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Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how we could promote Second Life and find a way to deal with some of its bad reputation.
I hate being modern, hip and groovy, but today a lot of messages are spread trough the use of ‘meme’s; a single picture with a short text or quote.
I’m sure you’ve seen them pop up now and then.
In some cases they go viral, which sounds disgusting but is a good thing, it means a lot of people share them and they get talked about, a lot.
So I reckon that making our own meme’s about Second Life, its bad reputation, misconceptions, and potential, is a cheap, fun and easy way for us to promote Second Life.
Of course it would be even better if Linden Lab did something like this, but well, Second Life is our world too, so we should stick up for it now and then, even if LL is not spending money on a new advertisement campaign or does not confront journalists who use 2007 screenshots to illustrate their articles about SL.
Anyway, I just made this meme that fights the bad reputation SL has.
The name Second Life has caused many a joker to make that 10 year old remark about how they don’t need a second one because their first one is so great… yeah right.
I think that Stephen Fry is a good name to promote SL with, like him or not, he is intelligent, famous, has a few million twitter followers, is a good writer and well, clearly has a very busy, successful and interesting life.
So I used a quote of him to promote Second Life, I think it will surprise a few people that he said that.
To be honest, he said this in 2007, I have no idea if he still uses Second Life, he may have grown sick of it.
I’ve asked him, but no reply yet.
I hope that perhaps Linden Lab will consider using someone like Fry to promote SL.
Or at least some interesting people, famous or not, who are SL users but who don’t fit the stereotype.
Show the world that Second Life is used by intelligent, educated, funny, pretty and nice people who actually also have a busy active and interesting first life.
I am sure there are a bunch of celebrities who used Second Life and still do, getting them to promote it might be a good idea.
Start with asking Stephen Fry if he still uses it!
If not, get him excited (again) about Second Life, send him the Oculus Rift the second it goes commercial… with the SL oculus ready viewer already installed…
He is known for being crazy about tech gadgets and such, he will love it.
While we’re on the topic, do you know of any celebrities who (still) use Second Life?
Getting some of them to talk about it or even just mentioning their names can give SL more publicity and reputation boosts than all the advertising they could buy.
Stephen Fry has 3 million twitter followers, imagine if he, just once, mentioned still using and loving Second Life…
Jo Yardley's Second Life 
He has since mocked sl in an episode of QI
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Do you mean this segment?
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You haven’t responded yet, but if this is the video you meant, I disagree.
He appears to be mocking people who get married and then cheat and then divorced in Second Life, something I would mock as well.
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The last quote is best “Why do that when you can watch Eastenders?” the context for that is Eastenders is a very popular VERY miserable show about Londoners who are miserable and dysfunctional yet promoted as ‘realistically’ portraying life.
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Thanks for this. My partner is a big fan of his and uses SL so I totally sent this on to her, thanks for this.
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Honest a lot are still using secondlife for physical events to show the public.
Think of Patrick Moya’s exhibition and Nice carnival, think of gogbot in Enschede, think of the music jams, extract and insert in coventry. I am busy to organize a kind of event about 3d printing. Using the virtual world as designing tool. And i guess around the globe more of events are like that what we do not know about and all that organize for general public will get as responce or “that world that used to be famous” but mainly “wow that a tool software like that exsist,never heard off” Specially now that 3d designing becomes more important these days, would be great to have a campagne like that…in the time of community gateway we were allmost pulling that and plans were ready to pull second life back in the open again but that got killed….
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Yes 3D printing is going big as well and I’ve thought before about being able to print out some of my buildings.
I hope I can find some up to date information and material about people working on that now so I can mention it in another blog or on the podcast.
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If you do directly from the polygons is tricky but the way blender and then mesh etc. That will work. Hope they might change that in sl as it an asset for marketplace but a grand example to interview is Maxi Gossemar who uses the secondlife marketplace and next to it for same designs Shapeways. Me triend a prim car but to hollow but fun to do with my home printer.
