Speaker List:

• Niku Banaie, Naked Communications
• Mike Butcher, TBites
• Russell Davies, Open Intelligence Agency
• Regine Debatty, We Make Money Not Art
• Jeremy Ettinghausen, Penguin Books
• Karen Fraser, Ethical Index
• Santiago Gowland, Unilever
• John Grant, BrandTarot
• Tamara Giltsoff, OZOlab brand
• Jessica Greenwood, Contagious Magazine
• Hugh MacLeod, GapingVoid
• Beeker Northam, Bloom
• Steven Overman, Lowe Worldwide
• George Parker, Madscam
• Simon Sinek, Sinek Partners
• Stan Stalnaker, Hub
• Iain Tait, Poke
• Diana Verde Nieto, Clownfish
• Timo Veikkola, Nokia
• Johnny Vulkan, Anomaly
• Faris Yakob, Naked Communications

Check out the site for the full program and the list of attendees that have signed up so far.

Product Details:

• Scratch card creators can email their scratch card link to other people or use a code snippet provided to embed the scratch card on their Web site.
• Scratchers move their mouse over the scratch area to reveal the message underneath.
• Every day, Scratchyourself chooses two winning times. The first person to scratch after each winning time wins an Instant Prize of US$10, and the scratch card creator wins a Bonus Instant Prize of US$10. Scratchers may reveal a message entering them into a Daily Draw for US$50. Users can scratch multiple times to win an Instant Prize but can only enter the Daily Draw once per scratch card per day.
• Winners can choose to be paid via PayPal, check or Amazon gift certificate.
• The current Scratchyourself promotion runs until June 7, 2007. Scratchyourself intends to run a second promotion from June 8, 2007, with bigger prizes.

Example (unscaled version – click here) :

The setup is very easy. First you provide the name of the ticket (the blueprint stamp you see before you scratch) – Next you upload an image (300k limit) and write the caption (text in the bottom left corner), then you pick a color panel and then you login or register for free, to send it off. (took me 20 seconds). Simple, cool and very nifty.

Get your own at: Scratch Yourself

To use the screensaver you need a PC with Windows and a graphics card supporting OpenGL. Enable Asian language support in Windows, because we all know there’s lot of that stuff in the blogosphere.

Produced by PrimeLabs

• Download that nifty thing
• Check out the website

Via: CrossTheBreeze | UpStream

There’s still a lot to be done, but they’re on their way. The main thing that caused their growth is the personal approach they maintained, to contact every blogger single handedly over email and negotiate the ad placement.

(disclaimer, Adhese runs ads on this blog from time to time)

–

Kris Hoet from MSN EMEA: Everyone is a customer.

How can a company engage with bloggers? How to connect and build long term relationships? There’s a lot of blog trackers and product trackers out there (technorati, tailrank, …)

The first thing you should do is READ! If you don’t care for reading blogs, don’t bother contacting them to promote your brand. Use RSS readers to track your bloggers, follow links to discover more blogs. Comment on blogs, where it makes sense. Don’t kill a bad blogpost, but stay factual.

Stay on track of your comments with tools like co.mments.com or cocomment.com, don’t comment to never look back. People will answer and expect you to come back and follow the conversation.

Set up meetings, invite people to come over and get to know you and your purposes. It helps to get your message out. Word of mouth is still the most powerful form of brand communication. It’s a natural thing that needs to grow in a natural way. Forcing it, or even worse: trying to force it, will lead you further from your goal than you’ll ever wished for.

Kris closed with some cases like the guy who got to drive with an Aston Martin because he wished for it, the Gillette 5 blades disaster and the famous Dell Hell.

She presented a lot of human stories, to illustrate that behind a lot of blogs, real people with real stories live their daily lives and are willing to share it. It’s not always about the high traffic numbers, but very often about ‘what’ is written and for whom. A lot of people write for a small audience and love that, they don’t feel the need to become famous. They do meet in small blogger events, and they love to socialize, but most of all, they love to blog.

The funny remark here is that Skynet started with an ‘everything about skynet blogs’ blog and that shortly after that their ‘top blogger’ started with a mirror blog which is called ‘bloggers about skynet blogs’. Every official announcement the Skynet team launches on their blog gets an instant feedback on that blog, and it’s most of the time razorblade sharp. A nice example of how blogging works.

