If you’re familiar with Second Life, then you have no doubt experienced the virtual advertising billboards that companies are utilizing to market to Second Life citizens. While the presence of these billboards may lead to increased conversions, the issue with this method of advertising is the relevance to any of the viewers of the ad.
ContextAds is a company that delivers relevant advertisements to Second Life avatars by listening to the avatar conversations around ContextAds billboards and displaying relevant advertisements based on certain keywords it discovers during conversations.
So this is how I envision the ContextAds system. I’m flying around happily in Second Life and I look down to see this hot little avatar, we’ll call Cindyrella Tenk, and I start chatting with her (is not usual Second life protocol as I’ve been explained by one avatar that you can’t just walk up to anyone and start chatting, would you do that in real life? I explained that (1) I wouldn’t be altering my appearance in public or flying from location to location either. We’ll leave Second Life suggested behavior for another post)…I’ve typed things like the snow was awesome and I notice that the billboard above us displays a Snow Summit advertisement. I then tell her I’m looking for a new house and the billboard shows a new development of an area where I live. etc. etc.
I have to admit, this method of advertising seems pretty cool, but very eerily freaky at the same time. It’s like “whoa…the sign can hear me”. I compare it to the first time I used Google search and was spelling something incorrect “Did you mean, blah blah blah?” Freaky! I guess it’s better than some of the Google Ads that I’ve seen that decide to show everything “Garcia” related since my last name is Garcia. Ya, I was really looking for Garcia Tires, and Garcia Landscaping.
Not to sound cold, but I intend to keep this post short and simple for personal reasons.
It’s a sad thing that happened at Virgina Tech. I feel bad for all involved, especially the students that got shot, their friends and family.
Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube are social media outlets that traditional media stated as tools that were used to cover the shootings, for VT students to let friends and family know they were ok, and to pay tribute to those who have fallen.
After researching many of the alternatives to building the Macabbi Social Network I’ve decided on trying my hand at Drupal. I’m sure there will be people saying use Ning, code in PHP, use onesite, etc…..IT AINT HAPENNING. The reasons are complex but here is an extremely simplified version.
1. The developers that specialize in creating custom social networks are too expensive.
2. I don’t have any of my MIT software development friends knocking on my door for this project.
3. I want to learn something new and fun.
4. All the other “instant social network” alternatives don’t do what we want.
Since I don’t have a background in development other than education-wise, it should be an interesting project. I’ll document the process as best I can I stumble through it. Hopefully the Drupal experiment goes well so that we don’t have to decide on a different system for our other much more interesting concept. Stay tuned.
April 21, 2007
Posted by Rick Garcia in Social Media Marketing, Second Life, Contextual Advertising 
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Huh?
