The Second Life Why Stories

cc image courtesy flickr.com/photos/30946745@N06

This long weekend could not have been more timely.  I needed a refresh and while Saturday was framed by 6am and 6pm Grace O'clocks, I've had the luxury of time to explore artists markets, movies, research papers and books. Now it's Monday and I need to turn my attention to Three Thanks - right after I get this post out of my head.

One book I finished was Simon Sinek's "Start With Why". I ran across Simon's TED Talk "How Great Leaders Inspire Action" (also the subtitle to his book) and was left wanting more, so I grabbed a copy of his book. 

Unless you are seriously into marketing texts, I think Simon's TED talk is just enough to get the main point across which is an elegant idea that Simon calls his "discovery".  Simon embodies his discovery in what he calls the The Golden Circle. It's a simple concentric circle model with WHY at the center, surrounded by HOW and WHAT.

He describes the implications as this:

Every single person, every single organization on the planet knows WHAT they do, 100 percent. Some know HOW they do it, whether you call it your differentiated value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP. But very, very few people or organizations know WHY they do what they do. And by "WHY" I don't mean "to make a profit." That's a result. It's always a result. By "WHY" I mean: what's your purpose? What's your cause? What's your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care? 

Simon predominantly uses three case studies to demonstrate how the idea of WHY is a differentiator for success: 1) why Apple has become a predominant technology company, 2) why the Wright brothers succeeded despite lack of funds, and 3) why Martin Luther King inspired the nation not with what should be done, but with the why of his beliefs.

He argues that organizations that begin with a strong sense of WHY and keep themselves centered there are far more effective that those that focus on WHAT they do or HOW they do it.

Share Some Grace:

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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Chicken One Day, Feathers the Next

cc image courtesy flickr.com//photos/jungle_boy

Recently, Hamlet Au posted a blog entitled "Avian Fever: Virtual Chickens (Briefly) Added 60K Paying Users To Second Life's Economy!" in which he highlighted an interesting footnote to the latest Linden Lab economic report as he quotes:

The June 2009 spike is correlated to the dramatic rise in popularity of the Sion Chicken in that month. 

I couldn't see a spike in June but rather in July, thanks to the on-going and heroic efforts of Tyche Sheperd and the "Total Customers Spending Money In-World" graph, there was clearly a jump in July followed by an almost equal decline in August. So, indeed something "blipped" on the Second Life economy and I suppose only Linden Lab has the data insider advantage to note the distinction between chicken-induced correlation or causation.

Economics aside, the story of the sionChickens developed by the enterprising Second Life Resident Sion Zaius is equally fascinating when viewed through the lens of collision between Sion's new technology and that of the Second Life socio-cultural norms.

I was a chicken-owner and I was crushed by a few of these collisions myself. When I became a bunny owner recently, I recounted the myriad of issues I experienced with the sionChickens.  Can they die? Can someone else kill them? How long do they live? Are they lagtastic? Do they breed? How much does it cost to feed them? These questions might seem strange to someone who missed the sionChicken era.

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Search for A Second Life Culture or Omphaloskepsis

cc image courtesy flickr.com/photos/jeansienkin

I'm going to continue my journey for "a" Second Life® culture and risk an omphaloskepsis outbreak. If you've found your way here from other places, welcome. This is my third post in a series on "The Search for A Culture in Second Life". You may want to read the first and second posts.

This week a quote trickled through my twitter feed from @MeganMurray 7:29AM May 6th:

I sometimes think we talk abt tools and metrics more because they are easier to grasp & less combustible than talking about being human.

I agree. This entire discussion of culture - virtual or otherwise - is messy stuff.

Questions, presumptions and world views - are we just navel gazing?

More than one person has asked me why I started this particular set of posts; some ask from curiosity, some with a taint of suspicion. Some have gone so far as to attack me personally, and some suggest that I'm wasting my time that could otherwise be spent on more important (albeit undefined) endeavors. Still others encourage me quietly from the sidelines.

I wasted a lot of time agonizing over answers and second-guessing myself but I've come out on the other side still believing one thing with certainty: There are no right or wrong answers, there are merely more questions. And I do believe that it's our ability to ask questions, and our willingness to try to answer them - each in our own way - that matters. Questions drive progress and innovation. On the flip side, unspoken presumptions and assumptions thwart it.


Share Some Grace:

Is There A Culture in the Virtual World Second Life?

cc image courtesy flickr.com/photos/jontintinjordan

My fourth rez day was February 6th, and I feel like I've spent the entire time getting ready to write this next series of posts. In some ways I am no more ready to start than the day I found my way off that dreaded little island in a purple t-shirt, faded jeans and really bad auburn hair, but now is certainly the right time to take the first step.

I recently wrote I am convinced that Second Life® is facing a Tipping Point and some people have asked me how I know. There is no way to articulate precisely how I know, I just do. What I cannot say is if tipping in this case is a good thing or a bad thing; good and bad are relative to your point of view. However, I do know that this type of event can result in a seismic shift in what one might call a cultural base - a commonly held set of beliefs, a set of rules and practice, forms of governance, etc. This assumes that there is a "culture" upon which these systems were built.

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The Second Life Tipping Point

cc image courtesy flickr.com/photos/atomicity

Have you read The Tipping Point:  How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell? If not, I do recommend it if you can tolerate Gladwellianisms, and if so I'd ask that you think about the release of the Second Life® Terms of Service as a tipping point.

Yes, I know it's audacious to predict a tipping point but I think it's safe to assume that we've already toppled over the crest, we just haven't recognized it yet. The world we used to know as  "Your World. Your Imagination." is about to undergo a transition as radical as when Linden Lab announced in a 2003 Press Release:

Linden Lab, creator of online world Second Life , today announced a significant breakthrough in digital property rights for its customers and for users of online worlds. Changes to Second Life's Terms of Service now recognize the ownership of in-world content by the subscribers who make it. The revised TOS allows subscribers to retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs. ... "Until now, any content created by users for persistent state worlds, such as EverQuest® or Star Wars Galaxies™, has essentially become the property of the company developing and hosting the world," said Rosedale. "We believe our new policy recognizes the fact that persistent world users are making significant contributions to building these worlds and should be able to both own the content they create and share in the value that is created. The preservation of users' property rights is a necessary step toward the emergence of genuinely real online worlds."