–

Jesse Wynants from i-merge and Gunther Boutsen from Fishtank are talking about the conversation that ‘happens’ when people use blogs. About opinions everyone has and everyone’s dying to share with the rest of the world.

People blog to become an authority, to be invited to speak at events, to connect with others (clients). People want to meet other people, bloggers want to meet other bloggers. Companies want to create transparency and want to share their ideas, their thoughts. Companies want to share knowledge, engage in conversations. CEOs blog to share their vision.

This presentation is really interesting and in fact goes a little too fast to live-blog. For every reason of blogging, they give an example. They give tips to blog like: create a style, send lots of linklove, set up a schedule, blog every day and keep up the frequency, write original content and don’t copy-paste too much. Personalize your blogposts and blog so that people can identify theirselves with you and your life. Try to organise a battle, start a debate and invite people to participate.

One of the best links I just discoverd is the IKEA hacker site, the perfect example of what ‘anti-consumerism’ means. This blog tells you everything you can do with the stuff from IKEA when you don’t want to follow the papered how-to guidelines. Sweeeet :)

You can also use technology to make it more easy to blog. You can use tools like Flickr, and blog those pictures. With tools like LiveWriter you can create posts offline in an editor that looks and feels like Office Word. You can use Media (audio and video) to make your content more catchy, or aggregate content from other bloggers or users or from yourself (del.icio.us, podcast feeds, video feeds). You can use widgets to make your blog look more ‘alive’ and to discover new things you weren’t aware of yourself. If you start moblogging and send pictures from your mobile phone to your laptop, the spontaneity increases and gives your blog a more ‘human’ face.

If you use metadata, you can strengthen your content and give it date/time/location tags, so the content has more context.

Then Jesse talked about degrees of participation. First degree is just the IP’s, the readers who come by and don’t interact. Next you have the Subscribers, the fans, those who keep coming back and are dedicated readers. Lastly there’s the groupies, the user group who interacts. These are the most valuable people, the ones who drive your community. These are the ones you need to love and praise.

Maarten Schenk, Six Apart. Blogging since 2002, that’s worth a t-shirt.

A lot has changed in a short time. Back in 2003 people thought it was either a forum, some sort of Geocities homepage or a community site. Nobody understood the purpose of RSS. But nowadays, the word weblog is in the daily news, all the major newspapers have blogs with RSS feeds, or are launching them as we speak. Companies treat bloggers like journalists… They’ve come a long way, and they’re here to stay.

Introduces ‘Blogoloog‘, a pet project that ran out of hand. Blogoloog is basically a rough project setup that runs on an old computer at Maarten’s little house. It has a full index of a number of Flemish blog services, and keeps lists of the blogs that have been updated recently. The list has been completed with ‘tips’ that have been dropped in Maarten’s comments.

Stats today:

40.000 blogs, between 9.000 or 12.000 outgoing links, 4000 daily blogposts…

Most of the blogs are hosted with free services. The backend of the state of the Flemish blogosphere looks like this (in order of all-aroundness): MSN Spaces, Skynetblogs, Bloggen, Blogger, Seniorennet are the most popular services. But, self-hosted blogs and foreign blog services are under-represented, so it’s difficult to keep track of the exact online activity.

MSN Spaces is overrepresented, because feeds of this service contain also the updates in picture galleries, which are very often more updated than the actual blogs.

A lot of popular blogs choose for self hosting, because they can avoid third party advertisement and by using paid services, they have more control over their uptime and the backend on which the blogs run.

The popular blogs of the Flemish blogosphere consist of small “blog clubs”, it’s the same people who react on each other’s blogs, add the same blogs to their blogroll… Much like it happens with the international A-listers.

The number of blogs keeps growing, because it’s become really easy to publish for anyone.

From what I’ve heard, there’s going to be 6 presentations of each 10 minutes, all about blogging. What better way to cover that than to live-blog the entire thing?

There’s a Flickr account where everyone can upload pictures and a dedicated blog where we can cross-post our thoughts. Pretty good organized, this event.

