How To Save Money From Paying Rent: Store ALL Your Junk On Second Life

When I first heard of Second Life, I thought that humanity had been set back. For instance, take a quick read of the article "Even In A Virtual World 'Stuff' Matters". In the article the woman mentions how she has 31,540 items that she owns. Virtual world or not, who needs all that junk? Seriously. And here I was and thought I had enough garbage in my room. But to clog servers?

That sounds PERFECT! Think about it for 10 seconds and pretend I'm being serious...how cool would that be? I could save so much money and live in a box! My other box will store all my stuff. Or maybe, I could even create an alter-ego and pretend to be innocent? Or I could pretend to be a creepy stalker? Or I could be nice (no pretending here)?

The more I think about it, it really does seem kind of neat, regardless of how cynical I come off as. The pretend Anshe Chung won the money I should have, and became the first Second Life millionaire. (An article describing what should have been me can be found at "Second Life's First Millionaire") Well, that seems pretty slick.

Second Life provides a means for being something your not. Basically, think of Facebook/Myspace on steroids. You create a 3D animated character to play yourself and then you run around doing things you would normally in life: lie, cheat and deceit. And shop. There is plenty of shopping. It does have a cool interface with Web 2.0 integration and video plugins. My favorite point: you need to build up your street credibility. Street credibility is translated into spending time on the website, which means that CLEARLY you can do one of my favorite things in the world: PROCRASTINATE!

All things aside, procrastination is the perfect tool in my book for making it through school. Another "nice" feature that intellectuals tell me about is that thing that I rarely do...."learning" I think it is? Well, "learning" aside, Second Life's grade? A-! Remember the whole "I'm a college student" part? Yah, $10/month is kind of expensive...still though, it does seem kind of cool and if I had someone funding me I'd "consider" joining...If it was FREE, then I'd give SL an A+...anyone want to fund me?


Boss, Shira. "Even in a Virtual World, ‘Stuff’ Matters." New York Times 09 Sept 2007 27 Sept 2007

Hamilton, Chuck. "Fast Talk: Getting A [Second] Life." Fast Talk: Getting A [Second] Life. Feb 2007. Fast Company.com. 27 Sep 2007 .

Hof, Rob. "Second Life's First Millionaire." Business Week 26 Nov 2006 27 Sept 2007 .

"Second Life In 3600 Seconds." Second Life In 3600 Seconds. April 2007. 27 Sep 2007 .

Technorati Profile

this is so that I can be registered on Technorati

The Mouth's Word

In a world where advertisers (according to a recent study) are considered to be only one notch above used car salesman, advertisers are looking (as well as marketers) for a new way to reach consumers. As Shel Israel/Robert Scoble's book "Naked Conversations" mentioned, Interruption Marketing was simply obnoxious. One of the resultants was viral marketing (which word of mouth falls under). The reason for word of mouth's success is the layer of truth and understanding. The most powerful word of mouth (WOM) comes from people you trust, namely friends and family. That is not to understate the power of WOM through blogs: they are a powerful marketer's tool.

Blogs create a one-to-many relationship, which provides for a good way to get your message out to the public. Blogs also allow one to comment on prior posts/comments. This is important because as jackie Huba states, "...Two-way marketing is essential to evangelism. Word-of-mouth tactics may backfire if they are one-directional." (Scoble and Israel 38)

Another key function for marketers/advertisers is the ability to advertise on blogs. For instance, on an ESPN blog, one advertisement could be for Cleveland Indians playoff tickets or for a related product. This way, WOM is working in conjunction with interstitals, blog ads, etc.

A quick example of WOM at work is the video that has been long circulating (by today's circumstances) is The Landlord. My friend sent it to me and so I knew I had to check it out. Through WOM this video has had an obscene number of hits.

The only thing I can predict that will come next is taking blogging and Google's YouTube and Google Video (among other services) to become video blogs. WOM would be an excellent choice for promotion because it is so easy and cheap.

Scoble, Robert, and Shel Israel. Naked Conversations. 1st Ed. Hoboken, NJ: Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006.

My Blog Circle

Here are the people in my Blog Group...