I'm going to leave this as an open-ended post, and share just two points that have helped frame my prediction. I'd appreciate your thoughts and insights.

Please note that I am neither judging nor evaluating these elements as good or bad, they are merely informing my perspective that we are witnessing the "tip". This is also not a "ZOMG the sky is falling" pronouncement; it's just my thoughts out loud and without warranty.


Volunteer's Dilemma and the Policy on Third Party Viewers (TPV)

"Facing Major Major Major Major's rebuke for not wishing to fly any more bombing missions over Italy, Yossarian contends that the bombs he could drop would make little or no difference to his eventual well-being, while the risks involved in dropping them might make an enormous difference to him."  - Russell Hardin commenting on Heller's Catch-22 in his book, Collective Action

I think that there is genuine and shared concern within the development community regarding the potential of theft, violation of social contracts, and security holes that third party viewers may present.

However, the new TPV policy is sufficiently ambiguous to a non-lawyer that there is an overwhelming perception that developers of TPV now assume an unbearable weight of risk.  The intentions of Linden Lab or the policy is immaterial because what has been framed is essentially a Volunteer's Dilemma.  A developer "could" produce a TPV for the "good of everyone", however in doing so there is a non-zero chance that they could face huge personal risk.

The Volunteer's dilemma hinges on an individual's perception of their personal risk; nothing short of removing the risk unequivocally will change that perception. This means that the TPV as conceived cannot meet the intended goal unless someone (in this case several) falls on the grenade - hence, the dilemma.

One might argue that in this case, a policy approach - regardless of intent or language -  cannot succeed.


From Place to Permits

Is this just a special show in a box, or this a real place where people really care about stuff?  - Law Professor Joshua Fairfield speaking to Metanomics April 15, 2010

If you read M Linden's post announcing most of the changes to the Terms of Service, you noticed a large graphic outlining a raft of new "licensing" clauses. 


At first I was confused by the emphasis placed here, but then it struck me between the eyes - Second Life is no longer a "place" with attendant property rights it is a "service" with permits of use, or licenses.  In my "Choices and Viewer 2.0 Assimilation" post I described the changes as "exercising your license of the services afforded to you by the virtual world of Second Life" this was echoed by Joshua Fairfield as he spoke this week to the Metanomics group.  


The discussion with Law Professor Joshua Fairfield is a much watch and I also encourage you to download the text transcript so that you can pour over the wealth of information and insights.

So what's so important about a simple legal change from "property" to "permits"?

Really, it's just one thing: human emotional connection - to our creations, to the content we acquire and to the places that we live.  This bond transgresses the bounds of rational thought.  Technically, we know "it's just a bunch of pixels" but that does not weaken the emotional attachment and investment that Second Life heretofore has provided so many.  Perhaps the licensing change will go unnoticed and we will continue to pursue our passionate connections.

One thing is for certain to me. It's this passionate connection; it's this perceived individual and collective power that fuels the livelihood of the world that was once a place, soon to be a permit, and soon to tip.


Share Some Grace:

Linden Lab - Please Raise Your Grok Factor

In October 2008 I wrote a post about the Linden Lab changes to the Open Space sim policies and pricing.  At that time there was JIRA fury (this remains the most-voted issue on JIRA by an order of magnitude), blog posts, open letters, flickr groups, berets, protests and micro-hysteria about the changes to the Second Life Ecosystem.  The post was about how closely Linden Lab was emulating John Sutter and his fateful demise.

Based on my observations at the time, I was convinced that the highest risk to Second Life was a rampant and deep misunderstanding of the cultural tenants of Second Life and a wholesale disregard for the gifts the Lab had been bestowed - a healthy, passionate, engaged consumer base the likes of which most "beta" companies only dream about.

Since then, my time in Second Life has moved from blissful experiential to ethnographic in nature.  I find myself acutely aware of things such as policy changes, customer support, as well as search and affiliate marketing.  There are nuggets of insight buried within each of these.

I think a lot about strategy and entertain my gray matter with Gedanken exercises to see if I can understand what Linden Lab might be thinking but I also pay equal attention to their direct actions and interactions with current Residents.

Based on recent observations - the development of Viewer 2.0 with its epically failed search, the events unfolding with the open source community and third party developers, the poor customer support,  the unannounced release of a new Terms of Service combined with the Policy on Third-Party Viewers and the recently outspoken T Linden, I am equally convinced of what I wrote over a year ago.

This in fact, is the crux of Linden's on-going problem. They are grokless, generally lacking so much of an inkling of their resident base, their passions, their normally predictably irrational behavior. They continue to miss the obvious, launching missiles at unarmed nations, killing off their own tin soldiers in an on-going series of blundering friendly fire.

This general lack of awareness will be the demise of the virtual world of Second Life, not some up-and-comer in the virtual world space, but Linden Lab will in fact run themselves out of business because they have not, or can not, tap into the richness of their standing army of residents.

The challenge of crossing the chasm and cashing in on a gold rush is having actionable insights.

Actionable insight has two parts:
1) tangible data of which I believe the Lab has more than plenty,
and what's equally if not more important:
2) the SL Resident "Grok Factor" (from Oxford grok: "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" ) of which they appear to have so little.

I emphasized the word appear because of all people I would have guessed that Mark Kingdon, (M Linden) might understand this very notion because in 2005 he wrote this for ClickZ:

When a company thinks about how to present its brand online (whatever interactive medium it chooses), it must start with a clear understanding of the problem it's solving. Then it needs to dig into its target user's needs, wants, desires, and behaviors. They'll move beyond understanding the customer to having empathy for her.

Dictionary.com defines empathy as the "identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives." Understanding is a rational activity; empathy is an emotional one. It's not just about listening or seeing, it's about touching, feeling, and experiencing. With empathy, an experience designer can create something truly exceptional. True empathy is what separates ordinary experiences from exceptional ones.

The $17 billion spent globally on getting smart about customers doesn't buy empathy. Sure, it provides critical facts, figures, and insights about the target. It's a very necessary starting point. But true empathy is earned. How can you build empathy for your target?

