Second Life Retention Recipe: Chat More

cc image courtesy flickr.com/photos/amibeattie

Chun-Yuen Teng and Lada A. Adamic from the School of Information at the University of Michigan have just published some interesting research on user retention in the virtual world Second Life ®.

The researchers observed that a high percentage (95.4%) of users who had made some financial investment in SL were likely to remain.  From there, they set out to determine which factors were the best predictors of retention. The findings are quite interesting and I'll summarize, but please read the detailed report for the analysis.

Linden Lab provided the research team a dataset on user activity including snapshots of the social network, group affiliations, as well as summary interaction data such as first and most recent login, user-to-user transactions and pairwise chat frequencies. The researchers focused on the slice of data spanning May-June 2009 and evaluated four different facets of the user experience: usage (time spent), networking (number of contacts, groups and social cohesion), interactions (frequency and regularity), and financial transactions (selling and buying).

1) On Usage
The total length of time spent in SL was not a significant predictor, however the intensity (total time spent in world) was a strong predictor.

2) On Networking
While all parameters of networking (# friends, # active friends, % active friends, clustering, # groups, group overlaps) were highly correlated with retention, the number of raw contacts and groups, were key to identifying which users stay. The diversity of those contacts was a positive predictor but not a strong correlation.

3) On Interactions
For this I will quote directly from the report:

We observe that almost all chat parameters are more predictive that the static network measures above.  Furthermore, one need not resort to complex metrics because the best predictions are also the simplest, e.g. the number of chat partners (not necessarily friends), or the number of days on which the user chatted.

In other words, talking with people matters.

4) On Financial Transactions
Here, the researchers looked at data on purchases, sales, and transfer of goods as well as proximity within the social graph.  The results indicated that while economic activity was correlated with retention, it was less so than chat.  Spending money was more highly correlated than making money.  Having a high proportion of free transactions was highly predictive. Profits did not improve the predictions of whether a user would stay.  The amount of money paid to Linden Lab versus other users was only weakly predictive.


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Happy Holidays from this Virtual World Musician

For this holiday, I hope you find peace in your virtual world, in your corporeal world and in the world of your imagination.
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CSI Comes To Second Life - Are You Ready?

[ The people who watch CSI are idiots. .. ]
- Nick Wilson (aka 57 Miles), excerpt from Metaversed.com Second Rant #12

By now you've likely read about the transmedia collaboration between Anthony Zuiker, creator of the CSI franchise and The Electric Sheep Company (ESC) in the upcoming CSI episode entitled "Down the Rabbit Hole". This was the highlight announcement at the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo 2007 for me; I am passionate about the potential of transmedia storytelling. You can hear the keynote with ESC CEO Sibley Verbeck and Anthony Zuiker in total here, thanks to the conference team.

The big event starts Wednesday Oct24, and instead of just telling you it's happening, speculating about what might happen, or complaining about the opportunity ESC seized by optimizing the Second Life open source viewer, I thought I'd go ahead and start my Monday morning quarter back routine one week early and outline what I would have done or would be doing if I were either Anthony and his Sheep or a Second life business owner.

Let's start by considering a few grounding points:

• CSI is reportedly a $6B franchise, airing in every country in the world except for six which are: North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan.
• On October 24th, 16 million viewers will be exposed to two 30-second spots to call people to action to join Second Life and the CBS virtual presence.
• The ESC is releasing a new Second Life viewer as part of their OnRez suite in conjunction with the episode.
  
• The CSI entry into Second Life is of massive scale, encompassing numerous (over 400?) private estates that include orientation islands and the destination of virtual Manhattan that will host reenactments of the crime scene as well as a host of interactive elements such as casual games, an online tie in to a blog game called Murder by Zuiker, and a murder of the month game in which Anthony himself will participate.
• The Oct24 episode narrative will continue to unfold after the TV airing across the virtual space, on the web and with mobile updates. The episode will repeat in December. The story will culminate with the closing episode on February 6th in which Venus (the female assassin) will be caught and jailed, along with the other killers she's dispatched in world over the holiday season.
  