Ale's Blog
Colleen's Blog
Khaled's Blog
Seppo Joe's Blog
Tim's Blog

An Attempt At Extra Credit...

Here is my attempt at taking a learning experience to the next level. Check out at Michael's Blog

Companies Aren't Just Smiles, Candy & Sunshine?

After reading Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's section on corporate blogs in the book "Naked Conversations", I began to think of all of the ways that a corporate blog could go awry. The guidelines on corporate weblogs seem obvious. Things are included such as "Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"; "Under-promise. Over deliver."; "Never change your weblog's URL"; "Never lie" [which seems ridiculous that this gets its own entry considering the first I mentioned]; "Be careful with legal issues"; etc. (Scoble & Israel 191-194) Some statements seem to contradict one another. For instance the "If your life is in turmoil and/or you're unhappy, don't write" and "your blog is your own". (Scoble and Israel 192-193) Don't most disgruntled people need to get their thoughts out? After all, if they are disgruntled they are going to, out of stress, explode and say things they shouldn't. I've seen this happen countless times. The Internet/blogs provide an easy way to do that in a quick manner. Then, the company has to play rebound and run damage control. Frequently this is disastrous and results in loss of business. After all, Scoble and Israel are just throwing ideas forward on what employee bloggers SHOULD follow. These are NOT absolute rules.

So, what must a company do to become immune to employee weblog damage? First off, realize that this is impossible; they must accept that in the real business world, companies can only take preventative measures, especially with the openness of the Internet. Second, there will always be disgruntled employees. Sure, it would be nice to think that a company is only smiles, candy and sunshine, but that would be a giant lie. Really, the only real other option is to set up filters (humans or otherwise) on all the employees’ blogs. Yet, this seems like a huge infraction of the first amendment and that it would cause the employees to be even more disgruntled. It would prevent the employees from publishing what is really on their mind, and providing a censor. Yet, they are sure to find their own way to publish whatever they want to say, such as publishing them under fake aliases. Eventually though the connection is sure to be discovered between the employee and the fake alias. What is put up on the Web is extremely difficult to pull off without any viewers. They are surely going to be fired and possibly find themselves in a long lawsuit.

What is a company to do? My disgruntled ITEC-333 class blog can be found at...

Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. 1st Ed. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2002

Scoble, Robert, and Shel Israel. Naked Conversations. 1st Ed. Hoboken, NJ: Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006.

Exceptions To The "Rules"...

There was one point in one of the articles with which I could not get myself to agree. Charles Kadushin, in talking about distance between nodes, wrote "Though I am well enmeshed in a given group, I have one friend across the country who is a member of another well clustered group." Then, as a footnote, one can find, "Whether this friend is a close friend or someone I do not know very well is part of the 'strength of weak ties'...that is, someone I am not close to." (Kadushin, 12) First off, that point seems to render itself useless at first glance: "...a close friend..." and then "'strength of weak ties'...that is, someone I am not close to." Some of my close friends come from across the country or do not live in near proximity to myself. I have friends who go to schools such as in Delaware, and though that is only a couple hours north, we have remained close. To say something such as since he lives a few hours away, I don't affect his circle -- which is what these passages seem to indicate -- are preposterous. Some of my best friends go to schools in Boston (8 hour drive away from me) and in Virginia (several hours away). Is that to say because we are not in the same "neighborhood" that the connections are weak? Together we all form a strong network, all playing as central people in a mutual relationship. Another person in this group lives in Atlanta and goes to school nearby (a 10 to 11 hour drive), and is that to say that they are on the peripheral level? Absolutely not. I am closer with some of the people now that they are NOT in my neighborhood as compared to when they were. We all live in different neighborhoods.

One could say that because of the Internet we have all remained close, but that would be a lie too. Though we use instant messenging clients, email, and VOIP (including video chat), we mainly have phone conversations. But this is subject for another post...

I don't believe though, that I am the only exception to the rule...

Cross, Rob, Nitin Nohria, and Andrew Parker. "Six Myths About Informal Networks -- and How To Overcome Them." MIT Sloan Management Review 43, 3(2002): 69.

Kadushin, Charles. "Introduction to Social Network Theory." 17 Feb 2004 1-60. 09 Sept 2007 .