• Live their lives. Visit their homes, read their magazines, eat their food, and drive their cars.
  
• Feel their feelings. Imagine their challenges in life; figure out what gives them joy.
  
• Find their motives. Understand their online behaviors and actions: What motivates them? What are they looking for in the experience?

Let me repeat and emphasize one part of that extract.

But true empathy is earned.

Mark, I agree with you completely.  But this is precisely where I am stuck with the Lab. You seem to have no grok factor; your earnings are low.

You don't grok by analyzing numbers, or from an academic treatment, or from exchanging rafts of email.  You grok by living, feeling and finding via appreciative inquiry.   Appreciative Inquiry is a particular way of asking questions and envisioning the future that fosters positive relationships and builds on the basic goodness in a person, a situation, or an organization. In so doing, it enhances a system's capacity for collaboration and change.  Appreciative inquiry would have been a great way to pursue the recent Terms of Service and Third Party Viewer Policy changes.

I believe Residents of your Second Life ecosystem are ready for change despite the "no one likes change" mantra, but critical collaboration and change requires understanding where you are (data) as well as understanding and appreciating who and how you are (the Grok Factor) in order to move forward.

John Sutter, despite being a brilliant business man, didn't understand this and his fate is well documented. You know it; right now is the time to start living it.

Please raise your Grok Factor. 


The following is the rest of my initial 2008 post about John Sutter, much of which stands today.

Linden has (had?) captured that which most fledgling businesses only dream. No, it's not Electric Sheep. I'm referring to a passionate consumer base that is willing to pay shockingly large sums of real cash on a regular basis. We used to call those "subscriptions" but since that's become a forbidden word in the new media vernacular, we pretend like paying tier for virtual land is somehow akin to an investment. In some cases it is an investment, but for the most part it's a payment for the privilege of access to content.

So let's review what Linden has at their disposal: paying, passionate and prolific content consumers and creators. Isn't that the equivalent of Social Media Nirvana?

What is that you say? Linden Lab is a virtual world builder, not a Social Media company! Oh, that would explain it. Everyone knows there are few easy and vibrant Social Media business models; there's far more gold in those virtual hills!

But we know the end-game here, it is the very same that plagued the California gold rushers intent to find fortune among limited resources. But who profited from the gold rush? Anyone that could leverage the irrationality of those seeking fortune profited mightily. Prostitutes made a healthy wage, as did general store owners, saloons and bankers. However, very few of the one(s) that discovered gold.

I liken Linden Lab to John Sutter. You remember Sutter, right? John Sutter was a wealthy land developer and it was at his mill where James Marshall first discovered gold in 1848. Now Sutter could not immediately profit from the discovery, since he didn't own the mineral rights on the land on which the gold was found. Those rights still belonged to the Culluma Indians and while Sutter fought a losing battle to keep interloping miners off his mill site and obtain the mineral rights, the gold rush boomed and busted and the once wealthy land developer died a poor man. To summarize:

Instead of becoming a wealthy man from the precious gold that was discovered at his mill, Sutter's domain was ruined when the Gold Rush hit. His employees deserted the Fort for riches in the foothills, leaving crops to rot in the field and abandoning businesses. He was swindled by unscrupulous partners. His cattle wandered off or were slaughtered by hungry miners, and squatters took over much of his land. He went broke and ended up near Washington, D.C., trying to convince the government to reimburse him for his losses caused by the Gold Rush. His attempts for compensation failed, and he ironically died a poor man in Pennsylvania. Source

Does this sound vaguely familiar? John Sutter - a man of resources, wealth and business savvy - missed the largest opportunity afforded to him because he lost sight of what was right in front of him. Why? Because he tried to protect his current thinking, his ownership, his existing business model instead of adapting to the situation that was rather difficult to ignore.

Sutter was a real estate developer. Did he erect the boom towns? No.
He had farms, cattle and labor. Did he feed or supply the miners? No.

John Sutter put his time, attention and wealth of resources into that which he was comfortable, and as a result he missed the gold rush, quite possibly the largest financial opportunity for which he was uniquely qualified to leverage.

Ironic, isn't it?

M Linden, meet John Sutter.
Share Some Grace:

Linden Lab Leaping the Chasm?

cc photo courtesy: globevisions

This last week I read the Harvard Business School case study entitled: Linden Lab: Crossing the Chasm Rev. August 3, 2009.  If you'd like to follow along, the pdf will cost you $6.95 USD and if you have anything more than a passing fancy about the virtual world of Second Life and/or start ups in this space it's almost worth it.  I say almost because despite the report page count of 26, there are 14 pages of endnotes and poorly formed exhibits of incomplete data extracted from sources such as blog posts. That leaves you with about 6 pages of historical stage setting and 6 pages of useful information and insights into the new Linden leadership and their dilemma.

M is for Marketing

The phrase "crossing the chasm" in the HBS case study is in reference to the marketing strategy set forth by Geoffrey Moore in his book "Crossing the Chasm" published in 1991. Moore's strategy is closely tied to a technology adoption model wherein a chasm appears as a discontinuity in adoption between the early adopters (visionaries) and the early majority (pragmatists) on the way to mainstream.  

This is the same chasm that Mitch Kapor described in his 2006 SLCC address when he said:

“In particular, in the short term, right now there’s still a chasm between the power users and the clueless newbies. Those are slightly provcative terms, they’re not the best, it is just a fact, there’s still a significant number of people who come in, try it and leave. It’s not ready for prime time. I don’t believe it’s going to change overnight. It’s going to change in stages. It’s hard to know how long it’s going to take, and how long before it’s mainstream. It’s not tomorrow, it’s not next year, but it’s coming.”

This chasm as described by Mitch is the point of departure for the case study.  I decided to see if I could use it to develop a better understanding of what Linden Lab might be doing under the leadership of a long standing member of the digital marketing industry Mark Kingdon, aka M Linden.

M is for Markets
Let's go back to Moore for a minute and his marketing strategy. Moore lays out a prescribed formula for crossing the chasm that is relatively straightforward:

1. Target a specific niche market within the early majority
2. Develop a whole-product solution that addresses that market segment's specific needs 
3. Flood the market segment with an intensive marketing campaign. 