It’s been a happy rendez-vous with a bunch of ex-colleagues from i-merge and I also saw Robin Wauters and Ine ‘Wow’ Dehandschutter and Herr Tom De Bruyne, the 2.0′d devil of the famous interactive agency. Also Maarten Schenk from SixApart and Jesse Wynants, who’re both going to give their best on stage.

Let’s see what the show brings. I’m looking forward to this.

A year ago, EuroBlog 2006 showed that interactive social media technologies – weblogs, podcasts, wikis, real simple syndication, folksomonies, social tagging, personal networks and other species of social software and services – were beginning to impact on communications in many different ways. The 2007 symposium will present insights from EuroBlog 2007, the second pan-European quantitative survey on the usage of social media by communication professionals, draw new theoretical insights and respond to industry feedback by identifying and presenting examples of best practice.

A must for every communication professional !

The EuroBlog conference, which will be held on 16 and 17 March of 2007, is to take place during a larger event, starting on the 15th of March already: the Chair Jos Willems, organised by the Communications Management and Journalism departments of Artevelde College in Ghent (Belgium) and named after the man who started the college over 40 years ago. Artevelde College and Euprera are organising the EuroBlog 2007 Conference together.

If you’re interested in social media and the impact they have on the field of communications (be it in pr, marketing communications as well as journalism), the EuroBlog conference is a must, especially considering the fact that on 16 March the results of the EuroBlog 2007 survey, conducted in co-operation with Euprera, will be made public.

Participants and top speakers from across Europe

Participants at EuroBlog 2007 are expected, as last year, to consist of researchers from all over Europe (including many involved in the Euprera network of academics from more than 30 countries) as well as communications executives from major companies, institutions, agencies and service providers specialised in the field of online campaigns, interactive media, digital communication and issues monitoring.

Speakers include a wide variety of top researchers and practitioners from nine countries. Keynote speaker at the Chair Jos Willems on Friday is Neville Hobson, managing partner of crayon (the first virtual communication agency), podcasting guru (For Immediate Release) and blogger on www.nevillehobson.com.

Register today!

The number of seats at the Chair Jos Willems is not unlimited. So register quickly and make sure you do not miss out on this unique opportunity to sharpen your knowledge on social media as well networking with a fine selection of people with whom you share professional interests.

English speaking people, go to the page ‘Information in English’ on the site where you will find more details regarding the programme, the location, the registration fees and so on.

Keynote speakers on Thursday and Friday

• Tom De Bruyne
  Senior Strategic Planner i-merge
• Clo Willaerts
  Marketing and Communications Manager Skynet
• Luc Van Braekel
  Entrepreneur and famous blogger
• (pdw)
  Former journalist, tv producer and blogger
• Neville Hobson
  Blogger, podcasting guru and co-founder of crayon, the first virtual communications agency

About Jos Willems

Jos Willems is the man who started the college which, almost forty years later, would bring about the Communications Management and Journalism departments of Artevelde College in Ghent (Belgium). He was also one of the founders Euprera, of CERP Education and CERP Education & Research.

See you there!

My partner is making the designs for the clothing line from scratch, so we’re not only going to have something unique to offer, it’ll be fashionably sexy as well. I’m very curious to see how this experiment turns out. I’ve been talking to a few dozen of entrepreneurs and business owners and got a ton of good tips on how to approach the Second Life audience. There are a few other plans as well that are still being developed, I’ll get to those as soon as they’re starting to become more real, but it all looks very promising with a few very talented people ready to go at it.

I think there’s an opportunity here that just begs to be taken. If you handle it right and be very aware of how to position yourself in this world, things can actually turn out to be just splendid. I’ll post some screenshots of the location if we have our opening party. I met some in-game DJ’s who’ll come give a great show, some dancers to entertain and enough people to have a small crowd to fill the store and the yard. If all goes well and the designer stays on schedule… you’ll be updated really soon.

As for being careful about how to do things in Second Life, have a close read at this article from The Fast Company. It’s an interview with the puppet masters of viral marketing, the blokes from Campfire. The article is about many things, but also about the approach of Second Life for Pontiac. What follows is a quote that quite sums it up just perfect:

This is a new platform for Campfire, but the art, as ever, is to ensure that Pontiac makes the experience of Second Life better for the community that’s already there–then transfers that luster to its real-life brand. The strategy so far is to have Pontiac financially support virtual car-related businesses, such as racetracks and drive-ins, in an online universe where people can create anything but need real-world dollars to do it. (Pontiac won’t let us disclose the real-world twist slated to come at the end of the campaign.)