• The February 6th episode will feature a rock star as part of the episode, after which they will perform a live virtual concert in Second Life. On February 7th, the jail will explode in world and the narrative will continue.

If I was Anthony Zuiker and the Sheep I would have started the buzz train earlier and with more vigor (at the time of this post, the promo machinima on YouTube still had but 19,495 views). Pitching the concept at CES in January, and again at the Virtual Worlds conference is necessary but not sufficient. You need to capture the imagination of the non-believers, the uninformed, the 16 million unsuspecting viewers. My experience tells me that empirically it takes about four explanations before the concept of Second Life sets in, and this is for people that are interested. You cannot hope to capture the attention and imagination of the CSI audience in fifteen minutes of machinima.

I know Anthony believes in the concurrent viewing model, but every SL resident knows that getting in world isn't as easy as flocking the The Suicide Girls website for a quick hit, despite the ESC best efforts to produce the perfect blue or red pill. Anthony knows that too, which is why he focused on streamlining the indoctrination all the way to building a custom viewer. However, that is simply not enough, no matter how easy you make it there will be questions that should be answered by people in world. Therefore, I would have had an update last week explaining the upcoming episode, encouraging early adopter viewers to get in world to become CSI mentors or guides and not rely wholly on post show enthusiasm.

I would not rely on the existing CBS CSI web properties to provide information and dialog, but seed it with information and pointers to a fully branded site. I did a quick search for "second life" on the CSI NY message board that yielded two (2) relevant results; this tells me that there are insufficient efforts to generate buzz among the viewing community rather than talking to the preexisting virtual world residents. I'd also solicit my advertising partners to do the same among their net promoters.

And finally, if I were the ESC, I would have released the OnRez viewer outside of my closest business partners for objective review and feedback, and most importantly I would have trained a non-trivial number of current SLers on the new viewer (I don't know if ESC has done this or not). Fundamentally, my primary concern as the ESC would be supportability because the *entire* success of this project depends upon two things: 1) the ability to get in world relatively smoothly and 2) the ability to keep people there once they've taken the blue pill.

If I was a Second Life hopeful entrepreneur, what would I be doing? For starters, I would figure out what type of people might be flocking in world this week. I'd scrounge the CBS CSI web property message boards and fan sites to answer a few questions about CSI passionates - who are they, what do they like, what motivates them, how do they relate to the show? I'd use this information to help shape new products or offerings.

If I were an existing business owner, I would update my classified ads so that they contain key words relevant to the new user base (so that they serendipitously show up in search). I'd offer freebies that cater to forensic freaks. I would make sure my product and/or service is listed as part of the OnRez shopping service.

As an event organizer and estate owner, I would start a Forensic Science or Crime Lab group and pack it with activities such as themed welcoming parties and crime solving "raids" to provide alternative entertainment to the beleaguered newbies, and I'd be planning a major in-world post viewing party for December.

That's a few things I would consider. Alternatively, you might simply choose to ignore the entire project and the bunch of idiots.
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Dunbar's Number - Groups in Second Life

You've probably heard "Dunbar's number" tossed about recently with respect to social networks. I would venture that before social networks became the hot topic, Dunbar's number was referenced fewer than 150 times in any year since British anthropologist Robin I.M. Dunbar journaled it in 1992 (yes, his middle initials really are "I.M"). Today, there is probably at least one Dunbar meme running around - something like "What are 5 social networks in which you have more than 150 "friends"? (If someone knows of one, please drop a comment and share.)

Thanks to the evolution of snack sized media and information, the collective understanding of the Dunbar number is fueled by Gladwell, Watts, or Buchanan quotes, or even a Wikipedia snippet such as: "150 is the maximum number of people that can belong to group to maintain social relationships". These bits boil it down to a number and while technically correct, the implications of Dunbar's number are far more important that the absolute value and it is these that help us understand how we can improve social networking feature such as groups within Second Life.

Read Dunbar's famous paper "Co-Evolution of Neocortex Size, Group Size and Language In Humans", here. In case you don't, there are a few critical points (hint: these are crude notes, you really should read the paper):

• The derivation of the "Dunbar number" is based field studies on primate group behavior and Dunbar's hypothesis that there is a correlation between relative neocortex size and group size.
  