So the challenge for the Lab was/is to find that target market and hit them with everything, or they could at most hit two markets if they managed resources and priorities religiously. According to the HBS case study, the markets available to Linden Lab are: enterprise customers, educators, adult consumers or teens.

The release of Second Life Viewer 2.0 seems to fit the Moore model - it's being sold as an entirely new solution and we are certainly in the midst of a wholesale marketing campaign.  The question is, which niche target market(s) have they selected?

In mid 2009, Kingdon sounded convinced that Second Life was the killer app for business meetings, and in May the Lab rolled out Second Life Enterprise Beta, a full service behind the firewall solution for enterprise customers.  As a market segment, it's clear that a hand full of large companies have sufficient discretionary funding (solutions start at $55,000 USD) to at least sample, but I don't have details on the success of the SL Enterprise Beta to date.  The initial release was undoubtedly crippled by the lack of Shared Media recently introduced in Viewer 2.0. As an "embedded practitioner" I know first hand how difficult it is to get people to download and install simple plugins for WebEx or AdobeConnect, much less go through the standard Second Life download and orientation so it's really hard for me to imagine that this is the "beachhead" Moore suggested.

I ruled out the educators, even after the VWPBE conference and the collective "hooray" about Shared Media. I'm convinced the education market is saturated (a @fleep tweet indicated there were currently over 600 institutions in world), and the introduction of land pricing model changes combined the recent departure of John Lester / Pathfinder Linden seem to indicate that the Lab's past love affair with the edurati is in that "old married couple" stage - safe, secure, not really growing wildly and with a lot less sex.

Speaking of sex, the Lab has bent over backwards (so to speak) to isolate, cordon off and squelch any inferences that Second Life is "all about the sex" so I'm confident that the "adult -adult" niche market is out of the question.

That leaves the non- adult adult market, and teens.  I think, for now, we can rule out teens.  When asked about merging the teen grid at the VWBPE conference M Linden confirmed that a combined adult/teen was a distant future dream, but would emerge slowly through "thoughtful evolution".

We've ruled out three of the four, leaving us this ill-formed "adult market" at which Viewer 2.0 is aimed. Who, then, is that?  I like the process of elimination, so let's go there again.

The new viewer does not appear optimized for anyone wanting to host, perform or attend events of any kind.  Part of this is tied to the delay(s) of improving the overall Search experience, but that aside there is nothing in the shape of Viewer 2.0 that lends itself to finding or promoting things to do.

Viewer 2.0 brings nothing to the revenue support base, land owners and the new Linden Homes are a shot in the arm to the rental owners. Currently, land sales and ownership contributes 79% of the LL revenue - which is enormously unbalanced, ripe with risk and likely the largest motivation to find new markets.

An opportunity for growth might be the $L conversion which means new content but the new viewer does not appear to be for content creators, arguably the second most important Second Life resident behind land owners. Content creators are feeling particularly unloved these days due to continuing challenges with copyright and content theft.  Perhaps that's why we saw the heavy promotion of the SL Pro conference, with backing from Linden Lab that far exceeded any previously expressed interest in SLCC.

Is 3D Chat and Shopping Our Future?
So if Viewer 2.0 is not for finding things to do and it's not for content creators or land owners, then what's left?  Maybe I'm using the Moore model too rigidly, but is there a niche adult market out there that would serve as a suitable beachhead and give the Lab a leg up for the next wave?

My best guess is what a friend of mine likes to call "playing house with paper dolls".

This is the 3D chat or IMVU model of virtual worlds (at this moment, IMVU has 83,819 people online).  IMVU is nothing to scoff at - according to a Virtual World News post IMVU has over 35 million registered users and 100,000 registered developers - so about twice the size of Second Life and a comparable concurrency.  I even noticed the strange similarities between the IMVU and Second Life landing pages, and oddly enough the viewers.

Could "3D chat with super easy shopping" be the new beachhead to serve adult and teen markets?  If you've tried Viewer 2.0, what's your guess?

If so, it's a far cry from “connect everyone to an online world that advances the human condition.”
Share Some Grace:

Virtual Identity and Real Value

(photo credit: flickr.com/photos/wakingtiger/3157622308/)

I'm going to open with a disclaimer: this may be a rambling, personal post in the way I imagined "Phasing Grace" would always be - a summary of what's phasing Grace - were it not for my simple insecurities and tendency toward "perfectionism" and some self imposed rule that posts should be deep, well thought out and structured as if they were going to be graded by Mrs. Jones - my 9th grade AP English teacher.

Those things have weighted me down long enough to where I have gone weeks without posting even a salient point that is otherwise lost, all for want of approval or correctness. So if a glimpse into my here and now mind scares you (and by all accounts, it should) then have a look elsewhere for now, although my suspicions are that henceforth, Phasing Grace will rediscover and embrace its original intentions so if you can, please stick around.

So today, the things that phasing Grace are largely but not surprisingly about identity.

Let's start with the first thing that caught my eye, a newly minted Wallace Linden's "conversation starter" post entitled "Will the Real You Please Stand Up". Provocative headline notwithstanding, the post tries to state a seemingly straightforward question: What are the issues attendant to virtual identity management? People have spent entire lifetimes researching this question; I'm sure Wallace didn't expect to work it out in his inaugural post but he certainly touched a nerve of the Second Life Residents, at the time of this post, it has 375 comments and few are of the "nice post, thanks buddy" variety.

Wallace's post appears to place a high value on name spaces as a means by which to traverse a person's digital droppings, and avoids exploring a more meaningful identity construct that extends beyond a mere user name. This is actually somewhat ironic as a precursor to a major Linden Lab announcement just nine days later, the acquisition of Avatars United.

Avatars United is described by M Linden as a Web-based community site designed especially for avatars. My personal Avatars United account was over a year old and primarily inactive because the service afforded very little outside of what established services such as flickr, twitter, plurk, and Facebook provided but the acquisition may prove to be a means to broaden the reach of Second Life on the whole by raising awareness across gaming and virtual world platforms.

But why is it ironic you ask?

