting your avatar where you actually are, mapping the real and the virtual -- a way that you can be in two places at once.
Sensible Organizations from MIT MediaLab put "lojacks" on engineers, tracked them online, and got really good contextual interaction, though no one really wanted to be lojacked. Someone is working on making this a piece of bling in Second Life -- the opportunity to add that where-are-you kind of contextual information to the virtual worlds experience.
In virtual worlds, we don't have to be as good as a physical interaction. We often overlook the things we can do in virtual worlds interactions that are better than real-life interactions, such as, augment the meeting by bringing in relative data, have the metadata floating around...we can do better than real life meetings in many ways that more than make up for the ways we are less than real life. We can put people on a continuum according to their opinions, augment and instrument physical reality (MIT MediaLabs again).
And we need metrics -- if it's just amongst us, we can throw around any numbers we like for users...but we have to give those outside the industry numbers they can use. They want to know real metrics, facts and figures. As an industry we should step forward and start putting forward universal metrics that outsides can understand. I'm announcing here the Metaverse Market Index, spearheaded by Nick Wilson of Metaverse and Robert Bloomfield of Cornell...they are going to be building the same kind of info as you would get from the Wall Street Journal stock index.
To be able to go from 40 million true believer, early adopter numbers to something bigger, we wil need common platforms -- not the lowest common denominator, but interoperability between platforms, content when applicable...we all agree in principle to move this forward (do you want all of Beta or a piece of VHS?)...There is an announcement from IBM and Linden Labs about this that is a complement to this and will benefit all of us.
And finally, the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT....we got so tied up in if we could do this, we sometimes overlook "should we do this" (as in Jurassic Park)...Tom Malone founded the CCI to look at things like prediction markets, etc. They are going to look at how you have a "campfire" across these worlds, what do we gain in collective wisdom, collective intelligence. They will be doing a multi-year study to see how these environments are helping us and where they are deficient, understanding where virtual worlds will always be deficient to real-world interactions.
To sum up, we need these four things to grow virtual worlds: common identity (the Open ID project), common denominators (the Metaverse Market Index), common platforms (The Virtual Worlds Interoperability Forum), and common understanding (the Center for Collective Intelligence) to know, when is this the best tool for the job and when is it not? Where is the real societal impact?
To find out more about these, visit Christian Renaud's blogs at:
http://blogs.cisco.com/virtualworlds or http://xianrenaud.typepad.com
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Virtual Worlds Expo: Togetherness--What Drives the Human Connection
Giff Constable, Electric Sheep Company; Beth Coleman, MIT; Betsy Book, Makena (producers of There.com); Robin Harper, Second Life; Ron Meiners, Multiverse
Giff (moderator): Where are we falling down, where is human togetherness not working in virtual worlds right now?
Beth: Persistence of your network identity and a porousness .... on various levels I can carry my avatar in my pocket, it's not limited to a PC interaction....in terms of scale of use, I think the player experience needs to be designed for various levels of engagement....not everyone will end up building things or running a store or business. The different platforms address this in different ways, but all need to have better design for different levels of engagement.
Ron: We're taking interactions that happen in a solid space and transferring them into 2D and digital spaces where there are differentne space and moving them to another. Technology that we have available to us and that's being developed affords new possibilities for interaction....people can experiment with social identity, with a "lower cost of failure" because there are possibilities that are not available in the real world.
Betsy: Virtual worlds are incredibly good at fostering deep human social connections because they are filled with a sense of presence. In a 2D or 3D space where you can see an avatar, there's synchronicity. You can connect in real-time, a level of engagement you can't get in email. The trade-off is that virtual worlds are incredibly cumbersome, it's a full process to log in, etc. We have to work to do to make our spaces user-friendly and make people comfortable. Virtual worlds today are too insular -- they are a deep meaningful experience, but how do you extend that experience out to other parts of your life? Facebook and MySpace are doing this so much better than we are right now. That privacy and insularity works for togetherness, but you need to be able to take it outside the virtual world.
Robin: Downside to being in an online community is the anonymity. There's some value to anonymity -- by pretending to be someone else you can be more of who you really are. But what that means is that the person who doesn't know me in real life doesn't know that aspect of me and that can lead to trust issues. The challenge is to help people who are in this pseudonymous space take advantage of those issues. Portable ID is probably where we are going with this, the ability to reveal parts of your identity in a contextual way. It's the ability to reveal parts of your real life and yet keep parts of your life hidden until you trust the other person.
Beth: We do this anyway....within each context (youtube, myspace, etc.), we reveal parts of our personalities that are appropriate for that place.
Robin: I'm not saying we don't do it, I'm saying that technology could help us do it better.
Beth: We are becoming more compassionate with each other because we know so much about each other.
People find it very frightening because they see it as a privacy issue....not knowing what to expect from other people because you don't really know who they are, these are big issues.
Those have always been problems. Some aspects are new, but we have another set of tools for creating the preferred presentation of ourselves. These tools give us more flexibility in how we present ourselves.
What does togetherness mean? In earlier communities there was a reason why people got together, and now people don't know what to expect. Historically, online communities were together for a reason. Now we have spaces and people just come there.
Giff: What are the key things that are working to bring people together on your platform?
Betsy: Technical and social things....socially, communications form around common interests. One of the most powerful is fandom, sports, entertainment, whatever. That is a common interest that brings people together. wWhat creates the community isn't the topic itself but the everyday sharing of your life. That forms the everyday social glue. Virtual worlds are spaces that really easily enable people to come together around a common interest and then stay together. It's fairly easy in virtual worlds to find your interest group, and people are finding them...features such as voice chat gives you that sense of presence.
Robin: When we introduced voice in Second LIfe, there was a tremendous unhappiness, we were surprised at the pushback. People felt that by using voice, it would interfere with the exploration. Another issue was the language issue, as we are increasingly international. Where we've seen it adopted initially has been with corporations, with educators, the places where you would expect voice to be beneficial.
Betsy: In there.com, avatars create idealized versions of themselves and anonymity isn't such a touchy issue as it might be in Second Life...you're expected to move up the social ladder and use voice. I see people moving back and forth with chat and voice.
Robin: Chat is often being used as a visible backchannel in conversations where voice is used as well.
Ron: Multiverse is primarily a community of developers...most of our community dynamics is among developers, who are a worldwide bunch. In our world, people in voice rooms created songfests, prayers, a 24-hour AA meeting. Voice was a really powerful way for people to connect.
Beth: Does it matter what the tools are? In the different worlds, you get the world that you design. The tools have to be the ones you want. The virtual experience has to be meaningful for individuals, cater to their interests.
Tools that create a richer information stream can potentially create a more involving and presence-based experience. In the real world, we live in this information soup and that's not been translated online yet.
Communication enables socialization -- text, chat, im, voice -- the more options you can give users to communicate, that's what's going to sponsor that sense of togetherness. You have to pay attention to the style and the culture of the community you're working with...the set of tools for one group might not be styled correctly for another.
Also important are the kind of tools you provide users to manage their connections. The nature of the communities that formed in Second Life made us retool and give people a different set of tools, so they could manage things at a far more granular level.
Giff: What about globalization
Robin: One of the best tools in Second Life is a translator that the residents created, that you could type in English and it would come out in Japanese if that's who you were talking to. Overall, there are lots of opportunities for public diplomacy, for sharing your culture.
Questions from audience:
Facebook and MySpace are good at keeping casual connections alive -- how? It's the asynchronous aspect, looking for ways for people to let other people know what they're doing when they are not in-world.
Robin: What happens when a community goes from 75% US participants to 30% US participants in just a few months, as we did on Second Life....there's an opportunity there to bridge misunderstandings about culture, to share experiences.
What design choices has your world made to support togetherness? Robin: We're not interested in trying to micromanage different types of togetherness. We're trying to offer tools for collaborative creativity, allow people to come together in real time and create together.
Giff (moderator): Where are we falling down, where is human togetherness not working in virtual worlds right now?
Beth: Persistence of your network identity and a porousness .... on various levels I can carry my avatar in my pocket, it's not limited to a PC interaction....in terms of scale of use, I think the player experience needs to be designed for various levels of engagement....not everyone will end up building things or running a store or business. The different platforms address this in different ways, but all need to have better design for different levels of engagement.
Ron: We're taking interactions that happen in a solid space and transferring them into 2D and digital spaces where there are differentne space and moving them to another. Technology that we have available to us and that's being developed affords new possibilities for interaction....people can experiment with social identity, with a "lower cost of failure" because there are possibilities that are not available in the real world.
Betsy: Virtual worlds are incredibly good at fostering deep human social connections because they are filled with a sense of presence. In a 2D or 3D space where you can see an avatar, there's synchronicity. You can connect in real-time, a level of engagement you can't get in email. The trade-off is that virtual worlds are incredibly cumbersome, it's a full process to log in, etc. We have to work to do to make our spaces user-friendly and make people comfortable. Virtual worlds today are too insular -- they are a deep meaningful experience, but how do you extend that experience out to other parts of your life? Facebook and MySpace are doing this so much better than we are right now. That privacy and insularity works for togetherness, but you need to be able to take it outside the virtual world.
Robin: Downside to being in an online community is the anonymity. There's some value to anonymity -- by pretending to be someone else you can be more of who you really are. But what that means is that the person who doesn't know me in real life doesn't know that aspect of me and that can lead to trust issues. The challenge is to help people who are in this pseudonymous space take advantage of those issues. Portable ID is probably where we are going with this, the ability to reveal parts of your identity in a contextual way. It's the ability to reveal parts of your real life and yet keep parts of your life hidden until you trust the other person.
Beth: We do this anyway....within each context (youtube, myspace, etc.), we reveal parts of our personalities that are appropriate for that place.
Robin: I'm not saying we don't do it, I'm saying that technology could help us do it better.
Beth: We are becoming more compassionate with each other because we know so much about each other.
People find it very frightening because they see it as a privacy issue....not knowing what to expect from other people because you don't really know who they are, these are big issues.
Those have always been problems. Some aspects are new, but we have another set of tools for creating the preferred presentation of ourselves. These tools give us more flexibility in how we present ourselves.