• Dunbar extrapolates from the measured primate data and the comparative size of the human cortex to reach a number of 147.8.
  
• Dunbar extends his analysis to cultural and historical data that reinforces the "average" number of 150 for group size to include armies, nomadic tribes, terrorists, etc.
• The number applies to groups with strong incentives to stay closely connected such as survival.
• In order to maintain group cohesion, 42% of a person's time must be spent performing "social grooming", else the tenants of unstructured trust will not hold and the group will lose cohesion and group "rules" will not be followed, etc. And a hint from Dunbar as to how to address that dilemma: " My suggestion, then, is that language evolved as a "cheap" form of social grooming, so enabling the ancestral humans to maintain the cohesion of the unusually large groups demanded by the particular conditions they faced at the time."

Christopher Allen has extended Dunbar's paper in a 2004 blog post describing why he thought there was a misunderstanding of Dunbar's ideas based on a preoccupation with the absolute. It's a worthwhile read, as is the rest of his Life With Alacrity blog. He delivered a more concise presentation of his argument at IT Conversations in 2006 called The Dunbar Number, and I encourage you to download the briefing and listen to the recording as I will reference here to give some background.

From a modern world perspective and using social network analysis, Chris Allen hypothesizes that that different group sizes impact a group's behavior and their choice of processes and tools. Based on empirical data from MMOG and online communities, he suggests that for non-survival groups, the equivalent Dunbar number falls somewhere between 60-90.

Allen argues that group dynamics have more than just the Dunbar number as a break point; three group size nodes emerge and Allen provides some insight into the group construct as it relates to size. Groups with too few people suffer from insufficient critical mass, experience group think, are unable to sustain conversation and the infamous "Echo Chamber" effect is evident. Read some of Eric Rice's "Echo Chamber" analysis regarding the failings of artificially small groups, aka elites. Overly large groups have far much too noise and cannot sustain an equal and unstructured trust. Cliques and inappropriate politics emerge and social contracts start to break down. From a Second Life perspective, an example of this might be the recent Second Citizen forum meltdown. Note that it's the group size that creates the breakdown of the cohesive bonds, not the "newbs". When group sizes grow beyond these normalized sizes, even the most senior members of the group can suffer the ill effects.

Allen also hypothesizes that there is a correlation between group size and the level of group satisfaction in an interesting double humped graph where satisfaction peaks at levels of 5-8 and 50-70, with a devastating chasm in the middle between 9-25 people.

So what does this all have to do with Second Life groups? You mean it's not obvious? One might assume that groups in Second Life should be the mechanism to allow people to communicate "easily" across virtual geography, to Dunbar's point about language (conversation) being a cheap way to meet the required 42% dosage of social grooming, they should be a relevant means by which the group can maintain cohesion. They might represent centers of affinity, and sub-cultures.

However, groups in Second Life aren't about group cohesion or social grooming, they are largely about announcements, group land, business updates and product releases - in other words, they are one-way push based communication channels. This is a critical need, but does not serve to build cohesion within the community. How many times have you seen someone chastised for chatting in a group IM? How often are the words "this is not the place for that discussion" or "this group is for announcements only - not chat", or my recent favorite, "no ones cares what you think"? This adopted use of the group function indicates that there are basic communication mechanisms missing with the Second Life platform that are necessary for cheap communication.

Groups in Second Life are often plagued with the "size matters" syndrome. How often have you heard an exuberant "my group passed 500 members"? The value of a 500 person group in Second Life is rarely more than an ego boost for the founding member, combined with some artificial strength in numbers false front. Groups of this size are effective in cases where there is a specific, goal oriented and tangible objective such as the Relay For Life, or to generate some short term flash mob behavior. And to Allen's point, groups of these size are destined to suffer from group dissatisfaction and disintegration. An example is the Live Music Enthusiasts group, aka LME. To a musician, LME offers the largest number of individuals to which to send notices for live performances, however this size is a bonus and a hindrance as it lacks moderation, the channel is far too noisy, and there is a general break down of the "social contract" - i.e. the group charter. As a result, small factions break off and form smaller groups.

