Given the ongoing conversations he has across the interactive advertising, social media, entertainment and virtual world spaces, Reuben is fast becoming an oft-cited authority at the messy intersection of these disciplines. MediaWeek’s Mike Shields today quoted Reuben weighing in on the implications of the recent reorg at Fox Interactive for advertisers pushing into social media. MySpace is obviously central to this discussion.

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Be sure to check out Reuben’s first contribution to AdAge’s new DigitalNext blog, which AdAge describes as follows: “a collection of news and opinions on the emerging media and technology space and its opportunities and impact on marketers. The group’s esteemed (and opinionated) contributors run agencies, startups, and creative departments and hail from all sorts of disciplines, including design and user interface, social networking and community, mobile, gaming and virtual worlds.”

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Flash | QuickTime

Already the recipient of an LACP Spotlight award, last fall’s WWE SummerSlam in Gaia campaign has been recognized as an Honoree by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, best known for putting on the Webby Awards, aka “The Oscars of the Internet.”

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Virtual Worlds News picked up today’s announcement that Millions of Us is leading an industry coalition working with Forrester Consulting to help deliver standardized - and more in-depth - metrics for virtual worlds marketing campaigns. They key issue is moving away from simplistic eyeball counts towards a measure of engagement quality.
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As Lauren has been blogging, we’ve had the pleasure of working with Southern California’s Palomar Pomerado Healthcare district and our longtime friends at Cisco to bring a virtual preview of one of the world’s most cutting-edge hospitals to Second Life. Massively, among others, picked up the news, praising the build for its clean look and lifelike medical demos.

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Reuben worked on Presidents’ Day, poor thing, by giving a talk at the Worlds in Motion track of SF GDC on the convergence of virtual worlds with entertainment. Gamasutra’s Christopher Woodard wrote it up…

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The contest that proves life is even sweeter the second time around.

The votes are in, and we have a winner.
Dive into the SPLENDA® Pool Experience, a sweet swimming pool filled with fluffy SPLENDA® No Calorie Sweetener and featuring fun new animations, submitted by Shava Suntzu. Congratulations, Shava!

We’re hard at work bringing The SPLENDA® Pool Experience to life. Check out the original submission to see what you can look forward to, then come back March 18 to experience it for real.

Thanks to all the entrants and voters who imagined new ways to make life sweeter and played a part in making it happen.

CNN’s Miles O’Brien dressed up an avatar and checked out Second Life musicians Space Junky.
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Worlds in Motion, a CMP-owned blog that is one of the leading chroniclers of our emerging industry, picked up today’s news that Mark Stephen Meadows (aka “pighed”) will be MoU’s second artist-in-residence.

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It was our honor to facilitate the inaugural 48-Hour Film Project competition in Second Life last weekend. Some truly amazing machinima were submitted, all the more amazing for having been pulled together in under 48 hours.

Massively picked up the news about the winner, announced just this morning.