But before the group can get into hashing out specifics, the Campfire guys offer a warning to the ad team at Leo Burnett, Pontiac’s agency, about the sensitive socio-economics of this unusual microcosm. Another carmaker, Monello tells them, nearly committed a massive faux pas earlier this year when it started giving away virtual cars to Second Lifers, instead of charging the market rate of about $5. “People who had been on Second Life for years, building cars and selling them, would have immediately gotten pissed off because this big corporation came in and totally crashed the car economy,” Monello explains. Make a similar mistake, he says, and the only thing Pontiac would be known for is how its “marketers are f–king up Second Life.”

A sin I’ve witnessed happening and learned important lessons from.

Find me in Second Life: Coolz0r Courier.

Yes, in come the media. Reuters and BigBrother have made their moves, now it’s time for the another tabloids to follow. Axel Springer, the publisher of Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper, is poised to launch a weekly paper designed to sate the virtual population’s appetite for news and gossip.

Due to be launched in December, the paper will be written in English and is estimated to cost between 10 and 15 Linden dollars. It will likely be sold by subscription – posted into mailboxes across the virtual parallel universe. Mr Springer plans to construct an online editorial office for SL News. A real editor-in-chief will then recruit a team of roving reporters from among the avatar community.

It’s a good thing they’ll be scouting for stories within the community and that in fact a lot of the news will be produced by residents. It’ll be only a matter of filtering out the junk. Oh no wait. That’s exactly what a tabloid is going to publish. How long ’til we have paparazzi that’ll be stalking ‘famous’ avatars to take snapshots as they enter nudie bars?

“It will be a colourful tabloid, with snippets about showbusiness and human interest tales from the avatar world,” explained Dirk Meyer-Bosse, a spokesman for the German publishing giant.

Read more on The Guardian | via SmartMobs

Check out the “BigBrother in Second Life” site

Given P&G’s clients comprise A-list supermarkets like Tesco, J.Sainsbury Asda and Boots, the cave is able to recreate, in every detail, the interior of these high street stores, The FT reported.

Cave visitors can walk through and explore the aisles, ‘picking’ products that catch their eye, or turning them round to read labels or sell by dates before they proceed to checkout to ‘buy.’

As consumers explore their familiar shopping worlds, albeit virtual, watchful marketers at P&G are tweaking the store layouts, displays, product design and overall packaging.

Interesting as that sounds, P&G is once again giving it’s own interpretation on the theme that has been proven to be succesful for other web services. Just like the launch of Tremor, their own word of mouth network, The Cave is very similar to what is now going on in Second Life. It’s the idea that counts, but rather than following the other brands into the Second Life saga and creating the experience on location, P&G fights swims against the stream and chooses to create it’s own virtual world, of which they’ll have full control.

“In three months we have done work that would previously have taken us two years,” Gianni Ciserani, P&G’s general manager for UK& Ireland said in an interview with The Financial Times.

He added that before the virtual cave, the company would need to persuade one of their retail clients to overturn one of their stores for a pilot – an experiment that means time and money for both parties. (read more via CustomerWorld)

That said, the industry in Second Life is booming as never before. Three months prior to the targeted date, Second Life welcomed it’s 1.000.000th visitor. With all these new people streaming in to share the experience, it still requires quite some pc-savvyness to move around and explore what Second Life has to offer.

Very often, newbies find themselves lost in a place with no directions and they don’t know where to go to participate in social events or gatherings. That’s why an online travel agency sees its business booming by offering guided tours to new citizens of the virtual life.

Synthravels is based in Milan, Italy. The concept of Synthravels is by Mario Gerosa and by Matteo Esposito of Imille. Mario Gerosa is a journalist who has a long experience in travel. He has worked for many years as senior editor of Condé Nast Traveller Italy and for the most renowned travel magazines. He is a member of the GIST, the association of the Italian Travel Journalists, and of the OMNSH, a French association of video games researchers, and he has been organizing in-world meetings with famous Second Life residents for a project of the Indiana University. In July 2006 he launched the project for the preservation of Virtual Architectural Heritage.