What does togetherness mean? In earlier communities there was a reason why people got together, and now people don't know what to expect. Historically, online communities were together for a reason. Now we have spaces and people just come there.
Giff: What are the key things that are working to bring people together on your platform?
Betsy: Technical and social things....socially, communications form around common interests. One of the most powerful is fandom, sports, entertainment, whatever. That is a common interest that brings people together. wWhat creates the community isn't the topic itself but the everyday sharing of your life. That forms the everyday social glue. Virtual worlds are spaces that really easily enable people to come together around a common interest and then stay together. It's fairly easy in virtual worlds to find your interest group, and people are finding them...features such as voice chat gives you that sense of presence.
Robin: When we introduced voice in Second LIfe, there was a tremendous unhappiness, we were surprised at the pushback. People felt that by using voice, it would interfere with the exploration. Another issue was the language issue, as we are increasingly international. Where we've seen it adopted initially has been with corporations, with educators, the places where you would expect voice to be beneficial.
Betsy: In there.com, avatars create idealized versions of themselves and anonymity isn't such a touchy issue as it might be in Second Life...you're expected to move up the social ladder and use voice. I see people moving back and forth with chat and voice.
Robin: Chat is often being used as a visible backchannel in conversations where voice is used as well.
Ron: Multiverse is primarily a community of developers...most of our community dynamics is among developers, who are a worldwide bunch. In our world, people in voice rooms created songfests, prayers, a 24-hour AA meeting. Voice was a really powerful way for people to connect.
Beth: Does it matter what the tools are? In the different worlds, you get the world that you design. The tools have to be the ones you want. The virtual experience has to be meaningful for individuals, cater to their interests.
Tools that create a richer information stream can potentially create a more involving and presence-based experience. In the real world, we live in this information soup and that's not been translated online yet.
Communication enables socialization -- text, chat, im, voice -- the more options you can give users to communicate, that's what's going to sponsor that sense of togetherness. You have to pay attention to the style and the culture of the community you're working with...the set of tools for one group might not be styled correctly for another.
Also important are the kind of tools you provide users to manage their connections. The nature of the communities that formed in Second Life made us retool and give people a different set of tools, so they could manage things at a far more granular level.
Giff: What about globalization
Robin: One of the best tools in Second Life is a translator that the residents created, that you could type in English and it would come out in Japanese if that's who you were talking to. Overall, there are lots of opportunities for public diplomacy, for sharing your culture.
Questions from audience:
Facebook and MySpace are good at keeping casual connections alive -- how? It's the asynchronous aspect, looking for ways for people to let other people know what they're doing when they are not in-world.
Robin: What happens when a community goes from 75% US participants to 30% US participants in just a few months, as we did on Second Life....there's an opportunity there to bridge misunderstandings about culture, to share experiences.
What design choices has your world made to support togetherness? Robin: We're not interested in trying to micromanage different types of togetherness. We're trying to offer tools for collaborative creativity, allow people to come together in real time and create together.
Virtual Worlds Expo: Narrative in Virtual Worlds
First up: Eric Rice of Slackstreet Entertainment: The video game industry has narrative figured out -- $350 million in sales in one week of Halo. Second Life is too big -- the narrative there is, what do the people of Earth do every day? Gaming is a top down narrative, virtual worlds are wide open -- would love to have the middle ground. His biggest concern -- How does story scale? How do you tell it across franchises?
Mike Monello, of Campfire (who was also one of the creators of The Blair Witch Project): We stumbled on to [collaborative narrative] by throwing a bunch of material we had used to make the movie online. People came and started engaging in the story, and started extending the story...we were not concerned about intellectual property, we were focused on the movie, and people were extending the story in ways that were not in the movie. We ran with it. By the time we sold the movie, that community was there.
People will engage for the sheer entertainment value of it....publishers don't give you a prize for reading a book, and you don't get a prize for watching a movie. Stories are how we engage in the world, and at the end of the day that's what we're all doing with our avatars. Sometimes it intersects with who you are and what you are doing and sometimes it goes way off.
Panel moderator Chris Carella of Electric Sheep quoted Richard Bartle, "godfather of virtual worlds" -- virtual worlds are about place, not story. He put that question to the panel.
Mike: They're both. I just moved to NY, and to me, NY is a big story. I came from Orlando, where everything is new and fabricated to give you a story. The difference is it's a distributed story, a personal story but not singular like someone making a movie or writing a book.
Eric: What is YouTube used for? To collect media, copyrighted content, or put up videos of people in their underwear singing...there's so much experience-driven. So many virtual worlds I am in, I only hang out with about 5 people.
Someone from the audience: Virtual worlds are a thing, as textured as life itself.
Examples of narrative environment in vitual worlds: Virtual MTV, Virtual Laguna Beach, Gaia Online, Saijo City, Motorati, CSI:NY, I Am Legend
CSI:NY is trans-media storytelling (Anthony Zuiker, creator of CSI:NY, gave the conference keynote this morning, talking about CSI:NY's cross-media storytelling project that will sart with the Oct. 24 issue of CSI:NY).
Mike: Virtual worlds are less about the story that you yourself are telling and more about the stage you are building for people to tell the story and extend the story. Example: Motorati, which gave people land and told them they could build anything they wanted, as long as their story was somehow about cars. When people start telling stories they become invested.
Eric: Gaming is work, and virtual worlds are social. If you golf in real life, I'm probably not hanging with you in virtual worlds. In that way virtual worlds are also anti-social. Do you trust your peers to build something as awesome as Halo?
Audience: Virtual worlds provide the oportunity to explore what is interactive fiction. Games are straight narrative, while virtual worlds are interactive
Mike: When you are designing a narrative for these worlds you have to trust the audience to take you to places you can't anticipate. If you do something that's really interesting and attractive to a lot of people and give them avenues to push and change and adjust, they will. 99% of the time where they push you is better than where you'd go by yourself.
Eric: Success means attracting people to participate. I got one story from American Apparel, but dozens of stories from Motorati. I like to put out what I call an FDK -- a fiction development kit -- which is a story fragment that you can let people run with. Yet I hate being virtual sometimes....can't we just get a bunch of us in a room sometime and look each other in the eye?
Mike: We allowed derivative works of Blair Witch, but we didn't allow anyone to put the real film online. This was part of the success of Blair Witch. Why would you penalize your fans, your customers, by not allowing them to participate by making derivative versions?
Chris -- Everyone should read Henry Jenkins' work on fan cultures.
Mike: Our campaigns are often trojan horses....the client is getting layer A but there's layer B for people, which you can't directly sell. When you don't have layer B it feels hollow, like it's just marketing...
How important is the narrative vs the functionality vs who's there? Do you weigh one over the other?
Mike -- We will use the narrative to attract the people we want....we'll start with who the client wants to attract, then we write a narrative that we believe wil appeal to those people, and leave it open-ended so those people will come in and change the direction so you get to the end game a different way.
Research and strategy -- a lot of people in advertising are frustrated movie makers, and they want to tell stories. To me it's if you want to make a movie, go make one....these campaigns are, someone had an idea for a story and a brand name and they sold them on it....and that's just wrong. The strategy has to come first. Brands should be wary. You have to start with what's the problem that you're trying to solve.
Ars Technica is a site that talks a lot about technology and narrative. They say we need more narrative in games, though gamers are a tough crowd who often say, who cares? I just want to shoot you. So it depends on the genre -- for first-person shooters, the narrative doesn't matter so much.
Mike Monello, of Campfire (who was also one of the creators of The Blair Witch Project): We stumbled on to [collaborative narrative] by throwing a bunch of material we had used to make the movie online. People came and started engaging in the story, and started extending the story...we were not concerned about intellectual property, we were focused on the movie, and people were extending the story in ways that were not in the movie. We ran with it. By the time we sold the movie, that community was there.
People will engage for the sheer entertainment value of it....publishers don't give you a prize for reading a book, and you don't get a prize for watching a movie. Stories are how we engage in the world, and at the end of the day that's what we're all doing with our avatars. Sometimes it intersects with who you are and what you are doing and sometimes it goes way off.
Panel moderator Chris Carella of Electric Sheep quoted Richard Bartle, "godfather of virtual worlds" -- virtual worlds are about place, not story. He put that question to the panel.
Mike: They're both. I just moved to NY, and to me, NY is a big story. I came from Orlando, where everything is new and fabricated to give you a story. The difference is it's a distributed story, a personal story but not singular like someone making a movie or writing a book.
Eric: What is YouTube used for? To collect media, copyrighted content, or put up videos of people in their underwear singing...there's so much experience-driven. So many virtual worlds I am in, I only hang out with about 5 people.
Someone from the audience: Virtual worlds are a thing, as textured as life itself.
Examples of narrative environment in vitual worlds: Virtual MTV, Virtual Laguna Beach, Gaia Online, Saijo City, Motorati, CSI:NY, I Am Legend
CSI:NY is trans-media storytelling (Anthony Zuiker, creator of CSI:NY, gave the conference keynote this morning, talking about CSI:NY's cross-media storytelling project that will sart with the Oct. 24 issue of CSI:NY).
Mike: Virtual worlds are less about the story that you yourself are telling and more about the stage you are building for people to tell the story and extend the story. Example: Motorati, which gave people land and told them they could build anything they wanted, as long as their story was somehow about cars. When people start telling stories they become invested.
Eric: Gaming is work, and virtual worlds are social. If you golf in real life, I'm probably not hanging with you in virtual worlds. In that way virtual worlds are also anti-social. Do you trust your peers to build something as awesome as Halo?
Audience: Virtual worlds provide the oportunity to explore what is interactive fiction. Games are straight narrative, while virtual worlds are interactive
Mike: When you are designing a narrative for these worlds you have to trust the audience to take you to places you can't anticipate. If you do something that's really interesting and attractive to a lot of people and give them avenues to push and change and adjust, they will. 99% of the time where they push you is better than where you'd go by yourself.
Eric: Success means attracting people to participate. I got one story from American Apparel, but dozens of stories from Motorati. I like to put out what I call an FDK -- a fiction development kit -- which is a story fragment that you can let people run with. Yet I hate being virtual sometimes....can't we just get a bunch of us in a room sometime and look each other in the eye?