In The Liquid Form...

One of the things that have always interested me in networks deals with their liquidity. Whether the relationship is mutual, or whether more hierarchial (with central and peripheral people), there is always some movement from who plays the central role and who plays more of an outside role. For instance, looking at person A, B, C and D, and assuming that A and B are central people while C and D are on the peripherary, one year later, the opposite could be true. That is, to say that A and B could be on the peripherary. There are many factors for this transition, including distance changes, changes in personality, and a breakdown of the network in general.

For instance, with my friends I used to be more on the periphery. Now, I am central. Several reasons for that include getting closer with my friends, but really when we are all home being able to drive (yet it is more than that because we all take crazy flights/trains/buses just to be able to visit each other). While we are not in the same neighborhoods, we still remain tight knit. We have many different views about the world too, so it isn't that we all became the same. Really no subgroups exist except to categorize those who are "perhiperhal people" and those who are the "central people". What's more, the people who aren't there on the everyday level make up the outer rim, like myself, who used to be there.

Even in a situation in the workplace sees the roles changing on a repeating basis. How many times are people promoted? How many times are people demoted or fired? It all seems very liquid, yet the texts read would convince one that it is more static.

Cross, Rob, Nitin Nohria, and Andrew Parker. "Six Myths About Informal Networks -- and How To Overcome Them." MIT Sloan Management Review 43, 3(2002): 69.

Kadushin, Charles. "Introduction to Social Network Theory." 17 Feb 2004 1-60. 09 Sept 2007 .

Fat, lazy people win...basically...

After reading the selected articles/chapter for this blog entry -- dealing with social capital and informal networks -- I started to think of all my interactions where these networks have helped. The article titled "The People Who Make Organizations Go-Or Stop" starts with "It's not what you know, it's who you know." (Cross and Prusak, 5) This is extremely true seeing as how websites such as Myspace or Facebook have created more informal networks. Through those networks, while doing homework, I have been able see people who were in the same class as me and could give assistance. That way I could pull up the equivalent to an address book entry vcard. Yet, there was a paradox created because according to managers of many companies in 2002, they believed that these kinds of networks hindered productivity. The reality of this is that we have all found means of procrastination on these websites, or through instant messaging clients (talking to those part of informal networks). The look of some people's Facebook, Myspace or blogging pages are nauseating with the amount of trash that they have on their page (i.e. -- Facebook recently opening up their API to allow 3rd party applications).

It is evident that the means of communication are improving, from wall drawings and a series of grunts, to speech, etc. and eventually on to telegraph, telephone, cellular phone, instant messaging, voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) and whatever the future holds. While I do love listening to those who complain (and I usually laugh to myself) that the usage of the Internet (especially older generations) and the advance of technology destroys social capital. Whereas once I could go and visit someone, I can now not move while we video chat. The advance of technology is the main components of the Laws of Reed, Metcalfe, Sarnoff, and Moore, and uses math to explain the value/worth of networks and their growth potential. (Rheingold, 56-61) Issues arise, at least in my mind, in only a few places: first, we are breeding a fatter generation. Why should I move to visit a friend, co-worker, etc. when I can sit and video chat? Additionally, it makes outsourcing easier which supports capitalistic markets and globalization, but can hinder work forces/the economies on a micro level. All of this forms to really forge a new relationship which we can go ahead and call "Mike's Law": as technology increases (see the previous Laws), social capital decreases. Fat, lazy people win...basically.

Then again, through studies I have found that, as helped proven by the award-winning documentary "Some Kind Of Monster", that collective thought brought on by informal networks does increase quality... To counter my own thought though, Metallica's "St. Anger" album, the product of collective engineering, was NOT great...but that was mainly due to lack of solos and the way the microphones were used to record the drums...

Cross, Rob, and Laurence Prusak. "The People Who Make Organiztions Go-Or Stop." Harvard Business Review June 2002: 5-12.

Cross, Rob, Stephen P. Borgatti, and Andrew Parker. "Making Invisible Work Visible: Using Social Network Analysis to Support Strategic Collaboration." California Management Review 44, 2(2002): 25-46

Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. 1st. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2002