While lagging heavily in Second Life yesterday, an acquaintance informed me that the virtual world There is now free. It appears they were forced to respond to Linden Lab’s recent move to make basic Second Life accounts free. Anyway, while posting my previous entry I was reminded of this – which is curious, actually. Why haven’t I read about this already?

Turns out the good folks at There appear to be having problems getting their story straight… which is probably keeping it out of the press (or at least the bits I read). So they’ve posted this “Clarification“:

Despite our best intentions, it’s apparent that our announcements and posts about “Free There” have been confusing, and in some cases, contradictory. To clear things up, we’ve removed all of the old posts on this topic by There and it’s employees, and are replacing it with what we hope is one simple explanation. I apologize if you find the language that follows a bit terse, but we are aiming for clarity here.

During this test, ALL prior memberships plans are replaced with two lifetime plans, with the exception of Beta Lifetime Memberships. The two plans are:

* A FREE Basic membership, which includes the Music pack. This plan is FREE, and it is a lifetime plan
* A Premium membership, which includes Voice, the Explorer pack, and Music pack. This plan costs $9.95 and is a lifetime plan.

I always enjoy Regina Lynn’s column over on Wired. But today’s article, “Coming Soon: Online Sex Games“, has me wondering if she’s been in There or Second Life. The closest she gets to either, as far as I can tell, is when she uses the catch-all MMPORG. Does anyone know? Because this specific distinction of creating “games” has me as confused as when I asked why anyone would bother with Virtual Eve. Maybe someone just needs to create a “game” inside Second Life.

Don’t blame me for that title – all those words are in a particularly nice article over on BW, “‘Mosh Pits’ Of Creativity“, that does it’s own spelunking. There’s lots of good stuff in this one, but this paragraph in the very beginning caught my attention:

To hustle the phone into production, Motorola engineers left their cubicles in Libertyville to team up with designers and marketers 50 miles to the southeast in Moto City. With its open spaces and waist-high cubicles for even senior managers, the lab fostered teamwork and a breaking down of barriers — both of which contributed to the success of the project. Razr developers, for instance, bypassed a normal process of running new-product ideas past regional managers across the world. Because they wanted to lead the market, not just give managers and customers what they thought they wanted, the Razr team put aside normal practices. “We did not want to be distracted by the normal inputs we get,” says Gary R. Weiss, senior director of mechanical engineering. “It would not have allowed us to be as innovative.”

With PLM software’s growing sophistication and eventual move to ubiquity, and then incorporating new business practices such as ROWE (and finding out it works!), I expect the future Moto City will be a virtual construct.

Over the past few months I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about branding in virtual environments; especially since reading Seth Godin’s comments on storytelling in his “The Placebo Affect” blog entry. I documented my concern with some of his observations in my own entry, “The Accomplice” (which received lots of attention for different reasons). That entry was really mostly about increasingly-savvy consumers eventually catching on to the often less-than-honest methods used to sell them products that don’t live up to the hype. How they’re loyalty is being tested by people who spend more time spinning tall tales than improving products, and how the changing marketplace (and future marketplace I envision) may not tolerate the kinds of tactics employed today. If ever there was a time to give serious thought to the future of branding (and reputation), now – with the emergence of virtual markets and a shrinking divide separating virtual goods from real products – seems as good a time as ever.

That said, I just read a blog entry over on Brand Autopsy that resonates with me. I’ve seen the blog mentioned previously elsewhere, but I think it’s time I make it a regular visit and suggest those interested in branding consider following it as well.

via TP Wire Service

Via Wonderland I made my way over to a BBC News online article about photo journalist Robbie Cooper’s ongoing effort to reveal the people behind videogame characters and virtual world avatars. There’s some interesting stuff in the article tracing his latest movements into China and Korea, but the one I thought most interesting was the person Wonderland pointed out: Mr. 5173. Be sure to read the caption on the enlarged picture.

{Image Source: BBC News}