PR in SL

Posted on | August 21, 2007 | 1 Comment

Interesting piece in a recent edition of Wired: “How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life.”

“Second Life partisans claim meteoric growth, with the number of “residents,” or avatars created, surpassing 7 million in June. There’s no question that more and more people are trying Second Life, but that figure turns out to be wildly misleading. For starters, many people make more than one avatar. According to Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, the number of avatars created by distinct individuals was closer to 4 million. Of those, only about 1 million had logged on in the previous 30 days (the standard measure of Internet traffic), and barely a third of that total had bothered to drop by in the previous week. Most of those who did were from Europe or Asia, leaving a little more than 100,000 Americans per week to be targeted by US marketers.”

Got to feel sorry for all those corporate marketeers and advertising execs, don’t we?

Thanks to my colleague, Charles Fadel, for the link.

Technorati Tags: second life, wired, madison avenue, linden lab

Category: education

Comments

One Response to “PR in SL”

Taran Rampersad/Nobody Fugazi
August 21st, 2007 @ 1:26 pm

Actually, if you really consider it, how much money do corporate marketers and advertising execs waste in real life? I’m always amused at the reactions of people who are in these positions when they realize that people typically don’t like advertising and marketing.

People like products.

SecondLife is just the Cluetrain manifesto on steroids.