Reuters Seeks a Second Life

I’ve been talking peoples’ ears off about Second Life for months now, and it’s gotten to the point where even I wonder if I’m starting to lose touch with reality — which is actually a good character trait in the eyes of other Second Lifers.

Then I heard that Reuters is opening a virtual news agency in Second Life, a 3D virtual world where all objects and buildings are made by real people who own intellectual property rights to their creations. This takes the fledgling virtual news industry to an entirely new level, and makes you wonder if the terms “real” and “virtual” will hold meaning for much longer. When real people spend over $300,000 in real dollars every day to buy virtual islands, houses, clothing and vehicles — and then turn around to sell those assets for a profit — I struggle to see the difference between Second Life and present reality (at least in a business sense). That’s not all that different from the speculative housing market that’s been holding up the economy.

And now that Reuters is in the mix, what’s “real news” for that matter? A Second Life character named Adam Reuters will staff a real virtual bureau office to cover the goings-on by real people living virtual lives in the 3D avatar universe. If the office is as nice as that owned by the Metaverse Messenger, we’ll know this is more than just a marketing tactic.

Perhaps I’m just a hopeless fan of Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash, but I think there’s some substance to this latest chapter of the virtual reality movement. Second Life is a major evolutionary bridge between what the Internet was and what it will become. And on a selfish note, it’s nice to get confirmation that I’m not crazy — in a bad way, that is (I always reserve the right to be considered “good crazy”).

When I read stories like this, I can almost see myself in the future telling my daughters and maybe even granddaughters about my first flying car trip, my first teleport to a hip island, and my first avatar concert in Second Life. To them that will sound like us talking about when we first used a Mac or NCSA Mosaic. They’ll pretend to be interested, but I know they will be stifling yawns. To them, shopping around for new outfits, scooters and crash pads for their Second Life peeps will be no different from going to the mall — if there are any real malls left by then.

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Reuters, Social Media

Bakotopians Prove Their Love

We were delighted this week when the Bakotopian community came out of the woodwork to respond to an NAA reporter’s inquiry about why they like Bakotopia more than MySpace. You can and should read their comments for yourselves, but they basically boiled down to this:

• It’s local and all my friends are here. Myspace is overwhelming.
• There are local people running the site, and they talk to me.
• I can find out about bands in Bakersfield instead of bands in New York or L.A.
• We like Matt Munoz and want to support him.

I swear on my honor that we didn’t plant any of those comments. By the time I found this thread it was a couple days old. Thank you, Bakotopians, for validating everything we set out to do with this site! Without you it would be like an empty bar with really great furniture. Bakotopia is all about the users.

Technorati Tags: Bakotopia, Bakomatic

A Sort of Homecoming

The last few weeks have been surreal in ways I can only begin to understand. To quote U2, it was “a sort of homecoming” that brought so many disparate parts of my professional and personal life into focus, and I felt — not for the first time — like I was an actor in someone else’s play.

As previously mentioned, the “Bakomatic Social Media Platform” was the recipient of a Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism. That by itself was an honor, especially given that even to this day people that I know and respect question whether things like citizen’s media, blogging and social networking can be considered journalism — as if that makes any difference to the millions upon millions of people spend hours a day in social media activities and never touch a “journalistic” product like a newspaper.

So on September 18, I traveled back to Washington, D.C. to accept the award on behalf of the Californian. The awards banquet was held at the National Press Club. Just 8 years earlier I had worked for Knight Ridder Tribune Interactive one floor below the room where this luncheon was being held, and that office and company had long since shut down. Former Knight Ridder executive Bryan Monroe presented the awards, and I graciously accepted the beautiful crystal trophy from him and went back to my seat. And then he dropped the first bombshell.

I’m paraphrasing the following quote, and shame on this former reporter for not writing it down, but this is my memory of what Mr. Monore said. Hopefully I got it pretty close:

“The Knight brothers and the people of the Knight Ridder chain were pioneers in using journalism to help people be better informed citizens, but that wasn’t enough. We were also one of the earliest adopters of digital technology, but that also wasn’t enough. In the end, our shareholders didn’t believe in our ability to be relevant in the future. They put more value in our assets when sold than they did in our future potential.”

Well needless to say, that was pretty sobering — and oddly inspiring at the same time, as he then pointed to the winners as role models to follow.