Well primarily because for all the goodness Avatars United might bring the to the Second Life ecosphere, it failed to protect one tiny thing that Wallace lauded: your Second Life name space. Avatars United, now prominently promoted as part of Second Life, has no means to verify your valuable Second Life name.

I cannot be anyone other than Grace McDunnough on XStreetSL and there can be only one Grace McDunnough in Second Life, but on Avatars United anyone and everyone can be Grace McDunnough anywhere and everywhere. Consequently, on Avatars United the virtual identity name space Grace McDunnough has been devalued.

Ordinal Malaprop was the first person that made this clearly obvious. Let me state my short opinion: this is bad ju-ju.

Why does this make me crazy?

For Second Life, I selected my name very carefully. Using the clumsy interface that the Lab affords new registrants, I picked Grace first, then looked for something vaguely Scottish or Irish. I wanted Grace to be a uniquely named person with traces of me; I diligently searched Grace McDunnough to see if there were any potential identity collisions. I found two: J. McDunnough, a Canadian Entomologist fascinated with classifying butterflies, and H.I. and Edwina McDunnough in the Coen brother's film Raising Arizona, both of which sort of sealed the deal for me in some weird way.

On February 6, 2006 Grace McDunnough became little more than 15 identity characters on a screen wandering aimlessly down the Orientation path, wearing a purple t-shirt and jeans, talking to a parrot and picking up a torch to light the way to the new world.

Since then, the user name Grace McDunnough has become my digital fingerprint in every virtual space I reside and my identity has real value outside of those 15 characters. I made a steadfast decision that I would not use my "real life" identity in any way to alter, shape, drive, etc. my eventual identity as Grace. I wanted Grace to develop her own street cred. I also chose not to gender bend or role play, but rather simply be the person I could not be in my day-to-day existence - more of an artist than a technologist - more of a philosopher than a executioner - more of an ENTJ than an INTJ.

Every instance, every action, every aspect of the virtual identity Grace McDunnough are important to me and as we move closer to the reality of the networked society they hold immeasurable value. Do not devalue them with a clumsy deployment.

Finally, this week my schedule allowed me time to participate in a great conversation with The Thinkers group in Second Life about identity and reputation. The discussion came on the heels of a post by Extropia DaSilva on Gwyn's blog entitled "Digital People and Anonymous Avatars". The discussion was to be pivoted on Scope Cleaver and his work in Second Life as a builder and what it takes to develop an online reputation. This strikes a deep chord for me because if it were not for Second Life, the music of Grace McDunnough would never be heard.

The most interesting and perhaps the most troubling part of the discussion was about how the work of a person that does not provide offline credentials holds little to no value. So beyond trust, which is another ongoing debate among scholars, a person's work in a virtual space may actually be of less value than someone who holds real life credentials.

To me, this will stifle any hope of realizing any of the new economic potential outlined in Yochai Benkler's book "The Wealth of Networks" simply because the opportunities for people to participate are cut off by the very limitations we are trying to supersede.

As a 4th year rez day approaches I am even more keenly aware and appreciative of the power, the nature and the delicate intricacies of digital identity. In fact, I may blurred in my thinking because this topic is so passionately appealing to me but I might go so far as to suggest the following:

The single most unappreciated element of Second Life is identity because in the end, a virtual identity is a commodity with tangible value.

That perspective, which may be solely my own, is the lens through which I have viewed my entire existence within Second Life. It's how I evaluate what Linden Lab does or doesn't do, it's how I process the events that occur and to some extent it is how I (and maybe others) start evaluate my self worth.

What do you think?
Is the fluff over Avatars United without merit?
Does your identity have value?
Do real life credentials increase the value of your work online?


Share Some Grace:

Second Life Killer Apps and Weak Ties

When I was in school we used to sneak out, drive down to the coast and go surfing. (yes Dad, I know I never told you) When we got back our friends would almost always ask "How was the surf?" and most of the time it was "Alright". But there were those rare times that the surf was really, really good - take your breath away good - and we'd answer: "It was -------- killer."

Fast forward to my land-locked career life and the word killer reappears, this time as a modifier, ala "killer app" or "killer application". This phrase means very little to most people; I could not find a standard definition so I lifted this from The Jargon File:

The application that actually makes a sustaining market for a promising but under-utilized technology. First used in the mid-1980s to describe Lotus 1-2-3 once it became evident that demand for that product had been the major driver of the early business market for IBM PCs.

For those of you new to Second Life, you should note that the founder of Lotus Development and the developer of Lotus 1-2-3 is Mitch Kapor. Mitch Kapor is also the co-founder of the EFF, founding Board Chair of the Mozilla Foundation and is a founding investor in Linden Lab.

Mitch is no stranger to "killer apps" so it's not unusual to me that Mark Kingdon / M Linden, now CEO of Linden Lab, has found fascination with the phrase.

But, like that killer wave that you catch once in your life, it seems that Mark's having a hard time really nailing down what constitutes the "killer app" for Second Life. I've seen/heard him use the word several times in the past year or so as follows.

M Linden quoted from his posts on the Second Life blog:

Apr 2008: Second Life has many magical properties, but one killer app is Second Life for work. It can’t be beat. 

May 2008: Inworld collaboration is going to be a killer application. 

Jul 2008: I’ve come to see a couple of use cases as future killer apps – namely virtual meetings and education. 

Jul 2008: Even though the initial novelty has worn off for me, I am blown away by how effective Second Life is for meetings. I am fully convinced this will be a killer app. 

Jul 2008: Using the virtual meeting environment for education is an even more exciting killer app. Dozens of universities are buying land from us or working with other inworld providers every week and the pace is accelerating. Seventeen of the top twenty universities in the US have land in Second Life.

M Linden quoted in interview with Second Places:

Oct 2008: Mr Kingdon says his company is still looking for the “killer application” that will draw in the casual consumer. He suggests “it could be live music, learning a new language, visiting a virtual landmark. It could be connecting with friends to go out for a night of dancing.” But arguably, those things will always be available in a richer form in the real world.

M Linden quoted, Agence France-Presse"

Mar 2009: The array of things people do in Second Life has blossomed. One thing that has popped out as a killer application is business meetings.

What I hear Mark saying for the past year is that somewhere there is a breakout, ass-kicking application of Second life for work, and mostly for meetings - meetings for business, meetings for education, meetings for collaborating.

