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Second Life Vice: Linden Lab Is in Denial About Its Gambling Problem

April 18, 2007 by Ronin Kurosawa

If you’ve been exposed to any recent media hype surrounding Second Life, you may have concluded that Linden Lab’s virtual world is an unstoppable force.

Second Life signups have accelerated to nearly half a million per month. Linden founder Philip Rosedale seems to be everywhere at once (although that may just be his Avatar). And SL celebrity Anshe Chung has become a household name (at least for readers of Business Week).

With so much momentum and positive press, what could possibly go wrong?

Oh, I don’t know, maybe something like a Federal investigation into online gambling in virtual casinos.

Of all of the vices in the Metaverse, some translate better than others. Virtual drugs don’t work particularly well — unless you count Second Life itself as a drug. On the other hand, virtual prostitution, as creepy as it seems, apparently works for a few people who can get past the possibility that their virtual playmate might actually be a grizzled construction worker in Peoria.

Virtual gambling, on the other hand, is a perfect match for this virtual world.

Online gambling is a well-established industry. However, for many, the added social element of a virtual reality world is a significant improvement over watching 2-D cards dealt onto a flat green poker table.

[Read more…] about Second Life Vice: Linden Lab Is in Denial About Its Gambling Problem

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Remastered, Second Life, Snark Hunt

More Thoughts From The Real World

April 12, 2007 by Kassia Krozser

As is my sometimes habit, I ventured out into the real world this week to take the pulse of real people who use real new media. Nobody was paid nor bribed in the course of these discussions and all opinions reflected here represent the opinions of my (anonymous as they shun fame and fortune) focus group, expanded this time to include a few voices from the legal profession.

So here is what they’re saying out there in reality. Remember, real people with real money to spend on goods and services:

[Read more…] about More Thoughts From The Real World

Filed Under: Marketing, Mediacratic, Movies, Services, Social Media, The Long Tail Tagged With: MySpace, Second Life

DuroSport and Star Trek: A Match Made in Hell

April 1, 2007 by Medialoper Review Labs

Yesterday we told you about DuroSport’s new retail outlet in Second Life. It was everything we expected a DuroSport store to be — which was exactly the problem. DuroSport has become so predictable that even their failures no longer surprise us. But there is a new development that even we find quite surprising. DuroSport has just announced an exclusive partnership with the most highly respected content franchise in history: Star Trek.

Yes, you read that correctly. Star Trek. Starting today, Star Trek and DuroSport Electronics have partnered to release what they are calling “DeMastered” episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series. The episodes are being made available exclusively through DuroSport’s new video download service called — predictably — DuroView.

[Read more…] about DuroSport and Star Trek: A Match Made in Hell

Filed Under: Reviews, Social Media, Television Tagged With: durosport, Second Life, Snark Hunt

DuroSport Strikes Again: Second Life Store a Health Hazard

March 31, 2007 by Medialoper Review Labs

Virtual Prism DuroSport The first thing you notice is the boxes. The huge, huge boxes, piled high on top of each other from the floor to the airplane-hangar sized ceiling.

What, you wonder, could these gigantic boxes possibly contain? The only possible items are washers and dryers, refrigerators, sofa sets, even SUVs. Maybe a really huge television. But if you’re the DuroSport Electronics Corporation, then these impossibly large boxes contain your latest product: a portable virtual media player.

During the past year we’ve had more than our share of laughs over the ongoing foibles of the DuroSport Corporation. From the company’s unbelievably bad portable media player to an embarrassing t-shirt recall last summer, it sometimes seems like DuroSport can’t do anything right. As it turns out DuroSport’s problems are not the result of poor engineering and horrendous customer service. No, according to company officials DuroSport has been victimized by “the current technological limitations of reality.”

So what’s a consumer electronics company to do when reality lets it down? Open a store in the virtual world known as Second Life, of course.