This leads to the most debilitating group dysfunction, which is the limit of 25 groups. If you spend any amount if time in world, own group land, and/or have the audacity to have more than one interest, you spend your time juggling your group memberships, adding and leaving on a regular basis. This is not just frustrating, but does highlight a significant flaw in the platform services. The strength of community is the ability to support large numbers of subcultures and affinity groups, while still maintaining an overarching sense of the whole. This requires a set of tools that are accessible and useful for the uber-group interaction.

The most effective tools for large or uber-group interaction are discussion lists that are reputation-filtered, wikis or multi-author workspaces, public blogs and social networks. None of these work within the current world, but are necessary complements to maintain community cohesion. Linden failed to recognize this, even after the rash of complaints when many of the "official" Linden forum segments closed. The other forums that have gained audience are focused on maintaining their community, which tangentially relates to Second Life but does not serve to build community cohesion. The failings of Second Life groups is largely why I spend time on Twitter catching up within my selected group of Second Lifers.

I tried to do some analysis of the bugs associated with groups in Second Life via Jira, which is why this post sat gathering dust for a week. I've given up, but I'd love to hear your perspective on groups and what changes could/should be made to Second Life to improve or establish some basic group functions.

Update#1: I could not make this up. Just hours after I finished this post, I got a group notice that said the following:

Please do not use group chat for communication.

Update #2: Hikkup was so successful in the last post, let's use it again. Click the link and sound off, or better yet - follow the lead and use the comments. What changes could/should be made to Second Life to improve or establish group cohesion?

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BlogHer '07 in Second Life Starts Today



Honestly, I do wish I was physically on my way to Chicago for the BlogHer conference although thanks to the hard work of Queen Tureaud many will have the chance to attend virtually.

Queen has done a heroic job pulling together the in world portion of the conference, you can find the schedule here. (Note that the times listed are local Chicago time CST. The SL times are 2 hours earlier). The festivities kick off tonight at 4PM SL with a mixer and a chance to meet people in world and listen to some live music from Dalien Talbot, Montian Gilruth and me - Grace McDunnough. There are over 120 SL Residents in the BlogHer group and I hope to get the chance to meet everyone over the next 2 days.

The conference starts on Friday AM on Hyperstring Islands and is packed with great speakers, exhibitors and live music from Takamura Keiko (aka "Keiko" ) and Slim Warrior.
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Virtual Collaboration, Real Results

The Mill Pond Folk Fest wrapped on Saturday and I believe our main goal of "have a damn good time" was met and it some cases, including mine, was certainly exceeded. I learned more about the culture of Second Life and virtualized collaboration and as you know, I am all about the learning so let's dissect the event.

On the numbers
We hosted 15 hours of art and live music on 3 stages across 2 sims, with 43 musical acts. One stage was on Stone Hill and two stages were on Mill Pond - the Pond and the Tavern. The Tavern was wholly dedicated to musicians from Montreal, Canada *never heard in Second Life* and the talented Montian Gilruth hosted the mixed reality event.

I put unique visitor counters at each of the three stage parcels which gave us daily and overall totals. We had 1553 unique visitors in total (average 103 per hour) with a break down as follows: Stone Hill = 550, Pond Stage = 553, and the Tavern Stage = 450. Average resident concurrency for Friday and Saturday (thank you Tateru) was 31,526 which means in total we drew an average of 0.03% of the on line SL Residents to the event per hour, or 0.4% of the total residents logged in the last 7 days. [Trivia challenge: If you drew 0.4% of the Internet traffic to your site, who would you be?]

On engagement
Of course, we *all* know that the true power of this platform is engagement and not just numbers, so let's look at that aspect just a little. The Stone Hill and Pond stages hosted Second Life musicians while the Tavern stage introduced new, never heard before, possibly never to be heard again, musicians from Montreal. Note that the numbers for Stone Hill and the Pond are 20% higher than the Tavern.