I’m proud of what The Bakersfield Californian has done in a short time, but I feel that it’s the bare minimum given the media revolution that’s happening largely outside of newspapers’ walls. Thanks to the foresight of Ginger Moorhouse and the fact that we’re an independently owned company, the Californian is fortunate to at least have a seat at that card table. Sadly, most newspapers (and other traditional media like TV and radio) are in another Casino. And I don’t mean the Bellagio either. Circus Circus is more like it.

Then the second bomb shell. The Knight Foundation announced its News Challenge, which is essentially a $25 million venture capital program spread over 5 years that will fund online “news and information” projects that benefit real-world communities. Applicants can be newspapers, or any for-profit, non-profit or educational institution. The purpose is to secure the Knight brothers’ legacy in the new digital world. It will be really interesting to see what they put their money behind.

And then a few days later, the American Press Institute released a $2 Million study called Newspaper Next that seeks to educate newspapers about how to reverse declining revenues and encourage longterm innovation. Many of their recommendations involve things we’re already doing. Bloggers such as former online newspaper pioneer Susan Mernit (now at Yahoo) have criticized API for not spending that money in the way the Knight Foundation is — that is to say, by funding innovation instead of studying it — but it is at least a bold effort to encourage newspapers to do what they need to do to survive.

If you were to put one headline on the events of Sept. 18 with respect to newspapers, it would go something like this: “Newspapers Agree the Future is Now“. It’s up to each individual newspaper to decide if they’re part of that future, or a footnote in the past. I hope most choose to step up to the plate, because there’s a century of good values in what they do, and I’m not convinced that other online-only ventures will carry those forward.

After that, I wandered around Washington, a toursit in the city I once called home (well sort of – I did at least work there for a few years). I visited some friends at The Washington Post at 15th and L where I worked more than 11 years ago (fun fact — you now get a personalized UPC symbol sticker to get in the building, as if you’re littel more than a cereal box). Then I got on the metro, went to National Airport and headed back to Colorado.

Once again I wanted to kiss the ground when I got home and couldn’t wait to see the mountains above my dashboard.

Technorati Tags: Bakomatic, Knight Foundation, Newspaper Next, News Challenge

The virtual print industry is born

For the last few months I’ve been checking out Secondlife.com, a 3D “virtual” world that starts to make you rethink the meaning of the term “virtual” to begin with. That’s because in addition to having 800,000 worldwide registered users (up from 130,000 when I started using it earlier this year), it has its own economy in the form of Linden Dollars that can be converted into any real currency at any time based on a publicly traded exchange.

That, and the fact that individuals in Second Life own the intellectual property rights to things they create, has caused a flurry of real-life business activity. I could talk for hours about the stores, clothing, casinos and even virtual ice cream cones available to Second Life consumers. What I find most interesting for media is that there is a growing print industry in Second Life.

Here’s a screen shot from one of the Second Life welcome plazas where my avatar is confronted with not just one, but seven kiosks for different “print” publications. When my avatar clicks on a kiosk, I can choose to pay a few Lindens (one Linden is about 1/300th of a U.S. dollar) for a PDF newspaper or magazine with news about people in the Second Life universe.

While the production quality of these publications isn’t on par with The New York Times, it’s as good as any local magazine you may find in a coffee shop or restaurant. And even crazier than that — the pages include display ads of businesses in Second Life that can sell you those same ice cream cones, shirts, Avatar makeovers, virtual real estate and more. Presumably those advertisers paid for the placements.

I wish I could get my hands on some numbers that show how many avatars buy these publications, but given that they are increasing in number, pages and ads, it would reason that business is good. One indication of success is that The Metaverse Messenger, one of the first Second Life pubs, has a swanky new office tower with post-modern furniture and a working elevator that must have cost a lot of Lindens, as a typical plot of land in Second Life sells for $2,000 USD. (I’m not making that up — check it out by downloading Second Life and searching for “Metaverse Messenger”).

Of course the irony here is enormous, because “real life” print circulation is going in the opposite direction, with most newspapers reporting 2-3% drops in circulation in recent years. The Knight Ridder chain is no more after a shareholder revolt, and every month we hear of new layoffs and buyouts at newspapers big and small.

This makes me wonder. Could the virtual print industry one day supplant the “real” print industry? And what is “real” anyway? How long will it be before the hundreds of newspapers that sell PDF versions of their daily products online start selling them in Second Life kiosks?

After writing this I feel like I’ve now seen everything, and also that this is just the first chapter in a whole new aspect to digital life.

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Virtual Reality, Newspapers