Mike: We allowed derivative works of Blair Witch, but we didn't allow anyone to put the real film online. This was part of the success of Blair Witch. Why would you penalize your fans, your customers, by not allowing them to participate by making derivative versions?
Chris -- Everyone should read Henry Jenkins' work on fan cultures.
Mike: Our campaigns are often trojan horses....the client is getting layer A but there's layer B for people, which you can't directly sell. When you don't have layer B it feels hollow, like it's just marketing...
How important is the narrative vs the functionality vs who's there? Do you weigh one over the other?
Mike -- We will use the narrative to attract the people we want....we'll start with who the client wants to attract, then we write a narrative that we believe wil appeal to those people, and leave it open-ended so those people will come in and change the direction so you get to the end game a different way.
Research and strategy -- a lot of people in advertising are frustrated movie makers, and they want to tell stories. To me it's if you want to make a movie, go make one....these campaigns are, someone had an idea for a story and a brand name and they sold them on it....and that's just wrong. The strategy has to come first. Brands should be wary. You have to start with what's the problem that you're trying to solve.
Ars Technica is a site that talks a lot about technology and narrative. They say we need more narrative in games, though gamers are a tough crowd who often say, who cares? I just want to shoot you. So it depends on the genre -- for first-person shooters, the narrative doesn't matter so much.
Notes from Advertising in Virtual Worlds session, Virtual Worlds Expo
Notes from my colleague Eric Brunker on the Advertising in virtual worlds session; panelists Joel Greenberg, Joe Hyrkin, Ben Richardson, Mike Dowdle Art Sindlinger
Present proposals in ways metrics can make sense - research? (Joe)
Capital music content - 2600 hours, 42,000 interactions with kiosks (Ben)
Reach and frequency do not always give impact
Captive audience, gauge attitude and opinions, how does a brand in the world impact the experience (Mike)
Question - Have the media answer so what? (Joel) or is is the marketers or the worlds to answer
⁃ Marketplace will solve (Art)
⁃ 700,000 in community, still in environment (Mike). Announced Turner Broadcasting, way to expand brand in a new TV experience
⁃ Helping consumers understand products (Mike)
⁃ There.com just announced partnership with Cosmo, bring editors into world to connect with the editor
Question - typical metrics? (Joel)
- number of steps, time spent (Art)
- impressions, measuring number of times wearing branded shirts, how many times people have embedded Scion products (Joe)
- interaction, exposure, adoption, momentum (Art)
- Mike - so early in this industry, one metric is what brands can learn.
Question - Nielsen comes knocking and saying they need a new metric? (Joe)
- Mike - tough because each brand is going to have a different goal
- Ben - Toyota tracks chatter, number of logins in the blogosphere
- Joe - number of branded impressions with an avatar
- Mike - attitudes or opinions
- Joel - can do that from surveys
- Ben - demographics different, research which is best
Question from audience - contextual ad serving
- Joe - target by interest area, age, located
- Ben - there.com via groups and affinity
- Mike - attaching brands to experience or interests
Question from audience - reaching through ad agencies or directly with brands
- Ben - both
- Joe - both
- Mike - a lot of traditional agencies talking to brands and a lot of virtual agencies talking. Brands not sure who to deal with and traditional struggling with this as well
Question from audience - do you sell CPM?
- Joe - sell CPM and projects
- Ben - most of the cost is in the production
- MIke - very similar
Question from Joel - should we be selling audience like TV?
- Art - TRP's still matter, but not all created equally, mixed modeling
Question from audience - how profitable is it for you to make branded experiences?
- MIke - focus 95% of the efforts on own world and partner with agencies and brands to create the experiences
- Joe - about user (deflecting question)
Present proposals in ways metrics can make sense - research? (Joe)
Capital music content - 2600 hours, 42,000 interactions with kiosks (Ben)
Reach and frequency do not always give impact
Captive audience, gauge attitude and opinions, how does a brand in the world impact the experience (Mike)
Question - Have the media answer so what? (Joel) or is is the marketers or the worlds to answer
⁃ Marketplace will solve (Art)
⁃ 700,000 in community, still in environment (Mike). Announced Turner Broadcasting, way to expand brand in a new TV experience
⁃ Helping consumers understand products (Mike)
⁃ There.com just announced partnership with Cosmo, bring editors into world to connect with the editor
Question - typical metrics? (Joel)
- number of steps, time spent (Art)
- impressions, measuring number of times wearing branded shirts, how many times people have embedded Scion products (Joe)
- interaction, exposure, adoption, momentum (Art)
- Mike - so early in this industry, one metric is what brands can learn.
Question - Nielsen comes knocking and saying they need a new metric? (Joe)
- Mike - tough because each brand is going to have a different goal
- Ben - Toyota tracks chatter, number of logins in the blogosphere
- Joe - number of branded impressions with an avatar
- Mike - attitudes or opinions
- Joel - can do that from surveys
- Ben - demographics different, research which is best
Question from audience - contextual ad serving
- Joe - target by interest area, age, located
- Ben - there.com via groups and affinity
- Mike - attaching brands to experience or interests
Question from audience - reaching through ad agencies or directly with brands
- Ben - both
- Joe - both
- Mike - a lot of traditional agencies talking to brands and a lot of virtual agencies talking. Brands not sure who to deal with and traditional struggling with this as well
Question from audience - do you sell CPM?
- Joe - sell CPM and projects
- Ben - most of the cost is in the production
- MIke - very similar
Question from Joel - should we be selling audience like TV?
- Art - TRP's still matter, but not all created equally, mixed modeling
Question from audience - how profitable is it for you to make branded experiences?
- MIke - focus 95% of the efforts on own world and partner with agencies and brands to create the experiences
- Joe - about user (deflecting question)
Demographics in virtual worlds: Numbers and charts and predictions, oh my!
I've stayed with the Community track at the Virtual Worlds Expo. The featured morning panel on that track was "Demographics and Numbers: Where Things Are Heading".
First up was Nic Mitham, managing director of K-Zero. He forecasts growth for virtual worlds. One big reason -- the number of kid-based groups. Pretty soon children will be outgrowing the kids' worlds, and they will look for new worlds to get into. There's a huge marketplace already of children using virtual worlds who will migrate up the food chain as they grow older.
Said Mitham, growth in virtual worlds will come from Western Europe, from Russia, Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia. He said he doesn't yet see much virtual worlds activity for and from "silver surfers" or Baby Boomers. He said he also feels that corporate communities are prime for growth in virtual worlds, as is the educational space.
Mitham said the most exciting area for him was product development -- new virtual worlds, and new interfaces, that he feels will help grow the overall virtual worlds space. He says the typical profile of today's virtual worlds user is an early adopter (though I actually think this is wrong -- we're just now getting early adopters in virtual worlds. According to the original Everett Rogers adoption curve, it's the Innovators who are currently best represented in virtual worlds populations).
Mitham said easier interfaces will trigger growth for early adopters, and serve as a bridge to get new people into virtual worlds. One thing that will engage people is to make the overall experience easier. Also helping will be Web-based remote viewers, using a browser to access virtual worlds, including mobile devices. New worlds will help growth as well. A Google My World would be a huge source of growth.
Mitham also sai that diversification would be helpful in growing overall vw user numbers. He cited the rise of category-centric vertical worlds such as Football Superstars (currently in development). There's potential for growth in community-based worlds where the draw is the content, not just "early adopters" (or Innovators!) looking for the next new thing. Finally he cited cross-world avatars as having the potential to grow the total population, though not the number of unique users. But cross-world avatars could help more people get engaged in vws.
Mitham put forward some growth projections for the period Q407 to Q408 in selected virtual worlds. These are increases in the numbers of registered accounts, where the first number is the Q407 number of registered accounts and the second number is Mitham's prediction of the number of registered accounts for Q408:
Second Life 10m to 20m; There.com 1 m to 7 m, Kaneva 0.6m to 3m, HiPiHi 0m to 10m, Whyville 3m to 10m, Club Penguin 15m to 30m, Football Superstars 0m to 3m
Next up was Parks Associates' Michael Cai, who put forward numbers form a recent Parks survey:
6% of US broadband users visit virtual worlds on a weekly basis.
18% have tried a virtual world at least once.
Second Life is the number 1 virtual worlds, followed by teen worlds and kid worlds. Most regular virtual worlds users visit more than virtual world.
He also had numbers on virtual worlds vs social networks -- he reported huge gaps betwen social network and virtual worlds usage among various demographics. Such as -- 40% of 25- to 34-year-olds participate in social networks, vs 12% of that age group participating in virtual worlds; 71% of 18- to 24-year-olds participate in social networks, vs 10% of hat age group participating in virtual worlds; 35% of females participate in social networks vs 5% females participating in virtual worlds; and 29% of males participate in social networks vs 7% of males participating in virtual worlds.
Cai also had numbers (from a 9,500 user study) on what people do less of in the real world while they participate in virtual worlds:
60% don't watch as much TV
22% don't sleep as much
18% don't read as much
16% don't know what they do less of (I found that illuminating -- people just don't really know how they spend their time!)
15% work less
15% spend less time with friends and family
12% don't do sports as much
11% don't shop as much
7% other
Finally, Cai said the majority of users think Second Life is a good medium to promote a brand or product
Last up was Market Truths' Mary Ellen Gordon, who presented an update of research whose first wave was done in the first quarter of this year (n=201 Second Life users in Q! and 190 SL users in Q3, after excluding questionable respondents)
60% of respondents have positive perceptions of real-life brands in Second Life, which is an improvement over the Q1 numbers.
Between quarters, the perceptions of brand effects and consequences hasn't changed. Brands bringing in new resources to virtual worlds are considered a good thing, and people are not as afraid that real-life brands will damage small content creators in Second Life.
Gordon said that as the Second Life population has grown, some concerns abotu brands "taking over" Second Life are still there, but the new people coming in too SL now are more mainstream and don't have as many concerns.
Here are the tactics Gordon's research says work best for brands in Second Life:
Give away SL versions of real-life products; co-create real-life products; sponsor brand-related events; customize real-life products for SL use. People tend to like things that link Second Life and real life, that offer two-way interactions.
What doesn't work: advertising via IM in-world; advertising using notecards for neutrally perceived brands (brands that are not already high-profile in Second Life). Most tactics are perceived more positively when undertaken by brands for which pre-existing attitudes are positive.