[Read more…] about DuroSport Strikes Again: Second Life Store a Health Hazard

Filed Under: Reviews, Social Media Tagged With: durosport, Second Life, Snark Hunt

One Positive Step For MySpace

March 28, 2007 by Kassia Krozser

So, the MySpace is adding a news component to its slate o’features. Given that the parent company of MySpace is News Corporation, this isn’t so much of a surprise as it is a question of what took so long. I know it’s not because the company’s shy about self-promotion.

Online speculation has it that Newsroo, a company recently acquired by News Corp will be serving up the headlines to the movers and shakers of the MySpace community (this speculation is fueled by the fact that Newsroo’s home page now redirects to the MySpace homepage). According to one site, deals are being struck all over the news universe. This site also curiously refers to MySpace as a pureplay online company; that shipped more or less sailed when the site was acquired by a major media giant. Slowly but surely the influence of the Murdoch empire has crept into the site, and we recently received samplers from the MySpace music label. Now that they’ve lived with MySpace for a while, the folks at News Corp. are desperately seeking ways to squeeze every nickel and dime out of it
[Read more…] about One Positive Step For MySpace

Filed Under: Mediacratic, Social Media Tagged With: MySpace

Twitter Hits the Tipping Point

March 14, 2007 by Kirk Biglione

A social messaging application called Twitter has taken SxSW by storm like nothing in recent memory. It seems like everyone in Austin is either Twittering, deconstructing the relevance of Twitter, building a Twitter enhancement, or wondering why the hell they didn’t have the idea first. It’s pretty clear that SxSW 2007 will bee seen as the moment where Twitter hit its tipping point.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, it’s a web 2.0ish chat/SMS mashup that allows users to send quick messages to friends (or the world) from just about anywhere. Unlike traditional chat and SMS, Twitter seems to be more group based and messages have persistence. Your most recent twit becomes something of a short-term status for your entire life.

Twitter messages are the kind of thing most of us would never bother to put into a blog post. Unlike chat, they tend to be more like random messages to the universe — frequently with little or no discernible purpose.

[Read more…] about Twitter Hits the Tipping Point

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: SXSWi, Twitter

Second Life and the Vision Thing

February 20, 2007 by Sherilyn Connelly

omg stfu saur0n!!!1!11!I’m wrong. A lot.

I fully admit it. I’m not an especially deep thinker, and I can’t predict the future for shit. Like everyone else, I was hoping for flying cars by now. Not to mention robots, though I suppose the longer we have to wait on that one, the better.

Hell, when I first heard about text-messaging, I scoffed. Scoffed, I tell you! I even remember whennish and whereabouts I was: walking down the Embarcadero in 2000 with my supervisor at CNET, a fellow who was much more on top of cutting-edge technology than myself. He was telling me about something called text-messaging, which was either just introduced in America or was about to be, but was all the rage overseas. I was five stubborn years away from even considering a cell phone, and text-messaging sounded like the most impractical thing ever. Words on a cell phone screen? And typing them via the number pad? Puh-leeze. As if.

[Read more…] about Second Life and the Vision Thing

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Second Life

Second Life and the Stupid White Man’s Burden, Part Three: Guni’s Condescension

February 7, 2007 by Sherilyn Connelly

sl_gunigauntlet.jpgAccording to the “Anshe Chung is a millionaire and you aren’t” press release, Ailin Graef was born and raised in Hubei, China, but is currently a citizen of Germany. Please make a note of that fact, as it will be on the quiz.

The story so far: sex sells, and nothing sells like sex. It’s the oldest profession in our world, and the the most popular in Second Life. The preponderance of sex workers is one of the few things about Second Life that genuinely makes sense to me, once I wrap my brain around the fact that people consider sitting at their computers and wanking and/or typing dirty while making their avatars do quasi-erotic calisthenics qualifies as sexy. It feels like cheating to me—if you’re going to do, do it for real—but that’s just my own disconnect between meatspace and polygon-based environments. When I make the leap of faith, then sure, yes, absolutely. If it’s a make-believe world in which you can do whatever you want, and you’ve harbored fantasies of whoring, then why not? It certainly results in some entertaining debates, as the self-appointed protectors of Biblical morality desperately wag their fingers in disapproval. Are certain types of sex immoral, as has been suggested? To paraphrase Woody Allen: yes, if you’re doing it right.

