Say what you want about the copyright infringement issues, Mattel still missed the boat. Think about your own business. Are there tech communities in which your product/service could do well but you’re hesitating because you’re unsure or uptight? Could someone else compete with you in those spaces if you wait too long? How much will the damage to your reputation cost if you allow someone else to deliver your product better?

Think about it while you jam to this ditty.

Scrabulous

Intellagirl: Anyone know a whole lot about WP? Not a little…but a lot about the ins and outs of the CSS and why it might not act like it should? about 1 hour ago from web  

And what do you know no less than a minute later a stranger popped up in my Guest Gchat and offered help. Not only did he teach me about the Firebug extension for Firefox (which is awesome btw), but he walked me through the edit in my style.css that was necessary to fix all my image goodness on the blog. So this is a story about one tool leading to another. First, Marcus Welz (of Slbuzz fame) are Twitter friends because we’re both Second Life junkies. So Second Life leads to Twitter which leads to the little Gchat plug in which leads to Firebug which lead to me having a fixed blog!

Giant hugs to my geeky community of friends!

I’ll post the slides and notes a bit later. Hope to see some of you there!

So, in addition to giving my three rules of social media, I’ve also issued a challenge to these guys: How do the social media evangelists stop “preaching to the converted” through social media forms, and start engaging and exciting the huge population of folks who don’t even know what they’re missing? In the podcast I give my answer the question to get the conversation started.

I hope you all enjoy the podcast. And CC, Joseph, Mitch: I hope you’ll respond to the challenge!

Note: The podcast is at the bottom of the post in m4a format. I tried to get it up on iTunes but didn’t have the oompf to wrestle with it and this headcold at the same time. Enjoy! 

So, being the nutsy person that I am, I couldn’t help but run off and download the VLES software and make myself an avatar. It was, needless to say, very interesting. I had the choice of about five haircuts in five natural colors (so disappointing for us pink-haired folks), about a hundred clothing options, skin color, and the choice of five celebrity faces. I chose “The Portman” because “The Ricci” had anime-sized eyes. I could choose my height but there was no slider for body shape. Everyone is eating-disorder-skinny in VLES.

Here’s my avatar in her Herby Hancock tank top and red Joan Jett haircut.

She’s “like sooo New York! OMG!” When I logged in I was surprised to see that VLES was announcing that CSS (that Brazilian band who sings the song about music on the new Ipod commercials) would be playing.

Log-in screen with concert announcement and menu for choosing the club you’d like to pop in to.

It’s grungy; it’s emo; it’s an opportunity to market to a self-selected audience of people who like virtual worlds, socializing, and new music. In my opinion, VLES is a pretty good idea. But will it work?

• What is a virtual world? what definition works best to aid research? Is it different than a virtual environment?
• How does the ability to see others’ friends list change our perception of them? How is that perception different in a space where we can’t who someone is friends with?
• How can identity formation mechanics be made interoperable? Should they?
• How is the style/goal of the world or environment tied to expected avatar behavior (ex. Miis with guns?)?
• What are the trust implications of communication in multiple virtual spaces? (ex. Do I trust someone more who I know in SL and on Twitter?)
• Are social networks virtual worlds?
• Identity: does more information = more trust, does more or less choice allow for more succinct identities?
• Are we more or less immersed in spaces where we have more choices in identity formation?
• Does less identity = less immersion?
• Does greater choice in identity formation result in more accurate identity portrayal? more trust worthy identity?
• How would MUVEs and MMORPGs be changed if more SNS mechanics were added to them?
• What influences greater number of friends in an MMORPG/MUVE? mechanics of friendship? purpose or advantage of friendship? personality expression?
• Do SL or FB users have more friends? How does introversion or extroversion influence number of friends in each space?
• Is FB a more powerful social network because it can incorporate multiple identities and connections? Pull info from other spaces?
• Do we “know” people more if we”know” more than one of their online identities? If one of those identities is a SNS rather than a MUVE or MMORPG?
• How do we verify someone’s identity? What info do we need to feel that we know who they are?

These are pretty disorganized but you probably get the drift of where the ideas are going. I haven’t had a chance to think through any one of them to the point of satisfaction but Mark and I have been wrestling with the definition of virtual world because we just don’t feel that the definitions offered by others are prepared to deal with the multitude of spaces that are popping up online. So far we think that a virtual world is one in which:

• the world goes on whether you’re logged in or not; you can’t pause the world
• digital
• hosted remotely
• capacity more multi-user
• users are represented by some kind of avatar, identity that they create (even if it’s text-based or very limited in construction)

What would you add? Would you take anything away?