Take all the imaginative power, creativity, persuasion, immersion, community and passion that is Second Life, do you think the transformational application for Second Life will be about meetings?

For me that answer is just a "meh", not because I don't appreciate a good meeting, but because I think Mark is missing something more fundamental about the strength of weak ties.

We have meetings primarily to sustain or maintain our strong ties, not our weak ties. And because they are strong ties, our preferred choice for interaction is "in person" and secondarily via phone, VOIP or video conferencing but not virtual worlds. Mark et al hold meetings in Second Life because it is their job - drinking their own bathwater - but you, Mark, are not your audience.

Strong ties reinforce homogeneity and don't spurn organic growth. The leverage toward mass adoption and transformation within virtual worlds and social spaces resides within the weak ties and the ability to navigate the paths of our connectedness over which we would normally be stymied in the real world. Weak ties help us build bridges that help us solve problems, find information and unfamiliar ideas. Weak ties further innovation - that is the target of a killer app. NOTE: For a lesson in weak ties, please read Mark Granovetter: 1973. "The Strength of Weak Ties." American Journal of Sociology, 78 (May): 1360-1380.

The killer app within Second Life is that which allows for rich fields of weak ties, that which affords relatively easy access to other people, other art forms, other spaces, ideas, cultures, music, and all within the context and dynamic immersiveness of Second Life.

More recently, Mark spoke of another "killer app". M Linden follow up to Metanomics talk:

May 2009: We absolutely have to make it easier for musicians and other performers to perform meaningfully in Second Life. We’ve looked at the challenges extensively and have a good idea of what we need to do but we won’t be able to get to it in 2009. We see live performance as a “killer app” in Second Life.

Furthermore, at the opening of the MacArthur sim yesterday, Cory Ondrejka indicated that it was watching live music emerge in Second Life that "led directly" to him to taking the position he holds at EMI. He even says:

Music became this killer app in Second Life years ago.

As a live musician in Second Life, I might be standing on a chair applauding - but I'm not.

Why? Because live performance cannot be a killer app unless it can adequately leverage the strength of weak ties and currently the infrastructure, poor performance and design limitations of Second Life social systems - groups, chat, messaging, and events - does not provide us the ability to do so.

How many groups can you join? 25
How many live musicians are there in Second Life? Hundreds

How many group notices fail to deliver? Too many.
How often does group chat fail? Too often.

Where is the messaging system that allows for casual conversation that doesn't result in social harassment, banning or group expulsion because you were chatting in the group IM?

Where is an event system that has a robust search capability, one that you can put on a calendar, one where you can see who else is attending, or one that allows comments, that allows you to share with others?

I could go on and on, but I'd like to hear your ideas about how Second Life might change so that weak ties become the killer app.

Share Some Grace:

Linden Lab Family Tree Pruned Again

It's been a little over two months since I wrote "Fun With the Linden lab Family Tree" on the announcement of Robin Harper's departure from the executive ranks of Linden Lab.

Since then, John Zdanowski, aka Zee Linden, told us he was off to slay more dragons.

And today, Ginsu (Gene) Yoon announced his departure. It's not likely that many Residents even knew who Ginsu aka Ginsu Linden was or what he did at the Lab.

Gene's commentary about Second Life and the attendant Linden dollar as merely "products" during a Metanomics discussion likely garnered more Resident attention than anything else he'd done otherwise.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: And so I guess my first question is, do you think we can just import traditional macroeconomics into a discussion of Second Life's economy?
GENE YOON: I think it is great to have an understanding of a lot of general fields, including economics, when we're trying to understand how to shape what's going on in Second Life, because it really obviously is a product that takes into a lot more than just the technology. As a social product, it has a lot of social elements.
That said, I really--this is a thing I have, you know. I just think that the--you know, viewing what's going on in the virtual economy primarily through the lens of economics is a little bit of taking the metaphor too far. What we've got here in any particular element, say the Linden dollar, is a product. It's an element of what our offering is. And when we thought about how to put together the offering for the Linden dollar, it was more in the sense of a product team. We did retain economic consultants. But that was just one input. It was more trying to understand a particular product offering and not trying to understand the world of macroeconomics.
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. So I guess we should think of Second Life as being a technology offering or web service just like any other. And monetary supply, then, would be like a feature of that.
GENE YOON: Right again. You know, the term monetary supply, it takes the metaphor of the virtual economy and assumes that that's essential way to understand what we're doing. And you have these thoughts about how to balance the money supply with monetary policy. I find that those are not the ways that are most useful for us as product managers to understand what's going on.

When we talk about trying to manage the pricing of a product, it's about--maybe it's more simply about microeconomics. It's about the supply and demand related to the attractiveness of a particular product offering we have. And because we allow this one particular product feature to be priced by market forces, it feels a little bit like--more like a macroeconomic policy. But it's really not. It's just, you know, market determinant of what the price is for your product.

Unlike Robin or even Zee's departure, Gene's exit may be but a whisper to the ears of the Second Life Residents, although he may see it differently:

I'm leaving Linden Lab, some of the finest people I've ever known and the most ambitious project I've ever seen. And the most passionate, intelligent, challenging, engaging Residents in any world. And that's good news; it's a graduation of sorts for the company and for me. Yet I'm sure that pundits who prefer their underinformed opinions to verifiable facts will try to find bad news.

Happy Trails, Gene.

Share Some Grace:

Robin Linden's Farewell Flotilla

I am not sure there could have been a better tribute to Robin Linden as she crossed over from her role at Linden Lab to join us as a Resident.

People from around the world gathered to say goodbye to Robin.

Ham Rambler shared thoughts and well wishes from those unable to attend, and some that were able to attend. My personal favorite:

Robin. Words fail. Prokofy

Philip joined us and shared a few thoughts, M Linden did not.

The voice channel and Dublin2 sim was griefed, but we all came back when we could.

Dizzy Banjo sang soulfully to an avatar flotilla as we waited for the sim to return.

When Dublin2 returned, everyone took care to pluck people from the flotilla to reconvene.

There were missives and murmurings.

"Did we get everyone?". "Can someone TP so and so?"