This is representative of the Second Life fan culture, or the fandom phenomenon. In the era of new media networks and convergence, this is critically important to understand. Henry Jenkins is the expert here, take a read through his blog and books. Fandom is a powerful phenomena, and harnessing it is one way to drive traffic and increase engagement - a point that is not lost on many of the more successful Second Life performers or the more successful commercial locations such as the L Word sims.

On collaboration
Executing an event of this size requires a good deal of collaboration and cooperation and often this is where you make or break it. There were four main co-conspirators doing the heavy lifting for a few months leading up to the event: Montian Gilruth, Micala Lumiere, Montrealer Moody and me. As the fantastic four, we depended on two primary forms of communication - conference calls and a wiki. I don't think Second Life voice would have helped here, primarily because we needed a secure (i.e. not publicly available) line that the four of us could access. As a side note, I think the introduction of voice at this event would have been disastrous; Gwyn might agree or disagree.

The real essence of an event like this is the community contributions of every single person in their own way - every one of the artists and vendors, the musicians, Edward Lowell of The Stream Team and Reslez Steeplechase of First Call Musician's Co-op who donated streaming services, Bree Birke who graciously volunteered to greet and be bouncer for the entire 15 hour event, DrFran Babcock who made a delightful May Pole (it was initially a May event), and Slip Stringfellow who donated his time and soon to be "must have" security system, and each of the Second Life blogging outlets that helped promote the event including SLNN, Rik Riel on Rik's Picks for New World Notes, The Avastar, and Amalthea Blanc on Second Life Art News.

I causally mentioned having the next festival in the Fall at my Sunday gig, although the thoughts of how much time and effort it took to pull this one off is looming dauntingly in my mind - which leads me to a couple of closing points:
1) You can never have "too much help"
2) People - not technology - are the foundation of Second Life, and
3) You can not truly appreciate the power, inspiration and transformative nature of this platform unless you spend some time here actually *doing* something, anything.

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A Bonfire in Second Life

Colorado Technical University and the House of Flames are hosting BONFIRE 2007 to celebrate the grand opening of CTU's island in Second Life.


BONFIRE 2007 will be twenty-four hours of live music in Second Life and it promises to be a great event. The festivities start on Friday, June 1st at 12:00 PM PDT/SLT and run through Saturday, June 2nd at 12:00 PM PDT/SLT. The BONFIRE 07 Lineup (all times PDT/SLT):

Friday June 1st
12PM - Kurt Jano (www.myspace.com/kurtbestormusic)
1PM - Linder Paine (www.billwagnermusic.com)
2PM - Tone Uriza/Speelo Snook (www.tonystorpedoes.com)
3PM - CyberPiper (www.cyberpiper.com)
4PM - Grace McDunnough (grace.weebly.com)
5PM - Ricardo Sprocket (www.myspace.com/richpetko)
6PM - Cylindrian Rutabaga (www.myspace.com/gracefolk)
7PM - Niko Donburi (www.nikodonburi.com)
8PM - Wendy Curtiss (www.wendy-lee.com)
9PM - Louis Volare (www.louislandon.com)
10PM - Juel Resistance (www.myspace.com/7juel)
11PM - Luigi DiPrima

Saturday June 2nd
12 AM - Tone Uriza (www.myspace.com/tonyandthetorpedoes)
1AM - Konny Kembla
2AM - Jaynine Scarborough (www.myspace.com/julianegabriel)
3AM - DWditty Delweg (www.myspace.com/dwditty)
4AM - Paisley Beebe (www.myspace.com/leoniesmith)
5AM - Andy Glasgow (www.myspace.com/jem777guitarist)
6AM - Spaceman Opus
7AM - Picker Apogee (www.myspace.com/robvanniel)
8AM - Cesar Pakula (www.myspace.com/cesaracho)
9AM - Jellyjellyjelly Benelli
10AM - Virtual Live Band (www.virtualliveband.com)
11AM - Shiger Seattle (www.myspace.com/shiger)

About CTU
Colorado Technical University (CTU) is an accredited institution of higher learning with campuses in three states, as well as an online division. CTU offers degree programs from the Associate level to the Doctorate in a number of disciplines such as: IT, Software Engineering, Systems Security, Computer Science, Management, Business Administration, and Healthcare. Classes can be taken in a number of delivery formats and now can even be held in the virtual world of Second Life. To find out more about the programs at CTU, visit the Colorado Technical University Island at Colorado Tech (200, 126, 22)

About HoF
The House of Flames is a small showcase venue that features live performances from some of the most popular singers, songwriters and musicians in Second Life. We invite you to join the group to receive the latest concert updates and information. You will find the House of Flames Group in Second Life under groups/House of Flames.