After a quick registration procedure, you’re invited to list the parts of Second Life you wish to explore and one or two dates/time settings that best suit your schedule. Synthravels then promises to contact you and arrange the guided tour of your choice.

Apart from travelers, the organisation is also looking for guides, so if any of you know some nice spots and cares to make some money touring around newbies, sign up at Synthravels. Your digital red umbrella is waiting for you. So are the tourists.

If you think the story ends here, no, we’re not even getting started.

Dutch politicians Arda Gerkens (SP), Zsolt Szabó (VVD) and CDA-candidate Ad Koppejan (CDA) are following the footsteps of the American presidential candidate Mark Warner – who got interviewed in Second Life by Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing – and are trying to run a part of their campaign in Second Life.

In the next couple of weeks they’ll teleport theirselves to places which are frequented often by Dutch people, according to EPN’s director Tom van der Maas. On these hotspots, they’ll be flyering digital campaign brochures in the hopes to win the hearts of the geeks and somewhat more regular Second Life citizens.

Politics is one thing, you can also decide to move your social benefit organization to the world of Second Life. Why shouldn’t you? After all, Second Life has its own U.S. $64 Million annual economy, an independent media, its own currency, and a thriving virtual real estate market that allows you to purchase land and structures. It is reported that over 3,000 entrepreneurs are making more than U.S. $20,000 a year, selling not just real estate, but coding and distributing everything from clothes to body parts for your avatar in Second Life.

Social projects have found their way into the virtual game, like the American Cancer Society who has raised over $40,000 this past spring by conducting a virtual walkathon in Second Life, just by strawling around and making people aware of the organisation, asking them for donations.

To get a bit of an introduction, have a look at this short YouTube snippet of a visit to Better World Island, where you will find Camp Darfur and other social benefit organizations. These organizations are interacting with online visitors to provide education, raise money and offering an alternative way for people to learn about their efforts, all online.

Susan Tenby, the Online Community Manager at Tech Soup, has taken the lead in involving her organization and in forming an ongoing non-profit discussion group on Second Life. She is currently in discussions on an effort to setup a free nonprofit office complex, and is developing a directory and Frequently Asked Questions for nonprofit newcomers in Second Life. (read)

That’s quite a remarkable twist, but not at all unexpected. Where people flock together, a social feeling always occurs, and online communities are very well known for their cooperation to benefits and social events.

Posted earlier on i-wisdom

News in and from Second Life:

Reuters opened the Reuters Atrium, on their website (secondlife.reuters.com) they feature in-game news, as well as the stock exchange rates from the Linden Dollar (the in-game currency). Adam Pasick, a veteran tech and media journalist goes in Second Life by the nickname of Adam Reuters and acts as Reuters’ bureau chief.

More info

It’s not that Reuters was the first to bring news from Second Life into real life. The Second Life Herald was doing that already. But they didn’t have the island with the huge buildings. Still. They were first.

Check out this site.

C|Net launched its virtual alter-ego which lookes a lot like the real-life building and includes an amphitheater, office space and attractive outdoor patio. The space will be used for a series of interviews with virtual-world luminaries, and as a forum for C|NET News.com reporters to come and talk about stories they’ve written. Over time, however, C|NET hopes the space can be used for CNET.com reviewers to talk about products they’ve tested, as well as for any number of multimedia projects, including the posting of CNET videos, meet-ups and other events.

More info

Clothing brands and their stores:

Adidas opened a store on a private island in early September. The huge complex includes a dome that projects a branded video clip, a few billboards, and an orange ‘test-your-shoes’ trampoline to demonstrate the ‘bouncy’ positioning. Avatars who wear Adidas shoes can jump to the sky through the script that came with the sneakers.