Gordon also presented numbers on consumer behavior in and out of Second Life:
57% considered buying a real-life product as a result of a recommendation they received from someone in Second Life.
55% recommended a real-life product to someone they were chatting to in Second Life.
25% have gone to look at a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
9% have purchased a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
8% have bought a real-life product in Second Life.
Gordon's research on brand types: High-awareness brands in Second Life are currently concentrated in five categories: Of 24 brands meantioned unaided, they were concentrated in information technology, athletic shoes, soft drinks, cars, and media
Gordon said that given the word-of-mouth numbers form her research, it's important for brands to start looking at soft measures as well as metrics -- measures such as word of mouth, engaging with the brand/product in real life, in-world effects vs real world effects vs cross-channel effects, and buying process.
Both active and passive measures have issues in terms of user acceptability. People in focus groups have said they value their privacy and don't really want to be tracked in Second Life as closely as is now possible, let alone will be possible in future.
Finally, Gordon said that some of the brands with the highest awareness do not have an official presence, but their awareness is the result of people making unofficial versions of their products available in Second Life. There's a concern among brand people about whether or not these products represent their brands as they would like. Brands need to work with small content creators in a way that works for the brand yet doesn't cause a backlash.
Questions from the floor:
What's the most underserved demographic in virtual worlds? Mid-40s and up, said KZero's Mitham, although he doesn't know whether the demand is there yet. He said, we know these people are active web and email users. Cai from Parks said the social networking crowd isn't well-served yet, and he doesn't understand why match.com and such sites haven't been in virtual worlds yet. He also said females are underserved.
How many virtual world users are there today worldwide, and projections through 2011? If someone knows the answer to that, I'd ask them to buy my lottery ticket, said Mitham.
First up was Nic Mitham, managing director of K-Zero. He forecasts growth for virtual worlds. One big reason -- the number of kid-based groups. Pretty soon children will be outgrowing the kids' worlds, and they will look for new worlds to get into. There's a huge marketplace already of children using virtual worlds who will migrate up the food chain as they grow older.
Said Mitham, growth in virtual worlds will come from Western Europe, from Russia, Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia. He said he doesn't yet see much virtual worlds activity for and from "silver surfers" or Baby Boomers. He said he also feels that corporate communities are prime for growth in virtual worlds, as is the educational space.
Mitham said the most exciting area for him was product development -- new virtual worlds, and new interfaces, that he feels will help grow the overall virtual worlds space. He says the typical profile of today's virtual worlds user is an early adopter (though I actually think this is wrong -- we're just now getting early adopters in virtual worlds. According to the original Everett Rogers adoption curve, it's the Innovators who are currently best represented in virtual worlds populations).
Mitham said easier interfaces will trigger growth for early adopters, and serve as a bridge to get new people into virtual worlds. One thing that will engage people is to make the overall experience easier. Also helping will be Web-based remote viewers, using a browser to access virtual worlds, including mobile devices. New worlds will help growth as well. A Google My World would be a huge source of growth.
Mitham also sai that diversification would be helpful in growing overall vw user numbers. He cited the rise of category-centric vertical worlds such as Football Superstars (currently in development). There's potential for growth in community-based worlds where the draw is the content, not just "early adopters" (or Innovators!) looking for the next new thing. Finally he cited cross-world avatars as having the potential to grow the total population, though not the number of unique users. But cross-world avatars could help more people get engaged in vws.
Mitham put forward some growth projections for the period Q407 to Q408 in selected virtual worlds. These are increases in the numbers of registered accounts, where the first number is the Q407 number of registered accounts and the second number is Mitham's prediction of the number of registered accounts for Q408:
Second Life 10m to 20m; There.com 1 m to 7 m, Kaneva 0.6m to 3m, HiPiHi 0m to 10m, Whyville 3m to 10m, Club Penguin 15m to 30m, Football Superstars 0m to 3m
Next up was Parks Associates' Michael Cai, who put forward numbers form a recent Parks survey:
6% of US broadband users visit virtual worlds on a weekly basis.
18% have tried a virtual world at least once.
Second Life is the number 1 virtual worlds, followed by teen worlds and kid worlds. Most regular virtual worlds users visit more than virtual world.
He also had numbers on virtual worlds vs social networks -- he reported huge gaps betwen social network and virtual worlds usage among various demographics. Such as -- 40% of 25- to 34-year-olds participate in social networks, vs 12% of that age group participating in virtual worlds; 71% of 18- to 24-year-olds participate in social networks, vs 10% of hat age group participating in virtual worlds; 35% of females participate in social networks vs 5% females participating in virtual worlds; and 29% of males participate in social networks vs 7% of males participating in virtual worlds.
Cai also had numbers (from a 9,500 user study) on what people do less of in the real world while they participate in virtual worlds:
60% don't watch as much TV
22% don't sleep as much
18% don't read as much
16% don't know what they do less of (I found that illuminating -- people just don't really know how they spend their time!)
15% work less
15% spend less time with friends and family
12% don't do sports as much
11% don't shop as much
7% other
Finally, Cai said the majority of users think Second Life is a good medium to promote a brand or product
Last up was Market Truths' Mary Ellen Gordon, who presented an update of research whose first wave was done in the first quarter of this year (n=201 Second Life users in Q! and 190 SL users in Q3, after excluding questionable respondents)
60% of respondents have positive perceptions of real-life brands in Second Life, which is an improvement over the Q1 numbers.
Between quarters, the perceptions of brand effects and consequences hasn't changed. Brands bringing in new resources to virtual worlds are considered a good thing, and people are not as afraid that real-life brands will damage small content creators in Second Life.
Gordon said that as the Second Life population has grown, some concerns abotu brands "taking over" Second Life are still there, but the new people coming in too SL now are more mainstream and don't have as many concerns.
Here are the tactics Gordon's research says work best for brands in Second Life:
Give away SL versions of real-life products; co-create real-life products; sponsor brand-related events; customize real-life products for SL use. People tend to like things that link Second Life and real life, that offer two-way interactions.
What doesn't work: advertising via IM in-world; advertising using notecards for neutrally perceived brands (brands that are not already high-profile in Second Life). Most tactics are perceived more positively when undertaken by brands for which pre-existing attitudes are positive.
Gordon also presented numbers on consumer behavior in and out of Second Life:
57% considered buying a real-life product as a result of a recommendation they received from someone in Second Life.
55% recommended a real-life product to someone they were chatting to in Second Life.
25% have gone to look at a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
9% have purchased a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
8% have bought a real-life product in Second Life.
Gordon's research on brand types: High-awareness brands in Second Life are currently concentrated in five categories: Of 24 brands meantioned unaided, they were concentrated in information technology, athletic shoes, soft drinks, cars, and media
Gordon said that given the word-of-mouth numbers form her research, it's important for brands to start looking at soft measures as well as metrics -- measures such as word of mouth, engaging with the brand/product in real life, in-world effects vs real world effects vs cross-channel effects, and buying process.
Both active and passive measures have issues in terms of user acceptability. People in focus groups have said they value their privacy and don't really want to be tracked in Second Life as closely as is now possible, let alone will be possible in future.
Finally, Gordon said that some of the brands with the highest awareness do not have an official presence, but their awareness is the result of people making unofficial versions of their products available in Second Life. There's a concern among brand people about whether or not these products represent their brands as they would like. Brands need to work with small content creators in a way that works for the brand yet doesn't cause a backlash.
Questions from the floor:
What's the most underserved demographic in virtual worlds? Mid-40s and up, said KZero's Mitham, although he doesn't know whether the demand is there yet. He said, we know these people are active web and email users. Cai from Parks said the social networking crowd isn't well-served yet, and he doesn't understand why match.com and such sites haven't been in virtual worlds yet. He also said females are underserved.
How many virtual world users are there today worldwide, and projections through 2011? If someone knows the answer to that, I'd ask them to buy my lottery ticket, said Mitham.
Virtual World Guide white paper available for free download
We've compiled a guide to existing virtual worlds that's available for free download. This guide offers info and screen shots on dozens of worlds from Second Life to Habbo Hotel. There's also more information in the paper about our Virtual Awareness research offering, designed to help companies understand more about how, when, and where to take their brand into virtual worlds.
To get a free copy of Sentient's Guide to Virtual Worlds, go here..
To get a free copy of Sentient's Guide to Virtual Worlds, go here..
Virtual Worlds Expo: State of Virtual Worlds Keynote
I'm going to be doing some live blogging from the Virtual Worlds Expo, going on today and tomorrow in San Jose. First up: keynote speech by Sibley Verbeck, Electric Sheep Company. His speech offered a "state of the virtual world" overview. I found it The tinteresting that he broke down the virtual-world world into age groups: kids, teens, adults.
Kids, he said, have the first virtual worlds market to become established and successful, with vws such as Webkinz, Club Penguin, etc. Large companies and major brands are marketing there, as well as sponsoring their own virtual worlds (Nicktropolis, Barbie, etc). Clearly those are here to stay. The users are spending money (or their parents' money), and there have been acquisitions, such as Club Penguin which was bought by Disney. Virtual Worlds have definitely been a breakthrough success as a entertainment medium for kids.
The next stage is the "multiply like rabbits" stage -- I predict a year from now we'll be looking at 40 virtual worlds for kids, all heavily marketed. This is great and sobering too because a lot of them won't be successful. We're beginning to see brutal competition as the early success attracts a lot of people coming in. Everything but the Keebler elf world, and maybe that.
Most interesting for the audience here is that it would be a mistake not to pay close attention to this even if you are not involved in kid stuff....this is where innovation is happening, and competition will focus on how do you make the user exprience work for users with short attention spans, which is everyone except early adopters who are already in virtual worlds. The kids' virtual worlds are also pushing the envelope to get a good user experience on machines that are not high-end.
