Just attended a very interesting meeting of the Second Life Business Communicators. As you can see from the photo, we had a great crowd! Roo Reynolds (aka Algernon Spackler in SL), the IBM Metaverse Evangelist, spoke to our group about IBM and it’s involvement in Second Life. A few really interesting tidbits from the meeting:
IBM is going to announce 12 new sims opening to the public either today or Monday. Those at the meeting who had seen the new island said that it was really cool. For me, the more interesting news was that IBM and Circuit City are working on a “new retail store for the future.” According to Reynolds, you can sit on a virtual sofa and try out different size televisions to help you decide which size works best based on your distance from the wall – that’s just one example of what they are working on. In the end, I think that any shopping experience could be very cool.
Well, yesterday I guessed that Second Life would probably 2 million residents this month, but I never thought that it would happen in less than 24 hours. I did a little math, and according to my figures (and adjusting for the time variance), Second Life grew 1.4% over the last 24 hours. Should Second Life continue to grow at that rate, there will be 3 million residents by mid-January.
If you don’t already have your avatar, you are behind the curve.
It looks that way. As of 8:19 a.m. SL time on December 14, Second Life is sitting with 1,982,813 residents. What’s amazing is that based on estimates and growth rates as soon as 4 months ago, it looked like SL would merely hit 1 million this year. I guess the press has been extra kind to Linden Labs.
The only downside is that the world seems to be growing much faster than the systems that operate it. Over the last couple weeks various search functions have gone offline because of “heavy database load” (think what would happen if Google was the only search engine, and it went down). It seems that everything is working now, but I’d guess the good folks at LL will be spending their holidays adding servers and updating systems.
Posted by John T. Mims, APR under
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Found a little snippet on Bulldog Reporter’s Daily ‘Dog. From Richard Nacht, president of Blogging Systems comes the 10 strategic benefits of corporate blogging. To read the full article, visit the Bulldog site. Here are the 10 benefits as listed from the article:
1. Search Engine Marketing —Blogs give you an increased presence on major search engines. The technology is a magnet for search engines like Yahoo! and Google. A well-written, routinely updated, keyword-oriented blog can enhance your chances of garnering high rankings on search engine return pages. Google in particular indexes sites based on content—text on your site. The words comprising the content on your site are like currency to search engines. The more times a certain word or phrase, or a combination thereof, is used on your website, the more likely Google will index your site highly based on that word or phrase.
2. Direct Communications —Blogs provide a way for you to speak directly, openly and honestly with your customer. Blogs enable you to stop talking at them and start talking to them. Because blog technology allows readers to leave comments on the blog, communications becomes a two-way street, and a conversation ensues.
3. Brand Building —Blogs serve as another channel on which to promote your brand and company.
4. Competitive Differentiation —Because blogs give you the opportunity to tell your story over and over, they help set you apart from the competition.
5. Relational Marketing —Blogs allow you to build personal, long-lasting relationships with your customers that foster trust. One person put it this way: “A blog is a continual tour with a guide you get to know.”
6. Exploit the Niches —Blogs help you fill your particular industry niche.
7. Media & Public Relations —Blogs are excellent PR tools. The media calls you, not your competition.
8. Position You as an Expert —Blogs enable you to articulate your viewpoints, knowledge and expertise on matters pertaining to your industry.
9. Reputation Management —Blogs help you manage your online reputation.
10. Low Cost —Blogs are inexpensive to set up, operate and maintain. Ongoing marketing costs are minimal. They do require an investment of time in terms of blog posting, but it can pay big returns for the time spent.
Good job on the list, Richard.