People shared of themselves as they knew best.

Dizzy, Cylindrian, Frogg and I got to share our music.

It was heartfelt.

It was classic Second Life.

[11:36] Robin Linden: I'll see you all on the other side, as they say.
[11:36] Grace McDunnough: This side is more fun
[11:36] Robin Linden: I bet it is Grace!
Share Some Grace:

Do You Manage Your Virtual Identity Value?

CC image courtesy of flickr.com/photos/dramaqueennorma

A while ago I was talking to a friend of mine and they called me "Grace". We stopped talking and just stared at each other for a moment, bemused and bewildered because this conversation was taking place face-to-face in the real world, in meat space, in my OP, in the atomic world ... you get the idea.

I asked, almost afraid of the answer, "Why did you call me Grace?". They replied, "Because in that moment I was talking to Grace, you were Grace."

That incident stuck in my mind, leaving me with a lot of questions, mostly unanswered. What did it mean to be "Grace" at that moment? How was the line between my real life identity and Grace blurring? When did people see me as Grace, and how did they make that transition in their minds? If Grace were a male avatar, would they make that connection as easily? What characteristics of Grace, good and bad, carry over to my personal day-to-day interactions?


We need to recognize that identity is a construct. Beyond the formal academic and clinical treatise of identity, there are emergent and complex ramifications from that which recent technologies have afforded us to define and redefine our "identity". We should be both safeguarding and leveraging the investments we make toward that construct.

Tom Peters taught us long ago about personal branding ala "Brand You" and we know how important Online Reputation Management can be in the real world, but are you adopting those same principles to your virtual identity and/or are you recognizing the blurring between the real life reputation you've established and that of your virtual self?

It's fairly easy to track the evolution of online identity constructs from screen name, to iconic avatar, to personal profiles and ultimately to fully immersive representations of our "identity" in spaces such as MMOGs and virtual worlds. What we may be missing in that evolution, however, is the economic value emerging from our virtual reputations.

The Yale Law Journal recently released a great paper called Reputation as Property in Virtual Economies by Joseph Blocher. In this article, Blocher explores the notion of reputation as currency, with value, just as we think of property. As Blocher puts it:

Having defined status as a kind of property, it is possible to further subdivide the virtual reputational economies: social networking platforms like Facebook and MySpace present one model; anonymous blogging and commentary another. In at least one important way, the former are more like online economies than they are like virtual world economies—the status they create and destroy exists both online and in the real-world reputational economy. Individuals use their real identities in these forums and often interact with people with whom they also have off-line relationships. Thus someone whose reputation is ruined in the online reputational economy likely loses it in the real world as well.

Anonymous blogging and commentary, on the other hand, correspond to the virtual world economies describe above. The reputational property this type of activity generates exists only online, associated with virtual identities that generally are not connected to any real-world identities. What enables this division from the real-world reputational economy is anonymity, which permits bloggers—or even blog commenters—to gain online status, often at the expense of others, without risking their own real-world status. And as with the online and virtual world economies, challenging problems arise when the two reputational economies meet, as happens when anonymous posters (members of the virtual-world-style reputational economy) attack nonanonymous online profiles (members of the online reputational economy). From a practical standpoint, it is difficult, though not impossible, to identify anonymous online attackers, making redress rare. But from a more theoretical standpoint, it is difficult to replace, with currency or any other kind of “old” property, the reputational property they have lost.

This leads me yet again to more questions.

What would you do differently in your day to day lives online if there were a legally recognized reputation economy?

What sort of value are you creating or destroying every day?

How will these things (some say predictable eventualities) change the way we see virtual worlds where arguably your identity is more pervasive as it is presented in the context of activity, discussions, etc?

Furthermore, this is becomes even more complex and compelling when you think about the pursuit of interoperability in virtual worlds, and Linden Lab's pursuit of Identity Verification.

These are interesting things to think about for me and I'd love to hear your perspectives.

Share Some Grace:

Linden Lab Acquires Virtual Goods Marketplaces: Shop OnRex and XStreet in Second Life

I was working on a post about the most recent Linden Lab acquisition of virtual goods marketplaces Shop OnRez (an Electric Sheep Company property) and XStreet which has now had sufficient time to sink in (here is the FAQ), but this morning as I was doing a bit more research I read Ordinal Malaprop's post on the subject.

It's so well written I think for now I will link there, and simply say that I believe Linden Lab made the only decision it could to ensure the viability of it's business. The virtual goods market is exploding, explosive and we have yet to understand the magnitude or impacts to our existing economy.

I know there is community disdain for another perceived Lab flim-flam - say one thing and do another - but I think we have to accept that the Lab as we once knew it, with Philip at the helm of the Utopia and Corey bailing water feverishly below deck, is gone. Don't hold fast to the old "truths" and mantras, work hard to discover who is now behind the curtain. With that, let's look at the acquisition.


There are a couple of important points in Ordinal's post to note. First, XStreet (formerly known as SL Exchange before Linden Lab's trademark policy rouse) had far more users than OnRez, despite the fact that OnRez by most accounts "looked better" and was "easier to use". I don't know if more users simply means more merchants, vendors, site vistirs or both. If someone has that data, please share.

XStreet did not enforce any type of copright infringement policy and it will be interesting to see how the Lab manages this problem moving forward. As Ordinal puts it:

It is well known that SLXstreet contains items which are Copyright Infringing, either directly or via Businesses In A Box. However, the “piratebay defence” was available previously, in other words, “we are not hosting infringing content, we are just providing links to it, please contact the host of the content i.e. Linden Lab”.
Now, Linden Lab are both advertiser and host and can no longer say that. This is in many ways an improvement for those whose products are being improperly duplicated, but is an issue that I am not entirely sure that the Laboratory were fully aware of when acquiring SLXstreet.

There are other marketplace offerings, two of note include Hippo Technologies and apex.biz.
Prokofy Neva speculates that Hippo may be next on the list, but I suspect that the Lab has reached it's acquisition capacity for now, and will settle back into focusing on it's top priorities.