Teen space is interesting, and perhaps only a step behind the kids' space....I would summarize the teen space as platforms that have taken communications that teens are already doing and then adding some virtual worlds components. Those are the platforms that are getting huge user numbers, such as Gaia and IMVU. These are taking things kids are already doing and adding value....we also see coming from virtual world side lots of other platforms taking the very deep 3D experience, such as MTV, whyville.com. and applying it to things that people are already doing and gradually adding on more virtual-world to it. One thing I'm not seeing there yet is a virtual world that does both of those things, that has all of the advantages that can be brought by a deep virtual world experience, along with self-expression and communication tools, such as profile pages and asynchronous communication. There are a lot of new platforms focusing on that as well. Clearly there are possibilities for a virtual world in the teen and youth space that could be a better acquisition candidate than MySpace.
The adult space is quite a bit further behind...I don't mean adult content, of course that's out there. But for an adult audience, a lot of experimentation hasn't even started yet. Adult users are *not* those with short attention spans -- the users that are there now are interested in investing a lot of time there. The long-term biz models aren't there yet, e-commerce and retail aren't there yet. In virtual worlds, every type of consumer shopping experience can be better than the web, though not better than in the real world. I'm not sure how long it will take but the time will come when there's more e-commerce done in virtual worlds than on the web. There's a lot of experimentation yet to be done.
Kids, he said, have the first virtual worlds market to become established and successful, with vws such as Webkinz, Club Penguin, etc. Large companies and major brands are marketing there, as well as sponsoring their own virtual worlds (Nicktropolis, Barbie, etc). Clearly those are here to stay. The users are spending money (or their parents' money), and there have been acquisitions, such as Club Penguin which was bought by Disney. Virtual Worlds have definitely been a breakthrough success as a entertainment medium for kids.
The next stage is the "multiply like rabbits" stage -- I predict a year from now we'll be looking at 40 virtual worlds for kids, all heavily marketed. This is great and sobering too because a lot of them won't be successful. We're beginning to see brutal competition as the early success attracts a lot of people coming in. Everything but the Keebler elf world, and maybe that.
Most interesting for the audience here is that it would be a mistake not to pay close attention to this even if you are not involved in kid stuff....this is where innovation is happening, and competition will focus on how do you make the user exprience work for users with short attention spans, which is everyone except early adopters who are already in virtual worlds. The kids' virtual worlds are also pushing the envelope to get a good user experience on machines that are not high-end.
Teen space is interesting, and perhaps only a step behind the kids' space....I would summarize the teen space as platforms that have taken communications that teens are already doing and then adding some virtual worlds components. Those are the platforms that are getting huge user numbers, such as Gaia and IMVU. These are taking things kids are already doing and adding value....we also see coming from virtual world side lots of other platforms taking the very deep 3D experience, such as MTV, whyville.com. and applying it to things that people are already doing and gradually adding on more virtual-world to it. One thing I'm not seeing there yet is a virtual world that does both of those things, that has all of the advantages that can be brought by a deep virtual world experience, along with self-expression and communication tools, such as profile pages and asynchronous communication. There are a lot of new platforms focusing on that as well. Clearly there are possibilities for a virtual world in the teen and youth space that could be a better acquisition candidate than MySpace.
The adult space is quite a bit further behind...I don't mean adult content, of course that's out there. But for an adult audience, a lot of experimentation hasn't even started yet. Adult users are *not* those with short attention spans -- the users that are there now are interested in investing a lot of time there. The long-term biz models aren't there yet, e-commerce and retail aren't there yet. In virtual worlds, every type of consumer shopping experience can be better than the web, though not better than in the real world. I'm not sure how long it will take but the time will come when there's more e-commerce done in virtual worlds than on the web. There's a lot of experimentation yet to be done.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
User research for Second Life, virtual worlds in general
As of yet there's not a whole lot of research available publicly on the user experience in Second Life and virtual worlds overall. That's starting to change. Just this week a couple of reports have crossed my desk, one free and the other relatively inexpensive. Both are thought-provoking.
User Acceptance of Virtual Worlds bills itself as an "exploratory report" and with 250 respondents, that seems right. It's also fairly timely, having been fielded last spring. The authors, academics at Rollins College and Potsdam University, present this summary of their findings, a sort of snapshot of their respondents:
The reason I found this interesting was that I read this report just after I read Social Technographics, a Forrester report from last spring that attempt to segment consumers of all kinds of social media, describing them by their placement on the "participation ladder" (see image here, in a thoughtful blog post on the Business Communicators of Second Life blog that discusses the Social Technographics report in detail).
According to report author Charlene Li, the ladder represents "six increasing levels of a participation in social technologies. Participation at one level may or may not overlap with participation at other levels." The six rungs are (in descending order of intensity of participation):
These studies are interesting for the snapshots they offer, but overall there is a dearth of research available on virtual worlds users -- what motivates them, what interests them, who they are, what their real-life and virtual-worlds habits are, how those are different and how those are similar.
There's a move afoot to start a Metaverse Market Index, which will offer an independent, welcome source for tracking data and for virtual worlds user research. Once the MMI gets started, the virtual worlds world will be less like the Wild West and more like....the Wild West with a couple of badged sheriffs, maybe. Data should begin to come from that effort by mid-2008.
Meanwhile, companies that would like to explore the possibilities of virtual worlds for their brands would be advised to do primary research specifically tailored to their brand (both in-world and real-life). Call us if you need help with that. That we can do!
User Acceptance of Virtual Worlds bills itself as an "exploratory report" and with 250 respondents, that seems right. It's also fairly timely, having been fielded last spring. The authors, academics at Rollins College and Potsdam University, present this summary of their findings, a sort of snapshot of their respondents:
· 90% of respondents have less than a year experience on Second Life.The authors also asked their respondents what other social networks they are on, and got this response: 72% also use YouTube, 47% use Flickr, 40% use MySpace, 39% use FaceBook and 33% use LinkedIn.
· 70% access Second Life from home.
· 67% of respondents are not afraid of giving personal information.
· Almost 60% are very likely to buy virtual goods from Second Life, and 42% are willing to use their credit card.
· 70% perceive Second Life to improve collaboration, 69% say it improves communication, and 61% say it improves cooperation between people.
· 56% of respondents perceive Second Life as easy to use.
· Finally, people are using Second Life not to change their identity, but rather to explore and visit new places and meet people.
The reason I found this interesting was that I read this report just after I read Social Technographics, a Forrester report from last spring that attempt to segment consumers of all kinds of social media, describing them by their placement on the "participation ladder" (see image here, in a thoughtful blog post on the Business Communicators of Second Life blog that discusses the Social Technographics report in detail).
According to report author Charlene Li, the ladder represents "six increasing levels of a participation in social technologies. Participation at one level may or may not overlap with participation at other levels." The six rungs are (in descending order of intensity of participation):
· Creators. Online consumers who publish blogs, maintain Web pages, or upload videos to sites like YouTube at least once per month. Creators, an elite group, include just 13% of the adult online population. Creators are generally young — the average age of adult users is 39 — but are evenly split between men and women.The way I am reading the results from these studies, Second Life is full of Creators and Joiners. The Social Technographics report also offers profile information on users with different kinds of motivations. Social media users who are entertainment-motivated (which would be many Second Life users) tend to "participate in greater numbers," says the report (as opposed to those whose use of social media is motivated by career or family). As more job fairs and other recruiting activities start to take place in Second Life, we may see greater numbers of career-motivated people there.
· Critics. These online consumers participate by commenting on blogs or posting ratings and reviews on sites like Amazon.com. Critics represent 19% of all adult online consumers and on average are several years older than Creators.
· Collectors. Users who save URLs on a social bookmarking service like del.icio.us or use RSS feeds on Bloglines, thus creating metadata that’s shared with the entire community. Collectors represent 15% of the adult online population and are the most male-dominated of all the Social Technographics groups.
· Joiners. This unique group has just one defining behavior — using a social networking site like MySpace.com or Facebook. They represent only 19% of the adult online population and are the youngest of the Social Technographics groups. They are highly likely to engage in other Social Computing activities — 56% also read blogs, while 30% publish blogs.
· Spectators. This group of blog readers, video viewers, and podcast listeners, which represents 33% of the adult online population, is important as the audience for the social content made by everyone else. The most common activity for Spectators is reading blogs.
· Inactives. Today, 52% of online adults do not participate at all in social computing activities. These Inactives have an average age of 50, are more likely to be women, and are much less likely to consider themselves leaders or tell their friends about products that interest them.
These studies are interesting for the snapshots they offer, but overall there is a dearth of research available on virtual worlds users -- what motivates them, what interests them, who they are, what their real-life and virtual-worlds habits are, how those are different and how those are similar.
There's a move afoot to start a Metaverse Market Index, which will offer an independent, welcome source for tracking data and for virtual worlds user research. Once the MMI gets started, the virtual worlds world will be less like the Wild West and more like....the Wild West with a couple of badged sheriffs, maybe
Meanwhile, companies that would like to explore the possibilities of virtual worlds for their brands would be advised to do primary research specifically tailored to their brand (both in-world and real-life). Call us if you need help with that. That we can do!
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Sometimes It Counts To Count -- And Sometimes It Doesn't
A couple of very good posts on the uses of qualitative vs. quantitative data have come my way over the past few weeks. Both of these are well worth looking into:
Andrew Hargadon, author of How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate, wrote this on his blog about “the virtues of qualitative research”:
1. When you don’t know what to count.
My take: This is what we often use qualitative techniques for in market research. If you don’t know what specific kinds of answers you're looking for, you can’t even construct a questionnaire with closed-end questions. So, often the first step is a qualitative study that will allow you to understand what’s important and what even begin to understand what can and should be measured.
2. When you can count it, but it doesn’t stick.
My take: It seems to me that this is the least compelling of Sutton's reasons, if only because so many companies seem to want numbers of some kind before they’ll make a decision. But it is true that compelling stories and images, which can only come from qualitative research, can be very persuasive.
