FredericMartin - Blognotes 2.0

Christmas shopping stress? Send your avatar shop for you!

 
Christmas shopping stress is around the corner. Always more people avoid the crowd by shopping online. The next step is probably that you give a rough list of ideas to Christmas Father your avatar. Send him to the online virtual worlds, he might talk to the avatar of a nice book shop in London or to the avatar of a wine shop in Bordeaux ... or whatever. With semantic web, he might even anticipate your wishes and come with a list of proposals before you ask him. In ten years?  Doesn´t look like, probably just a couple of years. By the way, Kinset is a nice 3D online shopping platform of a new kind ... already far ahead.

Virtual Universes Landscape

IBM workers go on strike in Second Life

Frustrated IBM workers in Italy joined by others from around the world are planning what is being called the first virtual “strike” in the 3D online world of Second Life.

1.6M active residents in 2L

Latest statistics from Comscore on Second Life report 1.6 million active residents (at least one log in per month) of which 61% are Europeans. Not critical enough to make it really interesting for brands today. But as the growth is exponential, global brands should think of it now. Some communication agencies like Million of Us are already specialising in 2L business.

Good or bad? your second life

Gartner says 80 percent of active iInternet users will have a "second life" in the virtual world by the End of 2011.

Second Life made in China

  Hipihi is the Chinese pendant of 2nd Life. Is it a clone? They claim they started the idea in 2005 and it would be a coincidence. Looks very similar. 

Brands in 2nd Life

KZero has pusblished a cool map of brands in 2L. Well known are ABN Amro, Adidas, AMD, Autodesk, BMW, Cisco, Dell, IBM, Intel, Mercedes, NBC, Nissan, PA Consulting, Philips, Pontiac, Reebok, Reuters, Sony BMG, Sony Ericsson, Sun, Toyota, Vodafone. Not sure if this is exhaustive. Anyhow it´s going to explode very quickly as brands realise the potential of 2L for testing new services, products or communication concepts.

Sony´s 2nd life ?

 Came across this today on Yahoo France homepage. Looks like Sony Computer Entertainment are starting their 2nd life with so called HOME after launching PS3 few days ago. Looks like a teasing for it.  Anyhow, this is a nice flash animation like that of Opel Cmons. Same agency maybe. Unclear but I´m sure they tell more in the next days...