What are those top priorities? According to the January 20, 2009 Linden Lab press release about the acquisitions, they are thus (emphasis and numbering is mine):

"Linden Lab is expanding its footprint in the virtual world industry through four major initiatives – localizing the Second Life experience (1) in key markets around the world, simplifying the 'first hour experience'(2) to broaden consumer adoption, enhancing the platform for enterprise users (3) and building our virtual goods marketplace (4)," said Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab.

"Content creators and merchants are pillars of the strong Second Life economy. With these e-commerce acquisitions, we will now be able to offer content creators and merchants an opportunity to substantially improve their businesses, while enhancing the Second Life experience for all of our Residents."

These have moved slightly from the December 29th, 2008 post by M Linden (aka Mark Kingdon):

Moving ahead into 2009, we at Linden Lab are continuing to pursue our world-changing mission. We are working hard to create a virtual world that “…advances the capabilities of the many people that use it, and by doing so affects and transforms them in a positive way.”
To make real progress, we’re continuing to focus on a small set of strategic initiatives:
* Ensuring the platform is stable (1) and able to scale with the growth
ahead
* Improving the first-hour experience (2) (on the web, in the viewer and
inworld) for all Residents and especially for new users so that we
can continue to expand our active user base
* Making the mainland experience more attractive (3) and fulfilling for Residents
* Localizing our content and experience (4) in key international markets
* Developing new products (e.g., land products as well as new social and commerce tools) (5) that offer Residents more opportunities to
create, connect, socialize and transact
While the majority of our resources are focused on our core market (content creators and consumers), we are also focused on building the business and education markets. Second Life is a powerful platform for doing business, collaborating, teaching and learning and we want to ensure we remain a vital platform for businesses and educators worldwide.

A lot can change in a month. Did two priorities miss the bus to 2009?

• Ensuring the platform is stable
• Making the mainland experience more attractive

We all know Stability took January off to visit relatives for the month in the far away lands of Scalability, but I thought Mainland Beautification would attend the Inauguration ball.

Share Some Grace:

Jeff Jarvis Says Second Life is the most Overhyped, Alleged Phenom of the Century

Pew Internet & American Life Project recently concluded its third canvassing of internet leaders, activists and analysts regarding their opinions about the effect of the Internet on social, political, and economic life in the year 2020. Key findings of Part III included this:

The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.

The data from responders are summarized here, but perhaps more interestingly, Pew highlights several of the participant feedback in the ways of quotes, including dissenting views.



A quote from Jeff Jarvis caught my attention: Image via Wikipedia

Second Life is the most overhyped alleged phenom of the century, so far. There's plenty of reality to go around; we don't need artificial versions of it.

Does Jeff really have experience regarding this Pew scenario to render such a strong opinion?




Based on Jeff's absolute statement in this prestigious report, I was determined to find out if Jeff has actually ever been in Second Life, so I did some research to gather more insight into Jeff's experience. From Jeff Jarvis himself via his blog Buzz Machine (emphasis mine):

What I need is for someone to create Second Life for Dummies and Old Farts.

Last night, I got into a good-natured head-shaking session with David Kirkpatrick of Fortune; he was pushing Second Life in a story he put up today and I was poo-poing. I think it’s overhyped, myself. At this morning’s session, John Markoff admits that he hasn’t gotten past the opening and I admit I have not either.

At Valleywag, Clay Shirky invades Second Life as the dastardly census taker to take the creators of the hype about it — and the reporters who swallow it whole — to task for trying to give us all the impression that the virtual world is bigger than it is. Personally, I’m relieved. It was beginning to appear that everybody in the real world was moving to the virtual one…. except me. I tried hard but just couldn’t get into the thing or figure it out.

There was a lot of hubbub at Davos about avatars: interviews with the players in Second Life (I wonder how many saw those sessions vs. read blog posts about the proceedings vs. read news accounts… vs. didn’t care). I remain skeptical about Second Life. I don’t need an avatar. What I put on the internet is my avatar. Our creations express us.

Jeff's Second Life experience appears to be insignificant, and largely influenced by uninformed media (ironically the kind that Jeff admonishes for acting without facts).



Although I think he's being a little hard on himself, in his own words he claims to be too old, too dumb, and possibly too lazy to figure it out yet he feels compelled? justified? qualified? to make such a bold and absolute claim.



However subtle, the worst point is possibly the most painful. Jeff claims he doesn't *need* an avatar, which led me to think he simply has no appreciation for identity as a construct. But if you read this post from Davos, he does understand the implications of identity, he just cannot make the leap toward identity as a construct, which is an important element of understanding virtual worlds. I have a post about this topic coming soon.



Jeff's conclusions and those of other outspoken internet pundits based on hearsay, opinion and superstition continues to be the highest hurdle for the future of Second Life(tm) as a platform to be considered seriously. Has Linden Lab decided to turn toward the Enterprise market in a desperate attempt to be viewed as a meaningful platform and not an "over hyped alleged phenom"? From M Linden's recent look ahead post:

While the majority of our resources are focused on our core market (content creators and consumers), we are also focused on building the business and education markets. Second Life is a powerful platform for doing business, collaborating, teaching and learning and we want to ensure we remain a vital platform for businesses and educators worldwide.

As someone immersed in corporate life and charged with moving the organization forward toward more socially-based enterprise systems, I can say that the gap between the corporate citizen's needs and Second Life as a "powerful platform for doing business" is significant.



The irony is that the challenges that the "core market" face are the very same that corporate consumers face, and I would strongly encourage the Linden Lab team to pursue some meaningful ethnographically based research on enterprise collaboration. It seems almost laughable that a large corporation that cannot see the benefit of a robust internally based social networking platform, for example, might find Second Life compelling.



Corporate-based ethnographic research would be money well spent before any Lab resources, marketing or otherwise are invested in developing what they think might be business solutions.



One last quote, from Jeff, as food for thought.

We need a frank discussion about the good, need, and risk for society of reporting. I think we also need to investigate new ways to make even the subjects of investigation part of the process of investigation, so it is clear they have the opportunity for correction and clarification earlier on - and if they forego that opportunity, they share risk. The more transparent they are, the more they mitigate that risk. To do this, we must acknowledge the public good of having watchdogs look over corporate activity, especially as governments fail to do so.

That's an interesting concept, Mr. Jarvis.

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