3. When what you can count doesn’t count.
I don’t have anything to add here that’s better than Sutton’s observation: “In the hunt for and obsession with what can be counted, the most important evidence is sometimes overlooked. As Einstein said, ‘Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.’ ”
Andrew Hargadon, author of How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate, wrote this on his blog about “the virtues of qualitative research”:
“Qualitative research is, at its heart, an attempt to understand how people (or fish) interpret their reality and as a result make it. Anyone who has both looked at manufacturing statistics and wandered the factory floor knows that you can learn a lot by watching and talking to the workers about their work and their lives. And so, when you decide you want your company to be more innovative--and you decide to reward those who are ‘innovative’--you need to be very careful how you are measuring innovation.”In an unrelated post, Bob Sutton, author of The No-Asshole Rule, discusses on his blog the current focus of many management gurus (including Sutton himself), “evidence-based management”:
“Managers and the business press seem to automatically assume that quantitative evidence is always the best evidence....The message seems to be that evidence-based management means management by quantitative data. I reject that thought, and have always believed that there are times when qualitative data are more powerful, valid, and useful for guiding action than quantitative data.”Sutton goes on to describe three areas he feels it essential that companies use qualitative data:
1. When you don’t know what to count.
My take: This is what we often use qualitative techniques for in market research. If you don’t know what specific kinds of answers you're looking for, you can’t even construct a questionnaire with closed-end questions. So, often the first step is a qualitative study that will allow you to understand what’s important and what even begin to understand what can and should be measured.
2. When you can count it, but it doesn’t stick.
My take: It seems to me that this is the least compelling of Sutton's reasons, if only because so many companies seem to want numbers of some kind before they’ll make a decision. But it is true that compelling stories and images, which can only come from qualitative research, can be very persuasive.
3. When what you can count doesn’t count.
I don’t have anything to add here that’s better than Sutton’s observation: “In the hunt for and obsession with what can be counted, the most important evidence is sometimes overlooked. As Einstein said, ‘Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.’ ”
Friday, September 14, 2007
Ford and JWT blur the line between marketing and research
"This is a marketing research project, and you won't be marketed to as a result of this project. And we won't use your image or words to market anything."
We say this, or words to this effect, at the beginning each and every focus group we do. Words like this appear somewhere in the recruiting script of every quant survey we do. We live by these words. And we're not the only ones -- the "church and state separation" between interviewing people for research and interviewing people to solicit marketing endorsements is a wide gap that's observed by most ethical agencies, and spelled out in the standards and ethics statements of groups such as CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organizations).
Apparently the folks at Ford and JWT did not get that memo about the ethics of market research. A couple of weeks ago the Ford "Swap My Ride" campaign launched, complete with testimonials solicited under the guide of marketing research:
"In New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Dallas, its advertising agency, JWT, had workers pretend to be from a fake market-research firm, track down owners of cars made by Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and other competitors, and ask them to drive new Ford models for a supposedly impartial weeklong test." (from the Wall Street Journal, sub reqd)
Not only did JWT gather and film the research "respondents" under a ruse, they *never* told some what was really going on. Again, from the Sept. 14 Wall Street Journal article:
"Reached yesterday, Mr. Campos [one of the participants] was surprised to learn In-Home Test Drive Experience isn't a real company and was linked to Ford. 'I had no idea,' he said. He added it doesn't change his high opinion of the Focus, but that it would be better for the company to be 'more straight-forward.' "
The WSJ calls this an "aggressive marketing tactic" and seems to suggest that Ford has no choice, as the quality perception of American cars is so low among buyers of foreign (especially Japanese) cars that it's virtually impossible to get past that perceptual screen and get people to really "see" the cars and the quality improvements that have been made over the years.
“We wanted raw, unbiased opinions,” said Toby Barlow, co-president and executive creative director at JWT Team Detroit, Ford’s longtime creative shop. “We didn’t want them to think they were in a TV commercial. We needed a trick to get real objectivity and honest responses.” (from The New York Times, sub reqd)
They wanted honest responses, so they had to lie to get them? If people didn't know that their video was going to be used, I wonder if they told them that their words and images were going to end up on this Ford website?
This is a story that's just now starting to throw off a backlash (see here and here). I predict that the backlash will grow. In the end all that will have happened is that once again those of us who are actually practicing market research according to ethical guidelines will again have to defend our industry to consumers who are quite rightly skeptical. And Ford will simply come off looking desperate. People, this is not how social media works. The point of consumer-generated media is that you let the consumers generate the media, not trick them into starring in media that you generate.
We say this, or words to this effect, at the beginning each and every focus group we do. Words like this appear somewhere in the recruiting script of every quant survey we do. We live by these words. And we're not the only ones -- the "church and state separation" between interviewing people for research and interviewing people to solicit marketing endorsements is a wide gap that's observed by most ethical agencies, and spelled out in the standards and ethics statements of groups such as CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organizations).
Apparently the folks at Ford and JWT did not get that memo about the ethics of market research. A couple of weeks ago the Ford "Swap My Ride" campaign launched, complete with testimonials solicited under the guide of marketing research:
"In New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Dallas, its advertising agency, JWT, had workers pretend to be from a fake market-research firm, track down owners of cars made by Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and other competitors, and ask them to drive new Ford models for a supposedly impartial weeklong test." (from the Wall Street Journal, sub reqd)
Not only did JWT gather and film the research "respondents" under a ruse, they *never* told some what was really going on. Again, from the Sept. 14 Wall Street Journal article:
"Reached yesterday, Mr. Campos [one of the participants] was surprised to learn In-Home Test Drive Experience isn't a real company and was linked to Ford. 'I had no idea,' he said. He added it doesn't change his high opinion of the Focus, but that it would be better for the company to be 'more straight-forward.' "
The WSJ calls this an "aggressive marketing tactic" and seems to suggest that Ford has no choice, as the quality perception of American cars is so low among buyers of foreign (especially Japanese) cars that it's virtually impossible to get past that perceptual screen and get people to really "see" the cars and the quality improvements that have been made over the years.
“We wanted raw, unbiased opinions,” said Toby Barlow, co-president and executive creative director at JWT Team Detroit, Ford’s longtime creative shop. “We didn’t want them to think they were in a TV commercial. We needed a trick to get real objectivity and honest responses.” (from The New York Times, sub reqd)
They wanted honest responses, so they had to lie to get them? If people didn't know that their video was going to be used, I wonder if they told them that their words and images were going to end up on this Ford website?
This is a story that's just now starting to throw off a backlash (see here and here). I predict that the backlash will grow. In the end all that will have happened is that once again those of us who are actually practicing market research according to ethical guidelines will again have to defend our industry to consumers who are quite rightly skeptical. And Ford will simply come off looking desperate. People, this is not how social media works. The point of consumer-generated media is that you let the consumers generate the media, not trick them into starring in media that you generate.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Four resources for trendspotting
There are no new ideas, blah blah blah...we've all heard that. Ideas don't come out of thin air, they are generally the result of a winding path of connections made between and among things that others might see as completely unconnected....random firings of neurons in someone's brain that never connected before and may never connect again. Which means 1) you should always capture your ideas and 2) don't look to me for valid neurological explanations!
Trends, or (officially), "a manifestation of something that has unlocked or newly serviced an existing (and hardly ever changing) consumer need, desire, want, or value" make excellent stimuli for those who are looking for new ideas, especially since trends themselves are often the result of some freethinking person's connection-making process. And lucky for us, there are many sources for trend information that we can use as creative stimuli by simply asking ourselves, "how can that work in my business?"
For linear thinkers, this would be:
New idea = (Trend info + odd little bits of stimuli from God knows where) incubated in a creative, connection-seeking mind.
So step #1 is to gather information about trends to feed your mind. Here are my 4 favorite trend resources, and why they should be in your RSS reader or email inbox:
Trendwatching.com: Publishes a free trend briefing each month that is full of not just observations, but also lots of good "what does this all mean and what can I do with it?" info. Recent example: Their September trend briefing is a great rundown of tips for trendwatching that shouldn't be missed if you have any interest in trendwatching, of which here is a brief summary:
1. Know why you're tracking trends
2. Have a point of view
3. Weave your web of resources
4. Fine-tune your trend framework
5. Embed and apply
Springwise.com: Trendwatching.com's sister site, employing the same network of 8,000 spotters who scour the globe for new entrepreneurial ideas. These they have helpfully arranged in a free idea database, guaranteed to get your neurons firing on all cylinders. They publish a free weekly business ideas newsletter. Recent example: StuffYourRucksack, which helps travelers know how they can use their excess baggage capacity to bring much-needed supplies to underfunded non-profit organizations around the world.
PSFK.com: At the free level, PSFK publishes a group blog that's one of the most prolific out there, publishing many posts each day. Recent example: GoMoBo text-message pizza-ordering service
StrangeNewProducts.com: This blog hasn't been updated lately, but it's fun to tour their archives. Example: Caffeinated sunflower seeds
So, where do you find info on new trends? And how do you use trends info to add value to your business?
Trends, or (officially), "a manifestation of something that has unlocked or newly serviced an existing (and hardly ever changing) consumer need, desire, want, or value" make excellent stimuli for those who are looking for new ideas, especially since trends themselves are often the result of some freethinking person's connection-making process. And lucky for us, there are many sources for trend information that we can use as creative stimuli by simply asking ourselves, "how can that work in my business?"
For linear thinkers, this would be:
New idea = (Trend info + odd little bits of stimuli from God knows where) incubated in a creative, connection-seeking mind.
So step #1 is to gather information about trends to feed your mind. Here are my 4 favorite trend resources, and why they should be in your RSS reader or email inbox:
Trendwatching.com: Publishes a free trend briefing each month that is full of not just observations, but also lots of good "what does this all mean and what can I do with it?" info. Recent example: Their September trend briefing is a great rundown of tips for trendwatching that shouldn't be missed if you have any interest in trendwatching, of which here is a brief summary:
1. Know why you're tracking trends
2. Have a point of view
3. Weave your web of resources
4. Fine-tune your trend framework
5. Embed and apply
Springwise.com: Trendwatching.com's sister site, employing the same network of 8,000 spotters who scour the globe for new entrepreneurial ideas. These they have helpfully arranged in a free idea database, guaranteed to get your neurons firing on all cylinders. They publish a free weekly business ideas newsletter. Recent example: StuffYourRucksack, which helps travelers know how they can use their excess baggage capacity to bring much-needed supplies to underfunded non-profit organizations around the world.
PSFK.com: At the free level, PSFK publishes a group blog that's one of the most prolific out there, publishing many posts each day. Recent example: GoMoBo text-message pizza-ordering service
StrangeNewProducts.com: This blog hasn't been updated lately, but it's fun to tour their archives. Example: Caffeinated sunflower seeds
So, where do you find info on new trends? And how do you use trends info to add value to your business?