[Read more…] about Second Life and the Stupid White Man’s Burden, Part Three: Guni’s Condescension

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Second Life

Second Life and the Stupid White Man’s Burden, Part Two: Grief’s Interjection

January 29, 2007 by Sherilyn Connelly

Ailin, a cheeseburger, and a virtual griefer.To say that I spend every waking moment online would be inaccurate. Sure, I’m online whether at work or at home, with the same screen configuration at both: Gmail window in the upper left corner of the screen, minimized but visible enough to see if there’s a new email or chat request, SecureCRT in the bottom left, just enough showing to see if there’s a new message. That’s also how my laptop looks when I’m at a wifi cafe writing, which is how I spend most of my quote-free-unquote time these days. But it isn’t just the waking moments, because even when I’m asleep, I’m still downloading stuff. Someone was kind enough to post the Bob Dylan Hybrid SACD box set in .flac format to alt.binaries.sounds.lossless, and it’s taking a while to get ’em all, as you can well imagine. Thank goodness for DVD-R.

So I’m online in one form or another at any given moment, and when actually in front of a computer usually have a chat or three happening. Oh, right—my cellphone is usually somewhere within my field of vision, lest I get a call or (even more importantly) a text message and miss it. For all of that, I don’t interact much with strangers, and I classify a stranger as someone I’ve never met in meatspace. I don’t participate in online forums or message boards even what few mailing lists still exist, and unless it’s a means to a specific end (like an offer of a gig, which usually comes via email), I almost never correspond or chat with anyone I don’t know in real life. What I do online is all about supplementing my offline life. (And, of course, piracy. Arrrr!)
[Read more…] about Second Life and the Stupid White Man’s Burden, Part Two: Grief’s Interjection

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Second Life

Second Life and the Stupid White Man’s Burden, Part One: Anshe’s Ascension

January 22, 2007 by Sherilyn Connelly

sl_mrburns.jpgWe at Medialoper take pride in surfing the hemorrhaging edge of cultural analysis, so I’ll be blunt: sex sells.

Especially celebritarian sex, famous pretty people associated with products which may or may not be related to the source of their fame. I still don’t get what Catherine Zeta-Jones has to do with cellular phones, but whenever I walk by a T-Mobile store or see their ads in a magazine, there she is. (Maybe if I watched television and saw the commercials it would make more sense, but I don’t want to know that much.) Though it helps, fame is not required. Like, there’s an auto shop at 10th and Howard in San Francisco called Smog Queen. On their sign is a faded head-and-shoulders glamour shot of what I’m guessing is a porn starlet. The Queen of Smog, no doubt. The sheer gall of it cracks me up every time I drive by. Empirically, what does a hot chick have to do with a smog check?

Not a damn thing. By my math, that’s exactly as much a hot chick has to do with virtual real estate in Second Life. Not that a hot chick can’t do smog checks or sell virtual real estate—they can be found in both fields—but if you create the association in the consumer’s mind, it’s unlikely to hurt sales.

Which brings us to Anshe Chung, the Second Life persona of one Ailin Graef.
[Read more…] about Second Life and the Stupid White Man’s Burden, Part One: Anshe’s Ascension

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Marketing, Second Life

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Previously on Medialoper

  • Certain Songs #2539: Sufjan Stevens – “Heirloom”
  • Certain Songs #2538: Sufjan Stevens – “Casimir Pulaski Day”
  • Certain Songs #2537: Sufjan Stevens – “Chicago”
  • Certain Songs #2536: Sufjan Stevens – “Decatur, Or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!”
  • Certain Songs #2535: Suede – “She Still Leads Me On”

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