Archive for October, 2006
Michael Johnson of Podtech Interviews Reuben and Versu
Published on Sunday, October 15th, 2006 by ReubenOn Wednesday before starting the New York City Live Window event, we hung out a little with the very cool Michael Johnson of Podtech. This is the Podcast we did.
The National Post on Virtual Worlds
Published on Saturday, October 14th, 2006 by Chris
This Saturday’s National Post has an article on Virtual Worlds, most specifically Weblo and Second Life. I think the most interesting thing this article brings up is the obvious desire to compete against Second Life. Companies like Weblo are so desperate to get a piece of the puzzle that they are launching and selling space without having even launched a virtual world yet.
But I think what is most telling, and indicative that the metaverse is going mainstream, is that people are willing to speculate on these virtual worlds. They are investing into them on that probability of large returns over time on their investment.
All in all, this is great news for Millions of Us. Competition in the metaverse will ultimately benefit the consumer. How? Eventually companies creating virtual worlds will be forced to compete on price, performance and features.
As a social media company, our medium of expression is a combination of the metaverse and web. Through competition, more features will allow us to expand the amount and availability of the metaphorical brush streaks we can use in expressing our campaigns. This will inevitably allow Millions of Us to create more interesting experiences for our customers and their customers in turn. In theory, everyone wins.
And So It Begins: 72 Hours in SL and NYC
Published on Thursday, October 12th, 2006 by reubenThis is very exciting . . . . you can watch ongoing coverage via 2 live video streams here.
Feels a little like the moments right before a Space Shuttle Launch. Over the next 3 days, we will be uploading audio blogs and time lapse films of the build every few hours right here, so stay tuned. Also, we’ll be on Rocketboom Friday!
Sun Press Conference Coverage
Published on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 by Chris
Some of the Sun press conference coverage we have located so far
Audio of the entire event available here
Interesting write up here
A couple people at Sun are also blogging about the event.
Finally, someone at IBM is blogging about Chris’ interview post-event
I’ll add more as I come across it.
Worlds Are Colliding. . . .Millions of Us to Launch Project for Intel
Published on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 by Chris
On Thursday morning at 8 AM Eastern, Millions of Us employee Versu Richelieu will be entering a store window at Datavision in New York at 39th Street and 5th Ave.
For the next 72 hours, armed with nothing more than a blazing fast laptop with the Intel Duo Processor processor and a potentially unlimited supply of gummy bears, she’ll be conducting an experiment in high-speed building and virtual living. Versu will use the web to order her food and anything else she needs to help her recreate in a virtual world the surrounding blocks of New York.
You can watch her build live via real life and Second Life video starting at 8 am Thursday here.
Come out and support her in person or IM her with encouragement in-world.
Millions of Us Presents. . . . SUN Microsystems
Published on Monday, October 9th, 2006 by ReubenThis is a really exciting project of ours that I’m so happyto see coming to fruition. Working with our good friends at BITE Communications, we’ll be producing the first press conference of a Fortune 500 Company in Second Life.
When we began working on this project months ago I had no idea that it would head in such a cool direction. Here are some of the cool parts. First of all, the conference will be led by SUN’s Chief Researcher John Gage, and will also feature their Chief Gaming Officer Chris Mellisinos.
So John Gage is apparently the person who actually coined SUN’s famous mantra, “The Network is the Computer”. While this catch-phrase was propethic in 1982, it’ll be really interesting to hear his thoughts on Second Life and Web 2.0 at a time when the sentiment behind the quote is actually becoming a reality.
The event starts at 10 am on Tuesday October 10th on the sim “SUN Pavilion”. Here’s a slurl to the event. Repeaters and a voice stream will be available, but if you’d like to attend in person (or rather, in avatar), please send an IM to Rodica Millionsofus or email rodica@millionsofus.com.
Millions of Us Plants a Tree for Leo Burnett
Published on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 by Reuben
It’s been a crazy few weeks — so much so that sometimes we forget to blog about interesting client releases. Last Tuesday, as we were preparing for the launch of CNET’s headquarters in Second Life, we were also frantically preparing a magical apple tree beneath a glass dome for our new client, Leo Burnett Worldwide. The tree can be found here and there’s been all kinds of cool coverage, including this piece in Adage and this article in the Independent.
The apple tree is cool in a few ways. First, it’s a creative way of handling the “Coming Soon” idea for which the web had ugly pages saying “Under Construction”. The apple tree is especially meaningful for the Burnett agency. Leo Burnett, the founder, was the originator of a school of advertising that moved away from wordy ads that compared products’ features and toward corporate symbol that brought out the “inherent drama” of a product. The apple tree was his own version of this (and one that I particularly identify with as a startup CEO). Naysayers told him that he’d soon be out of business and selling apples in the street so he instituted a tradition of having fresh apples on every desk. So I guess you could say that the marketing of so many modern products (including Apple) have Burnett to thank. And as a company devoted to heightening that exact ‘inherent drama” Burnett spoke of (our headquarters is a theatre after all), we’re really flattered to be involved. By the way, Burnett went from startup to an agency that currently has 90 offices in 72 countries and does amazing creative work.
How do you like them apples?
New York Times Magazine: “Marketing to Avatars”
Published on Sunday, October 1st, 2006 by Reuben
Rob Walker’s “Consumed” column in the New York Times Magazine has an interesting overview of the recent interest by marketers and corporations with Second Life. Millions of Us gets a nice mention and the article really highlights some of the issues big companies face when they enter Second Life and need to fit in with the existing culture and already booming economy.
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