Monday, August 27, 2007
Sara McLachlan - changing the world
I just came across this video from Sara McLachlan and associated data on Swivel a great data site in our Blinklist. Sara McLachlan has donated the $150,000 normally used to make a video to much needed spots around the globe. Why is this interesting? Well for one it ties into making the world a better place wich is always important. However, even more intriguing is when you can create more positive results with the same our less input. It's the equivalent to building a city that reduces pollution instead of creating it (which is under construction now in China). How does this impossibility happen? In short - technology and creativity - both for the city in China and Sara McLachlan. An artist can't simply donate all their production money to charity and expect to stay profitable and thrive. However, an established artist can use the brand equity they have built up and new technology platforms (inexpensive video production, YouTube, MySpace and more) to create, product and distribute to a far wider audience in a more engaging manner. I have no dougt this $15 video will drive more record sales, artist brand equity and social awareness all at the same time than the next $20M spent on music videos this year. You can't watch it and not be moved by the images, the great music and the causes. More importantly it will be hard to watch another music video without asking why the hell that artist does not do the same! See the official site and list of charities for "World on Fire" by Sara. Then, come back and tell me how other campaigns and companies can do more good, build their brand and change the world.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Virtual Worlds Conference 2007 - Be 3D or Be 2D
This is the 2nd Virtual Worlds Conference that I am aware of and it should be impressive. The first one was in NYC and they received a bigger turnout than expected. I was unable to make it last time, but based on all the talk about virtual worlds over the last 6 months, I am sure it will be packed. Also, Sentient will have the inside cover ad of the program so make sure to take a peek.
Virtual Worlds Fall Conference and Expo takes place October 10 – 11, 2007, at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California. Virtual Worlds Fall is dedicated to helping businesses harness the power of virtual worlds to engage with their customers, partners and employees.
The conference program includes five tracks featuring over 70 industry leaders presenting the latest techniques and best practices. This conference will bring together more than 1,300 attendees to participate in concentrated discourse with their peers, network with colleagues, learn from industry leaders, conduct business, and see the latest tools, technologies and techniques - all in a fun and relaxed atmosphere.
Anthony Zuiker, Creator and Executive Producer of the award winning CSI: Crime Scene Investigation franchise (including; CSI, CSI Miami and CSI: NY), will deliver the opening keynote of the two-day conference.
Online registration is open, and attendees can save $400 by taking advantage of the early-bird registration - only $595 - until August 24, 2007. Registration information and conference details are available at http://www.VirtualWorldsFall.com.
I am heading to register right now, hope to see you there!
Monday, August 13, 2007
Is it a case of the chicken and egg?
Virtual worlds, they are all the buzz. CEO's of Fortune 50 companies are claiming they are the next evolution of the internet. Gartner has publicly announced that by 2011 they believe 80% of the internet will have a "second life" (though they also warned about security issues this past week as well). Lastly, over 100 articles have been written about virtual worlds in just the past 6 months.
If you were to see all of this, you might immediately run down to your web team and say "I NEED A VIRTUAL WORLD PRESENCE." Which is exactly what a 100 or so major companies have already done, only to see that a nascent market is precisely that: a nascent market.
Don't get me wrong, I believe just like Sal Palmisano, IBM CEO, that virtual worlds are the next evolution of the internet, however we must first learn how to market within virtual worlds, how users of virtual worlds like to be communicated to, and how best to message our brand and position our company, products, and services. We must iron out the kinks and nail down security issues. We must bolt down the hatches, and hoist the sales.
I don't blame the companies completely though, as so many creative developers quickly jumped on the bandwagon and started spitting out their show-stopping creative and telling brands exactly how and why they should be in a virtual world. All of this without a single statement, quote, remark, or comment from an actual customer of (insert brand).
Did we not just go through this around the turn of this century when everyone had a website not because they knew how to leverage and use it, but because the guy next door did and the creative was just too cool for school? Did we also not go through one of the worst industry busts of all time, when the deck of cards on the Dot.Com era came crashing down? Did we not learn that we must first research, ask questions, talk to customers, understand usability, etc. prior to building the coolest creative ever?
I just got done spending a couple of hours on MarketingSherpa.com reading all the case studies about how companies have been successful designing and re-designing their websites because they took the time to poll customers, to run usability tests, and to understand the psychology of the users. Virtual world presences are basically 3-D websites, so why should we buck the process we have been using the past 5 years or so just because there is a new cool gadget out on the market?
If you are a marketer of a brand and you are reading this, I urge you to ask the question which comes first, the research/usability or the creative. If you think it is research/usability, then give me a ring. I can’t guarantee that virtual worlds are ready for your brand, however I can help you make a decision, keep you from second guessing, and allow you to focus on the things that matter. If you think it is creative go talk to the corporations already in virtual worlds. My guess is that a good many of them can't explain the current strategic direction of their presence (though they might have been able to when it launched).
Virtual worlds are definitely the next evolution of the internet, but until we as marketers start to understand that virtual worlds are not a chicken and egg proposition, that they are clearly research/usability first, creative second, then we will be stuck with 1 step forward and 2 steps back as big media has a heyday debating the viability of virtual worlds.
If you were to see all of this, you might immediately run down to your web team and say "I NEED A VIRTUAL WORLD PRESENCE." Which is exactly what a 100 or so major companies have already done, only to see that a nascent market is precisely that: a nascent market.
Don't get me wrong, I believe just like Sal Palmisano, IBM CEO, that virtual worlds are the next evolution of the internet, however we must first learn how to market within virtual worlds, how users of virtual worlds like to be communicated to, and how best to message our brand and position our company, products, and services. We must iron out the kinks and nail down security issues. We must bolt down the hatches, and hoist the sales.
I don't blame the companies completely though, as so many creative developers quickly jumped on the bandwagon and started spitting out their show-stopping creative and telling brands exactly how and why they should be in a virtual world. All of this without a single statement, quote, remark, or comment from an actual customer of (insert brand).
Did we not just go through this around the turn of this century when everyone had a website not because they knew how to leverage and use it, but because the guy next door did and the creative was just too cool for school? Did we also not go through one of the worst industry busts of all time, when the deck of cards on the Dot.Com era came crashing down? Did we not learn that we must first research, ask questions, talk to customers, understand usability, etc. prior to building the coolest creative ever?
I just got done spending a couple of hours on MarketingSherpa.com reading all the case studies about how companies have been successful designing and re-designing their websites because they took the time to poll customers, to run usability tests, and to understand the psychology of the users. Virtual world presences are basically 3-D websites, so why should we buck the process we have been using the past 5 years or so just because there is a new cool gadget out on the market?
If you are a marketer of a brand and you are reading this, I urge you to ask the question which comes first, the research/usability or the creative. If you think it is research/usability, then give me a ring. I can’t guarantee that virtual worlds are ready for your brand, however I can help you make a decision, keep you from second guessing, and allow you to focus on the things that matter. If you think it is creative go talk to the corporations already in virtual worlds. My guess is that a good many of them can't explain the current strategic direction of their presence (though they might have been able to when it launched).
Virtual worlds are definitely the next evolution of the internet, but until we as marketers start to understand that virtual worlds are not a chicken and egg proposition, that they are clearly research/usability first, creative second, then we will be stuck with 1 step forward and 2 steps back as big media has a heyday debating the viability of virtual worlds.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Don't blame the platform for failure
I just read this great article about not blaming a platform (in this case Second Life) if you have the wrong goals or poor execution. Read it here (article). What it states simply is that some platforms are made for selling, some for brand building and so forth. New immersive worlds need to be approached differently. See our earlier post titled It's about the "cliques". These new web platforms build relationships and are not the best place to just recreate a real-world store and expect the dollars to start rolling in.
Instead, businesses need to figure out the "why" to why they should be there. Just jumping in because you don't want to get left behind is not an adequate why - and we tell clients this all the time. Sometimes money is still best spent the old fashioned way (and not even with Sentient!) in beefing up customer service, buying TV spots, sponsorships and so forth. If you want to chat about who should enter these new worlds, why and how, please let me know.
Instead, businesses need to figure out the "why" to why they should be there. Just jumping in because you don't want to get left behind is not an adequate why - and we tell clients this all the time. Sometimes money is still best spent the old fashioned way (and not even with Sentient!) in beefing up customer service, buying TV spots, sponsorships and so forth. If you want to chat about who should enter these new worlds, why and how, please let me know.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Austin AdFed and Virtual Worlds
I recently had the pleasure of writing an article for the Austin AdFed newsletter about virtual worlds and marketing. Take a look here and let me know what you think.
http://www.austinadfed.com/newsletter_06-3.shtml
http://www.austinadfed.com/newsletter_06-3.shtml
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Is Second Life a dip or a cul-de-sac?
Last week my colleague Eric Brunker posted about the recent wave of Second Life bashing. He was a little ahead of himself -- the biggest bash of all came a few days later in Wired, in the Frank Rose story How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions On A Deserted Second Life and editor Chris Anderson's Long Tail blog post, Why I Gave Up Second Life. There are robust comments at both links that offer the pro/con give-and-take, mostly centered around the not-enough-to-do-in-SL/not-enough-traffic-in-SL reasons given by Rose and Anderson. Erick Schonfeld seconded those opinions on the Business 2.0 blog the.next.net, as well. Wagner James Au from New World News not only disagreed, but put forth an interesting argument that SL marketing in the short term creates something of a long tail for a brand (an argument with which Anderson, who created the Long Tail, did not disagree). Au also says (and has said before) that Second Life marketing is simply waiting for the killer marketing app that will in the long term bring value to SL marketing efforts.
The idea that Second Life marketing is doomed and corporations are wasting their money there is a classic example of missing the forest for the trees, in this case missing the virtual forest for the Second Life trees. This is essentially the point Eric (Sentient Eric, not Business 2.0 Erick) made in his post. There are other marketing/media/PR bloggers saying much the same thing -- for example, B.L. Ochman and Shel Holtz, who says "more forward-looking competitors stand a better chance of being prepared when the scales tip." Paul Hemp in a Harvard Business Review blog, said "It would be a grave mistake to dismiss the notion of marketing and selling in virtual worlds simply because of the shortcomings of Second Life."
