OK, here’s what I mean by this:

Have you ever gotten a Facebook email that someone sent that you only discovered 3 months after the fact?  I have, and I often wonder, “Did they really want to speak to me, and if so, why didn’t they call on the phone”?

But I am also guilty here, though usually with a good degree of calculation.  For example, I try to think about what my goal is, what the other person is doing and how to best communicate without wasting time.  While still enjoying the other person (this is important, or we’d stop phoning or having meals together).

So here goes — my list, ranked in order from Most Intimate to Least Intimate

1.  Face-to-Face (this works even better if the faces are being fed food)

2.  Synchronous Video Chat like Skype

3. Asynchronous Video Chat like Seesmic

3.  Realistic Virtual World with Avatar that Resembles You in Real Life

4. Facebook private conversations

5.  Textual Microblog Social Networks like Twitter

6. Fantasy - oriented Virtual Worlds where you do not resemble yourself

7.  Social Network public conversations (not including Twitter, Pownce and other microblogging)

8. Blog Comments

9. SMS

10. ESP

What do you think?

I am so excited about this news from our sister company Virtual Greats for a number of reasons.  First and foremost, it is the first time we’ve extended premium virtual goods into virtual worlds running within the world’s largest social networks.

For those of you not up to speed, Super Pets is a virtual pet experience that allows you to adopt a pet, train it and battle it against your friends’ pets.  Within Facebook, Super Pets has 417, 000 monthly Active Users and within Myspace, it has 4.5 million monthly Active Users.  One of the challenges brands had in being sucessful in Second Life was that while the monthly active population was large (and the time per user, enormous), there was no good way to get in front of all those users.  Well, in Facebook with Superpets we’re now in front of an audience half as large as Second Life, and in Myspace, in front of one 4.5 times bigger than Second Life.

As for what we’re selling, we’re starting simple with items like winter hoodies for your pet that say Snoop’s cathcphrase, “Drop It Like it’s Hot” (you can see one on my avatar below, styled as a raccoon as a nod of the hat to my man Loic LeMeur and his Seesmic Logo.

Snoop Virtual Goods in Facebook with Rockyou Super Pets

My son and daughter love it.

Since we started our company in July 2006, we have seen rapid growth in the virtual world market. Originally, the market was largely conflated with Second Life and many companies ran pilot marketing projects in that world. More recently, we’ve seen a shift in attention from projects in Second Life to marketing engagements in larger web-based worlds like Gaia Online and Habbo Hotel as well as a large-scale movement by entertainment companies to create their own virtual worlds.

In serving our clients through this growth and evolution, we have - unsurprisingly - observed a strong desire for improved metrics to inform ROI calculations. Earlier this year, with that in mind, Millions of Us assembled a unique consortium of companies operating consumer-facing virtual worlds. Our shared goal: to work with Forrester Consulting to produce a study that surveyed a broad array of brands that had conducted virtual world marketing projects. This was intended to gain an accurate view of the state of the market and define areas for improvement.

The study which we are making available today to interested clients, prospects, and journalists is a strong first step in moving towards a unified set of standards and measurement by which clients can gauge the effectiveness of their activities in virtual worlds. We think many people will be interested in the study’s conclusions about opportunities for cross-channel tracking and building brand recognition through the distribution of virtual goods and the use of avatar customization.

Forrester made several clear recommendations regarding campaign planning and measurement; while still just a start, these stand to help grow budgets for virtual world campaigns.

Forrester’s Key Findings on virtual worlds are as follows:

This report highlights some key areas for improvement as well. With these in mind, I’d like to offer some thoughts of my own as a starting point for what I hope becomes an active and ongoing discussion:

Those interested in receiving a copy of the full study should contact Mat Small at mat@millionsofus.com .  Link to the press release here.

First Israel.  Then Denmark.  A few weeks ago, Australia.  Today,  Mayor Newsom along with Governor Schwartznegger and the Mayors of San Jose and Oakland, announced that they would be making a major move towards bringing electric vehicles and the Better Place network to the Bay Area.

Please, visit Planet Better Place to sign the petition,  join the movement and bring Better Place to your town or country.

Better Place: California Joins the Network

What Will the Inauguration be Like?