More info

Reebok’s store is an SL extension of RBK Custom campaign. Visitors can customize their sneakers as well. Reebok island is a bit too much like a real-life mirror. It features a desolate city and an empty parking lot. The streets have names of the Reebokly-branded people like ‘50 Cent Lane’ and ‘Mauresmo Drive’, and the store has a classic Second Life look and feel. Spacy, stylish and designy. The basketball courts on the island are (obviously) branded with logos, but since I’ve been there four times and always was alone, it’s kind of hard to play the game. The store only sells blank sneakers, but does offer them in different sizes. You can take them to the coloring machines and customize them to your own taste.

More info

American Apparel was the first actual clothing brand to take the step to Second Life. The building is based on the fashion label’s Tokyo showroom. The sleek, mostly glass structure is shaped like two stacked boxes, and features lighting that changes at virtual nightfall. The few times I visited this store, more than a dozen people were checking out the clothing. That’s very cool. There’s a lot of life here, which is very good for the brand.

More info

Advertising Agencies in Second Life:

Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s (BBH) office is also located on a separate island. A small chill-out area at the entrance of the block invites restless minds to come at ease, the “offices” are on the right and there’s also a conference room with a media screen that would most likely play either promotional ads or video clips. All the structures are roofless, which makes it very inviting to visit and explore.

More info

Leo Burnett’s Creative Hub. An apple tree with a coming soon note. For a few weeks already. Much ado about nothing so far. A lot of press buzz for a storm in a glass of water. Being first is one thing. Having a ‘coming soon’ sign up for a few weeks is another. The apples are ripe. Time to harvest.

VIA launched their agency in Midnight City on the ground floor of what seems to be a locked-down office building. Only level 0 is accessible and some office furniture has been placed around the one-room office to create the illusion that sometimes people come there to work. In sharp contrast to BBH, this tiny office actually has a more realistic look and feel than the bombastic buildings on private islands, far away from the people. These guys are just ad guys, having a blast across the lingerie store, like normal ad guys do.

More info

Audio, Artists & Other Goodies:

On the C|Net island Regina Spektor, the New York singer and pianist, now has a virtual spot. You can listen to almost all new tracks from her upcoming album (I listened to at least 5). The setting is cozy, jazzy, loungy… there’s some soft red lights that create a relaxing atmosphere. Perfect for prelistening the tunes. You can’t buy any merchandising though. Just a nice experience, but you can’t take it with you.

You know it wouldn’t take that long before someone would introduce voice chatting in Second Life. Vivox did it. You can make free phone calls and talk to friends in the game. All you have to do is sign up for an account, download Vivox Second Phone, install it and run SL again.

Get Vivox

Starwood aloft hotel became the first company in history to open a new hotel brand inside of a virtual world. Prior to opening to the public in 2008, aloft hotels will offer a sneak preview inside of Second Life, giving visitors an in-depth insiders view of how a virtual hotel is created.

More info | aloft SL blog | BusinessWeek | Hotel Review

Sun Microsystems opened a pavillion and launched its presence in SL by holding the first ‘in-world’ press conference by a Fortune 500 company on October 10th. Sun Chief Researcher John Gage, appeared in avatar form and discussed the purpose and goals of Sun’s foray into Second Life. He addressed the opportunities for experimentation with new forms of communication, collaboration and economic activity in the virtual world. Chris Melissinos, Sun’s chief gaming officer, also spoke during the event.

Sun’s Press Release

Toyota has entered the virtual world as the first automotive advertiser, dropping their Scion all around the grid of Second Life so users could drive it around and interact with it. A full launch is planned for late October, when SL citizens will be able to customize Scion models. Makes sense, considering Scion already lets buyers do a fair amount of customization on real-world cars.

More info | Lots of pictures

IBM experimented with real-live data updates from Wimbledon. They didn’t rebuild the arena, but simulated the entire event. RSS hubs could be touched and then showed the RSS data from the wimbledon.org website.

Read more about this proof-of-concept

Update: Yesterday night (the 24th), Nissan launched in Second Life. Nissan has brought in one of the characters from the ad campaign, who in SL is known as Toast Alicious. Toast is, yes, a piece of toast. To get a free car, you have to find his avatar, or if that’s too much work, search for “Toast Alicious” and send him an Instant Message. Nissan has put down a massive vending machine on their location, now where did I leave my giant coins?