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Second Life Economics vs. Entitlement

I spent so much time thinking about the title of this post that it was making me slightly nuts, so this morning I sat down and tapped out what was at the top of my mind. In my life I've had the good fortune of a few writers and editors trying to teach me how to craft an appropriate title, but for whatever reason, I continue to fail them as a student. Nonetheless, this post is purely my opinion on what I see as a natural turn of events as the Second Life population grows and the attendant market and cultural evolution. Evolution, as it were, that sometimes feels more like a retrograde than forward movement but that's just this one avi's opinion.

While the growth of Second Life has been media-hyped, there are market effects felt in world that are not necessarily understood by those merely reporting. The recent onslaught of new residents has done at least two things: 1) saturated some markets and 2) presented new market and social normality challenges that were not otherwise present when the world was considerably smaller, and therefore more "small townish". These changes came on as quickly as the newbs, and it's left some residents in a quandary about how to stay solvent, if not thrive.

On the Marketplace and Value Chains
If you read my Defining Virtual Worlds post, you'll know that I believe that the marketplace of Second Life, enabled by Linden Lab's brilliant decision to allow content creators rights to their digital creations, is critically important to success. I place it on equal par with the other two points I made, as it's very existence is what motivates some people to participate well beyond the social aspects of the environment. I hesitate to categorize the Second Life platform as a true economy because of a few nuances, such as things like the lack of a central bank and stipends, but let's not debate those here. Regardless, there is a true marketplace, and much of what drives successful businesses in SL is the ability to tap into a market and serve it accordingly.

NOTE:
1) The live music case below was stimulated by a recent dialogue within the Live Music community and assumes that the value chain participants want to profit or stay solvent. The cases where an individual merely wants to participate at his own expense is provided as a counter example in the Second Life Artists discussion.
2) Among other things in Second Life, I'm part artist and part performer but certainly not an economist. I concede that as a human that the following represents my own thinking and observations from that vantage, not as an economic treatise.

Live Music as a Market
Recently, one of the most vocal discussions about marketplace dynamics and social norms has been in the Live Music community. Live Music is certainly not the largest entertainment draw in Second Life, but it does present a valuable and unique opportunity for the marketplace participants which include listeners, venue owners, performers, promoters, distributors and publishers. Just as the real world, a many-person value/supply chain can be complicated to navigate, and if you do not realize what part you play, understand what value you add, know what each contribution is worth to the consumer, and how to play nicely with the other contributors, you will fail. [If you don't believe me, read any article on the success of Toyota or Walmart.]

For the Live Music community, there are sore spots all along the value chain but I'm going to focus solely on Venue Owners and Performers as Publishers/Promoters have been fairly silent. Unfortunately, the case has been generically presented as "should live music be free or not?", the utterance of which is simply an ignorance about how a marketplace thrives so I am not answering that directly.

Music Venue Owners
There are many types of venues in a endless resource market, from pure music venues to casinos, each with their own value proposition. Slim Warrior, performer and proprietor of the Menorca sim, started a free form discussion regarding the inability of music-only venues to stay solvent given the current overhead of paying performers as well as on-going land, streaming server and maintenance fees. The fees Slim outlines are real, but as part of the value chain, do consumers distinguish between venue types and if so, what is the value they place on a "not for profit" or music-only venue, versus a revenue-supported venue (e.g. a casino) and most importantly is there a cost value within that distinction? One way to test is to charge admission, which to the consumer may present itself as "I'm paying to enter this venue" or "I'm paying to hear this performer", or both. Does that matter? It matters only if you plan to have a successful marketing campaign.