According to the Facebook blog:

“Engaging with businesses and buying things are part of your everyday life. Advertising doesn’t have to be about interrupting what you’re doing, but getting the right information about the purchases you make when you want it. We believe we’ve created a system where ads are more relevant and actually enhance Facebook. “

This is radical thinking in the world of marketing and advertising. But before I explain why let me give you a little case study/example of how this will work.

Bob has a Facebook profile and adds an application for, say, Amazon. Every time Bob adds a book to his wish list on Amazon an item goes into his News Feed announcing “Bob just added Brain Surgery for Dummies to his Wishlist” and all of his friends are notified. When they click on the feed they’re connected to Bob’s page and then to Amazon to see the book and are offered a discount on the book because they arrived through Bob’s recommendation. (Please note that not all Facebook advertisers will be offering discounts etc. but it would be nice!) Maybe Bob gets a nickel off his next order for every friend who purchased one of his recommended books.

It’s a pretty straight forward recommendation advertising scheme already in use on lots of sites. But here’s the kicker. There’s a difference between going to Amazon, for example, and clicking on “What my friends are buying” and having that same information delivered to you in another space, your social network.

There are a couple big ideas in play here:

1. The power of recommendations: We all know that we’re more likely to buy something recommended to us by a friend than based on advertising but I think it’s interesting to ponder the responsibility associated with recommending a product. How many times have you told a friend “Oh, man! That movie was so great! You HAVE to see it!”? They then see the movie and tell you “OMG! That movie sucked! I thought you had good taste!” The result? You stop recommending movies to your friend. Offering recommendations reflects not just on the product, but on the person offering the recommendation as well as on the person receiving it. “You thought I’d like that sweater?! Do you even know me?!”

2. Context of ads: It’s all about context. There’s a huge difference between someone shoving a coupon in your face as you walk down the street and the cashier saying “Did you know there’s a coupon for this? I think I have an extra one here. You’ll save a dollar.” In the first case the ad is unwelcome, even if it is for a product you’re interested in. In the second, you’re already interested in the product and you welcome the coupon. In another example, if your friend called you every day to tell you what he bought last night at Target you’d probably get annoyed. But if you were at Target and you could see a hover over products that said “Your friend Bob loves this soap!” you’d probably be grateful (or at least understand why Bob smells like Lavender and Honey all the time). Context determines whether an ad is welcome and helpful or annoying and obtrusive. The question is are ads from friends on Facebook welcome or intrusive?

I have to conclude that the level of intrusion and the power of the recommendation depends on who the friend is and how often they shove recommendations in your face. So, will you be a Facebook ad-whore or will you reject them and reject the friends who use them? Will you be able to ignore the ads like you would a sidebar ad or a banner ad? Do you think this kind of advertising is useful? powerful?

If you’re interested in microblogging ala Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, you might be interested to know that Google purchased Jaiku today. Besides making all the Jaiku employees dance around in celebration of their upcoming stock options, this could mean something big. Other smart folks are talking about it too:

• BlogShmog
• Guardian
• Reuters
• Mashable
• Read/Write Web
• OReilly

This could mean some serious improvements in the way Google IM works. Jaiku’s functionality, if added to gchat, could mean that you could sort your friends, send chat via SMS or a web interface not attached to Gmail. I’m imagining the implications of integrating Jaiku into Gmail and it’s making my head spin a bit. Though, I don’t think any of us should hold our breath. It could be quite a while before Google does anything with Jaiku. Keep your eye on it!

This will be huge! Why? Because it makes Facebook more powerful and more of a “one stop shop” for communicating with contacts. Most social web 2.0 sites would like to create a platform that you’d never leave, where everything you want to see or know is delivered right to you (along with ads and other revenue generating tools). Giving us the mechanics to manage multiple identities in one spot prevents us from leaving FB to go to another site to communicate with people associated with another facet of our lives. So smart!

The downside is that sorting like this might change the way some recently added apps will work. I’m sure we’ll see some quick “version 2.0″ adjustments made to apps that send info to friends to accommodate choosing which groups of friends see the updates you add to your profile.