We concur. Here's some food for thought from Business Week's April 16, 2007, article The Coming Virtual Web:
If the 3D Internet does not come to true fruition until 2016 or so, which companies are going to be best poised to take advantage of its marketing possibilities -- those who waited until everything got figured out by someone else, or those who pushed through the early, tough years, gained experience, and figured out how to make it work?
The idea that Second Life marketing is doomed and corporations are wasting their money there is a classic example of missing the forest for the trees, in this case missing the virtual forest for the Second Life trees. This is essentially the point Eric (Sentient Eric, not Business 2.0 Erick) made in his post. There are other marketing/media/PR bloggers saying much the same thing -- for example, B.L. Ochman and Shel Holtz, who says "more forward-looking competitors stand a better chance of being prepared when the scales tip." Paul Hemp in a Harvard Business Review blog, said "It would be a grave mistake to dismiss the notion of marketing and selling in virtual worlds simply because of the shortcomings of Second Life."
We concur. Here's some food for thought from Business Week's April 16, 2007, article The Coming Virtual Web:
"The Acceleration Studies Foundation ... (a non-profit research group that has set out to define the 3D Internet) assumes much of its vision won't materialize until 2016 — and some participants think even that date is ambitious."Here's another way to look at it: Is Second Life a cul-de-sac, a cliff, or a dip on the path to virtual world marketing success? According Seth Godin's latest short-but-thought-provoking book The Dip, knowing when to quit is a matter of strategy. It makes sense to quit if you're in a cul-de-sac or a dead end. If what you're in is a Dip -- "the long slog between starting and mastery" -- then it's important to "lean into it...push harder" because people (and companies) who "invest the time and the effort to power through the Dip are the ones who become the best in the world."
If the 3D Internet does not come to true fruition until 2016 or so, which companies are going to be best poised to take advantage of its marketing possibilities -- those who waited until everything got figured out by someone else, or those who pushed through the early, tough years, gained experience, and figured out how to make it work?
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Bottled water and other disasters
Our environment is melting away, small artisan and high quality “shops” (farms, journeymen…) are slowly disappearing – well you know the story. While the woes of these happenings are becoming less and less disputed the solutions are not becoming any clearer that I can tell. There are still some who see this as simply the market economy and make some valid arguments – for one of my favorite back-and-forth discussion on this “Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business” there is a spirited discussion between Milton Friedman, Whole Foods' John Mackey, and Cypress Semiconductor's T.J. Rodgers (http://www.wholefoods.com/blogs/jm/archives/2005/09/).
Another great recent article in Fast Company (July/August 2007) by Charles Fishman (auther of The Wal-Mart Effect) talks about the $15 billion dollar a year bottled water industry and the branding psychology behind it. What seems like a healthy choice quickly becomes an environmental and humanitarian crisis. Fishman points out that bottled water is a recent invention, like the iPod and 10 years ago we did not know about it or “need” it – now it is the must have lifestyle accessory – both the water and the iPod. The issue with the water is that "we" (I buy it by the box) are spending billions, producing plastic and shipping something around the world (all steps eating fossil fuel and resources) for something that runs in our homes and offices - thought provoking to say the least. Read it here and let me know what you think: (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html).
So my question is this. How does a research, marketing and advertising shop like Sentient along with our clients build worldwide brands, reach out to consumers, built market share and all that other stuff and be part of the solution and not the problem. Let me know what you think, please!
Another great recent article in Fast Company (July/August 2007) by Charles Fishman (auther of The Wal-Mart Effect) talks about the $15 billion dollar a year bottled water industry and the branding psychology behind it. What seems like a healthy choice quickly becomes an environmental and humanitarian crisis. Fishman points out that bottled water is a recent invention, like the iPod and 10 years ago we did not know about it or “need” it – now it is the must have lifestyle accessory – both the water and the iPod. The issue with the water is that "we" (I buy it by the box) are spending billions, producing plastic and shipping something around the world (all steps eating fossil fuel and resources) for something that runs in our homes and offices - thought provoking to say the least. Read it here and let me know what you think: (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html).
So my question is this. How does a research, marketing and advertising shop like Sentient along with our clients build worldwide brands, reach out to consumers, built market share and all that other stuff and be part of the solution and not the problem. Let me know what you think, please!
A Sentient History
The history of Sentient Services, LP? Well I guess that has to start with my history. No, I am not “Sentient” – the company is much more and I have been lucky enough to hire smarter and more creative folks than I. However, here is how the company started. I came out of undergrad at UT Austin with dual degrees in Government and Economics and took a job with The Gallup Organization (yes, the one that does all the political polls). However, a little known fact is that the political polling is a small part of the company. They have great brand consulting, employee strengths and hiring practice, customer engagement, and a myriad of other research and consulting practices. I was lucky enough to work with an amazing team in California doing market research and brand consulting for Intel, Microsoft, Toyota, Nissan and others. Alas, Austin came calling – well actually it was the birth of our first child (my lovely daughter) and the desire to be able to own a home. So, back to Texas we came and during this time I left Gallup to join one of my research clients from Intel where he started a market research and branding company catering to the technology sector. There I worked around the globe with clients such as HP, Intel, IBM and others to develop new products and services, build and track brands and conduct just about any flavor of quantitative and qualitative market research.
At this point I knew I wanted to become a professor and get my Ph.D., so I enrolled in grad school at UT Austin in the Government department specializing in political behavior (a lot of sociology and psychology) and survey research methodology. And, we had our second child (an adorable little boy). During this time I worked as the Branding and Research Director at an advertising agency where accounts included Dell, Seagate and others. Needless to say, I was busy, too busy. So, realizing I wanted to see my children and wife and not move somewhere in the middle of nowhere to get my first teaching job (I won’t name undesirable cities at the risk of offending) I left school with my Masters and started Sentient Services, LP right as the .com bubble burst. Our (I use that term liberally, it was just me) first clients were Business Objects and working on the largest IPO ever at the time – the Freescale spinoff from Motorola. I worked around the clock doing brand tracking and consulting in 8 countries for the Freescale spinoff which turned out to be extremely successful. From there the business continued to grow – I moved out of the house into office space, hired former clients, travelled the globe and developed a list of clients that I truly consider friends and am blessed to be able to work with to this day.
Sentient today is a thriving company and we pride ourselves on our amazing employees and clients that work with integrity and respect for each other the end customers to create better products, brands and experiences. There you have it – a short history.
At this point I knew I wanted to become a professor and get my Ph.D., so I enrolled in grad school at UT Austin in the Government department specializing in political behavior (a lot of sociology and psychology) and survey research methodology. And, we had our second child (an adorable little boy). During this time I worked as the Branding and Research Director at an advertising agency where accounts included Dell, Seagate and others. Needless to say, I was busy, too busy. So, realizing I wanted to see my children and wife and not move somewhere in the middle of nowhere to get my first teaching job (I won’t name undesirable cities at the risk of offending) I left school with my Masters and started Sentient Services, LP right as the .com bubble burst. Our (I use that term liberally, it was just me) first clients were Business Objects and working on the largest IPO ever at the time – the Freescale spinoff from Motorola. I worked around the clock doing brand tracking and consulting in 8 countries for the Freescale spinoff which turned out to be extremely successful. From there the business continued to grow – I moved out of the house into office space, hired former clients, travelled the globe and developed a list of clients that I truly consider friends and am blessed to be able to work with to this day.
Sentient today is a thriving company and we pride ourselves on our amazing employees and clients that work with integrity and respect for each other the end customers to create better products, brands and experiences. There you have it – a short history.
Howdy from the CEO
I am Paul Janowitz, Founder and CEO of Sentient Services, LP. I am going to use this space for some open dialogues with customers, friends, partners and whoever else happens to be reading this. Those of you that know me, know that I want Sentient to be at the forefront of social responsibility and an amazing place to work, first and foremost. If we do not do this, the business is simply not worth running for me personally. I want clients to work with us for who we are and how we operate before they even consider our portfolio or skill sets.
However: I also want to be profitable, work with large global clients and local clients alike, push the boundaries of technology, develop new products and work within consumer goods, real estate, technology, and other brand centric categories.
As a market researcher first and foremost I see my job as developing better customer experiences by listening. The art and science of market research helps build better products and deliver them to the right market. This I see not as pushing stuff people don’t need, but as actually reducing corporate waste, increasing customer service and delivering more of what works and less of what doesn’t to the market place. I also see our advertising practice as helping those companies that do this the best – our clients that employ market research. So, am I putting lipstick on a pig and trying to make myself feel less like a consumer? Let me know your thoughts.
However: I also want to be profitable, work with large global clients and local clients alike, push the boundaries of technology, develop new products and work within consumer goods, real estate, technology, and other brand centric categories.
As a market researcher first and foremost I see my job as developing better customer experiences by listening. The art and science of market research helps build better products and deliver them to the right market. This I see not as pushing stuff people don’t need, but as actually reducing corporate waste, increasing customer service and delivering more of what works and less of what doesn’t to the market place. I also see our advertising practice as helping those companies that do this the best – our clients that employ market research. So, am I putting lipstick on a pig and trying to make myself feel less like a consumer? Let me know your thoughts.
Monday, July 23, 2007
It's about the "cliques"
...not "clicks". Advataring is not about open rates, click throughs, or even conversions. It is about creating a community around a brand that is influential over the sentiment of a brand for each and every member of the community. Avatars are social in nature, they communicate via various mediums, but basically they are about interacting and communicating with the virtual world they reside in, which includes other avatars. Thus, to market to them, you must treat them as communities, not as individuals. In doing so, you will effectively influence the community to immerse itself in a brand, your brand.There is a mantra by a well-known advertising company that goes something like this "The more time a person spends with your brand, the more likely they are to spend money with your brand." This defines Second Life in that we are not trying to drive clicks or conversion, rather we are driving immersion by communities into a brand. A person that is immersed in a community will spend time with that community. If said community is immersed in a brand, then members of that community will spend time around the brand which will increase the likelihood they spend money with that brand, either in first or second life.
Thus if x = a user, y = a community, and z= a brand, if x is a subset of y and y is a subset of z, then x must be a subset of z (I just made that up, smile).
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