Slim's personal initiative started a fire storm of debate and discussion, which highlights an interesting aspect of the Second Life community insomuch as there are not yet standards bodies, unions or organizations from which structured discussion can emerge. Hence, basic human nature leaves us with cliques, collusion as well as soap box theatrics.

Performers
I chose not to use the word "musician" here, because I am making a market judgement that the live music market value proposition in Second Life is as much about performance as it is raw musical "talent". This subtlety regarding value from the market's perspective- not the performer's perspective - may be where this case breaks down the most. Arguments stemmed from Slim's discussions that performers are not making "what they deserve". At one performance on Menorca, a live musician took time out of a set to complain that it was unfair that escorts were making more than live musicians.

This is how Entitlement came to be part of this post's title. In a marketplace, you are "entitled" to what the market will bear, and how you compete against the other market entities. The Second Life market is not the same as the real world market. While some can leverage the aspects of the real world market toward their in world value, the simple argument of " I make this in real life, therefore I should make this in Second Life" is critically flawed, even in the case of escorts.

There have been a number of outspoken performers on this issue. Silas Scarborough chose to use his position as the performer for the Dreams Community Fair American Stroke Association benefit concert to announce his personal perspective regarding live musicians playing casinos and asked musicians to strike until casinos delivered what he called fair and reasonable pay for musicians. He also used in world live music groups as a distribution platform for notecards and t-shirts reiterating his views. Likewise, Flaming Moe, a long time performer in Second Life, scoffed at an offer of $25USD for a single hour of play at AOL Pointe - arguably one of the most successfully promoted corporate venues in world to date, right behind the L Word sims. I won't use any space here debating Silas' or Flaming Moe's points, since if you've understood any of what I'd said in the opening paragraphs, you know my opinion.

A different view to the above has been eloquently presented by Komuso Tokugawa. Komuso started his discussion here, but today I read a follow on comment post from him on the subject, citing a brilliant article by Bob Lefetz . Komuso's comments are on target, from which I must quote:

I think in this changing environment indie musicians [esp indie musicians with dreams of making it “big”] need to seriously start questioning conventional wisdom concepts such as “exposure”, “cd sales”, “promotion”, “marketing” and other so called traditional routes to musical “success” and start devising ways to connect with and communicate authentically with the only people that really matter…the people who are moved by your particular style of sonic manipulation and will ultimately put their hands in their pockets to reward you for doing that…if financial gain happens to be your core objective [or one of them] from being a musician.

If music is art, how are the other "artists" in Second Life managing the same market dilemma? I think the answers can be found in any number of places, but this Reuter's article is packed with an interesting contrast to the above case. From the article:

“My experience is that 99.9 percent of the artists here are not just out to make a buck. They just enjoy having their art seen and if they sell a piece here and there, it’s icing on the cake,” said Sasun Steinbeck, who maintains a list of art galleries for Second Life. “I know for me I get much more thrill out of watching someone have that ‘oooo aaaah’ moment when they see my sculpture than in the ‘cha ching’ sound of making another sale”.

And finally, to my friend DrFran Babcock- an individual that in real life has a "day job" but has embraced Second Life for the opportunity it affords us all. In Dr Fran's Friday podcast about the success of her bird buddies:

"I think of Second Life as my creative and social playground. I would rather not make money, than spend all my time in SL preparing objects for sale ... Poor but happy is what I'll be, and that's a conscious decision."

You are entitled to be happy, you are not entitled to profit simply because the platform allows it. Leverage the endless possibilities that Second Life affords its resident to think creativity about your craft, your "brand", your existence and your business. Allowing yourself to be trapped in the models and attendant expectations of the real world will leave you shallow, unfulfilled and probably the subject of one of my next postings.
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Grace McDunnough's Music

Welcome to the listening lounge.





This is a widget portal into my music in Second Life - just click through the buttons on the widget for more information .




You can find my music and other information on my music blog. If you want to stay up to date, join us at ReverbNation.









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Gridscape

These photos are the gift of Second Life residents from around the grid. You can join the "Second Life - Saving Grace McDunnough" flickr group for updates and if you grab a shot of one of my live gigs, feel free to add it to the group.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
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