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This is a great strategy for a marketing campaign, Jo, using high profile, successful, educated, talented, interesting people with even busier first lives who can tell their story of what it is about Second Life that interests them and keeps them engaged in it.
Perhaps another way to achieve this same goal would be for Linden Lab to use a different, target marketing strategy that selected from a “wish list” of very specific people residents and/or the Lab wished would use Second Life, then send them an INVITATION for a FREE trial-basis premium account for up to one year after which they could provide their user feedback and potentially the option to use their likeness and comments in promotional advertising if they liked it. (I would suggest having a dedicated handler assigned to them too, to help facilitate this process for the time-challenged guest user). Using this strategy, Linden Lab could actually GET the people they feel would most appeal to demographic groups they want to engage most.
I say as a second option we might enjoy opening up the discussion to include nominations for a “dream list” of potential Second Life “pitch-people.” Even if we didn’t use them in the end, it could still provide a spirited and lively discussion and debate over who residents think would be good spokes people for the incredibly unique and diverse experiences SL offers. I for one would sure enjoy seeing who the list would include if we could have our “dream team” of spokes people. =)
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Good idea, they could have a global competition or just ask random people on the street in a viral video, what they would build if there were no limits.
Then get the best SL builders to build it for them and throw then inside it with the Oculus Rift 🙂
But even just saying that they have a competition where you can win a “virtual world” might be a good idea.
After all a region for a year for free is about $5000 worth.
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Coincidence, I just blogged another famous person: http://quanlavender.blogspot.de/2014/02/the-ambassador-of-second-life.html
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Sorry Quan, Moya’s not famous.
Pep (French people are very rarely famous outside France)
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Pingback: Bits & Pieces SL 2014-8 | Nalates' Things & Stuff
Nobody who is anybody is going to admit a commitment to SL.
Pep (It’s Groucho Marx’s “club” joke all over again.)
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Well Stephen Fry did just that, and so did others.
So the situation is not that they are not going to admit to a SL existance TODAY, not in general.
If that is the case, we need to figure out why they were once not ashamed of it and am now, and how we can turn that around.
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There is an avatar called Stephen Fry, incidentally. As Fry, to the best of my knowledge, was never a last name for the general public, this must be one created for him. https://my.secondlife.com/stephen.fry
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I assume it may have been created for a public event he once did or was going to do, a chat with the audience about his books or something.
I wonder if it was ever used.
It won’t be his main avatar.
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Pingback: The reputation of Second Life | Jo Yardley's Second Life
Just spotted this post now. Fry did have some more critical remarks of our world in this interview which was also conducted in 2007. He does confirm that he has a Second Life avatar, but he makes it pretty clear that he just popped on for a visit. Like a lot of the big names who have visited in SL (You should add Brian Eno to that list of yours, Jo), it seems his visit was brief and back in the days when SL caught the general public with what turned out to be a fleeting spark of attention.
“WHAT DO YOU AVOID ON THE INTERNET?”
“Well, I certainly avoid games on the Internet. For some reason I never bothered to get myself off the Macromedia mailing list, so they’re constantly sending me flash games with frogs hopping up or down or something. I’m not sure whether I avoid games because I’m bored or frightened by them, rather like a child being confronted by a heroin dealer. Is it fear and disgust, or is actually terror that you’re going to get sucked in and forever be an addict? I think it may be the latter, but functionally it’s the same, it means that I avoid games. I avoid things like Second Life. Like everybody, I’ve had a visit, and I think everyone should just because it is such a preposterous phenomenon, and such a deeply bewildering one as to what’s happening to the human race to some extent, and some of the grimier things you hear about it really do make the eyes pop out on stalks, and you want to avoid them, but I guess it’ll settle down.”
Full interview can be found here:
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If (big if) I understand correctly the interview you mention was made in may 2007, his blog confession about having a SL profile and telling people not to look for him came at the end of october of 2007.
So although it is perhaps a bit like clutching for straws, it does seem that he stayed for at least another half year after claiming he just had a short visit.
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