Read more | via Adrants

Future Plans:

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels revealed that a group of Amazon engineers is looking at ways to use Amazon Web services to bridge Amazon with Second Life. According to a comment by Vogels at the virtual-worlds blog 3pointD.com, it’s not an official project. But it’s no secret that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is an investor in Second Life creator Linden Lab.

Source

GM’s Pontiac division is the next mainstream company to join the one million strong Second Life community with the creation of the soon to be launched Motorati Island where residents can engage all kinds of automotive-related projects such as the construction of racetracks and dealerships where the Pontiac Solstice will be on display.

Source

This Thursday (in Second Life), Jaffe Juice will officially launch “crayon – a new marketing company”. Stay tuned for updates about that. [www.crayonville.com]

A sneak preview of the Crayon Island:

Source

Related:

• SecondLife Business Magazine (tips, tricks, investments etc.)
• 3PointD
• MillionsOfUs
• Official Second Life Blog
• Second Life Insider
• Live From eDay: Second Life

Visit Advertlover.com

Create your commercial here.
Visit the website from the TV-show.

Over the last two days, Google and YouTube executives have compiled an extensive list of ways to integrate the two features. There’s now plans to soon incorporate YouTube videos into Google search results, and to make YouTube part of Google’s AdSense advertising feature, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.”

Says Coolz0r: Good, at least the videos will start loading now and no longer slow down the blog. Oh no, wait…

“YouTube founder Chad Hurley, during the same call, said that it was Google’s “revolutionary ad program that inspired us.” Plus, he added, “we wanted to remain independent. By working with Google, that’s still the case.”

Says Coolz0r: Damn. At least make Google host the videos… for the love of blogs and loading time…

Google to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.

Says Coolz0r: stock isn’t going to put butter on the bread, but okay. Let’s hope the AdSense brings in enough. Oh wait. There are hundreds of videos that violate the terms… hmm. A round of user-banning is coming up. The delete button is going to need replacement. Anybody knows a factory that produces ‘delete’ buttons? Major client coming up… :)

Is Google now responsible for all the illegal content? If so: lawyers, aim your arrows!

$1.65 billion. $1.65 billion. (I had to type it twice to fully comprehend.)

I thought YouTube was estimated on $1 billion. Did Battelle know? Even he thought $1 billion was way too much. Now it’s 65% more. Looks like the GOOG guys are trying to get rid of their stock. How much is there left to give away anyway?

Ah well. Good luck, YouTube, and congrats Google.

*continues living*

Check out the commercial:

Tune in for some episodes on Meetordelete.com

Commercial credits: T-Viral

Less than three months after launching its quasi-social-networking site aimed at teens, Wal-Mart has shut down the Hub. [...] “The Hub” was designed by Wal-Mart to allow teens to “express their individuality” but it screened all the content, informed parents when their children joined and forbade users to e-mail one another. [...] In August, the site attracted 91,000 unique visitors, according to ComScore Networks. Social-networking giant MySpace.com garnered 55.8 million unique visitors the same month.

Okay. So let’s put it in perspective: there are quite some cars out there, but I think there’s one missing especially for teens, namely mine. So I create a car, but it has no doors so you have to crawl in the way I tell you to. If you turn on the radio, I’ll make sure your parents know what station you tune in to, for how long and what music you listened to. You can only pick up people who have an RFID chip that unlocks the window, otherwise they won’t get in the car. For evey friend that enters to drive along, I’ll contact your parents and inform them who you picked up, where you picked them up and how long they rode with you. See how stupid that sounds? Yet still, WallMart thought it would work. I guess not.

From the start people have been saying that the WallMart approach isn’t the right approach. Teens don’t want you to talk to their parents about what they do online and who they know. It’s the reason the internet is so popular. You can be whoever you want, talk to whoever you want to talk and block anyone you don’t like. Why would anyone want to give up that freedom, when it’s only a click away?

Visit ShootMyBlog | Thanks, Reno.

A little friendly warning though, Reno… if you’re planning to go viral, you better not encourage people to click your AdSense ads, especially not on a blogspot.com domain. It’s against the ToS agreement you have to follow. People got banned for less. I’d remove the request from your sidebar if I were you.

Update [09-29-06, 11 AM]: Reno says the links are ON the pictures themselves, I must’ve tried some images of authors who didn’t have a website to link to. My bad!