Virtual Worlds 2007, Report No. 4: $5 Million Worth of Worlds
by prokofy on 29/03/07 at 9:51 pm
Prokofy Neva, Corporate Watch
So they had this big conference with 600 of the most influential people in the world, in terms of middle management or even CEO level, from major broadcast media, online games, social media, advertising, development companies, educators and government. It was kind of scary, in fact, thinking of what a terrorist target this particular gathering was.
And? Did any money change hands? Did any deals go down? Did people make bank, as the baby barons say in Second Life?
Yes. A very knowledgeable and highly-placed source for this conference told me today that the deals initiated and signed at this conference were valued “in the millions”. When pressed, the source said, “$5 million” is the estimated value of the deals coming out of this conference. That’s U.S. dollars, not Lindens.
Is this believable? You tell me. Of course, people like my sources might like people like me to hype this industry more than is justified to make it look like it’s worth spending another $1000 to register at yet another one of these shindigs next time. But…Peering at the suits in the “executives lounge” earnestly demoing stuff from their laptops (even Lindens who claim they don’t do deals), and hearing about the advertising budgets of the large corporations present, it seems plausible. Why?
Because sources in the metaversale [oops was that a typo??!] development companies say their industry now commands $100 million from clients of everything from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses. So $5 million coming out of this very strategically organized conference in New York could well be the real deal.
Is that plausible? Well Palinden Reuben Steiger bristled a bit on a panel once when a moderator made a comment probing for estimates of revenues from MOU — basically, you don’t get to pry proprietary information out of a small business.
Do the math, however, people. This island known to cost $50,000 paid to developers; that island known to have cost $25,000 paid to developers. A tenth of a mil here, a tenth there, pretty soon you are talking about real millions.
And guess what — $100 million is not a very big figure. It’s a fraction of the size of the ad budgets for these large corporations.
Which brings me to discuss the king of any conference like this: ROI (return on investment).
As a small business — micropayment small — in SL, I have to wonder why people even use the term “ROI” in this regard. To me, ROI is if I buy an island, and then rent it, and try to keep it managed well, then eventually I pay myself back for its purchase price and start “making bank”. “Making bank” isn’t touchy-feely stuff like getting my customers to “interact with the brand of Ravenglass,” it’s about *cashing out money from the Lindens into PayPal money market and into real life to pay bills with*.
That’s not what something like AOL or American Apparel or Warner Brothers are talking about necessarily. We kept hearing that Adidas sold 27,000 virtual sneakers. Don’t they sell that out of all the stores along Fifth and Sixth Avenue in a month or something? I mean, that’s a figure that doesn’t sound like much. Even if they charged bunches for them. It’s not by sales of a product that they are judging ROI.
So ROI becomes a hugely flexible concept, if what they really mean is “reached eyeballs” or “clicks” or “exposure”.
But then, stop using terms like “ROI” as if something *returned*. It didn’t. It flowed out, never to come back, except in some elusive sense of “exposure” or “gaining brand recognition”. No doubt media planners have scientific ways of calculating just how much sales come down the line *later* when they have X clicks or Y exposure — beats the hell out of me. All I know is that if I spend $25 US per month on SEARCH ads, I ensure my rentals are filled. So I could correlate my ads to my sales very clearly. Something like an ad on a magazine related to SL, even if I get the click count and the teleportation count isn’t going to give me as good information on sales.
So, it would be better if they used a term like “my PR budget” or “my ad campaign expense” for what they do in SL rather than “ROI”. Because it’s dropping $50,000 down to have a PR campaign — and that’s it. It’s gone from the annual campaign budget then.
Did you notice the new jargon of these companies? If you’re like me, your notion of advertising was shaped by old TV shows like Dick Van Dyke and Bewitched, and those sort of goofy husbands who worked in advertising who were always trying to make bosses with names like Larry happy. That era of terminology had phrases like “public relations” (PR) or “ad campaign” or “advertisement” or “ad man”.
Today, these same companies which are actually advertising campaigns have rebranded and reformatted themselves so as to never use the term “advertising” — which Lordfly might get a nosebleed over. That’s why when something called Crayon came to SL, I couldn’t figure out what they do. I thought they belonged to the Crayola people at first.
Instead, what these companies all say they represent nowadays are “companies that provide solutions”. When I hear these execs saying in panel after panel, in presentation after presentation at a media conference liks this, that they have “solutions,” I hear another thing: that they have clients with PROBLEMS. Yeesh. They sure do!
What kind of problems? Losses of their audience. This one guy from an ad agency out in the MidWest some where, who was worried about whether he’d be able to make his own avatar (it sounded too hard, and he said “I know what I’m not good at, and that’s what I’m not good at), gave me a glossy brochure. It was his company’s work for television shows.
“I don’t have a TV and don’t watch TV anymore,” I said. I have Second Life, World of Warcraft, and Neopets for my family entertainment, if you will. For work, to watch the news, I have the Internet where I especially want to go to the television or radio sites of other countries, i.e. BBC or RTV, in order to see news broadcasting that isn’t biased in the way that American television has become. The war in Iraq made many people stop believing in television.
The guy had trouble believing that I didn’t watch television, and showed me the brochure of these various shows. I frankly couldn’t recognize a single one. I say this not as a poseur — I just never did TV much, and I especially don’t now that I have SL and the Internet news sites instead.
“Well, maybe you’ll recognize the brands,” he said hopefully. The products he advertises on these shows. I looked at the brands…and I didn’t recognize a lot of them. Maybe I’m just not typical, and I shop the generic store brand and the bulk rates or something — but something about falling off the television circuit does make you fall away from brand recognition.
And there it is: the ad revenues dropped 8 percent for these companies because people have stopped reading newspapers (subscriptions are down) due to the Internet and other forms of entertainment, and those in this industry tell me that there is probably a story of even more ad revenues being lost — or about to be lost — because of the higher and higher percentages of people falling away from old media.
Naturally as we are coming to see, whenever there’s a loss of ad revenue for old media, the advertising companies have to start talking about “solutions to problems” — and that’s what Virtual Worlds 2007 was all about. (I was also told that “solutions to problems” was a phrase borrowed from the IT industry because tekkies talk in these terms — and that makes sense, because often I find tekkies peddling solutions to non-existent problems that more software doesn’t help).
$5 million worth of deals. All you can ask about this is: did you get your piece of it?
Betsy Book may be able to deliver all her 14-year-old girls on a platter to these ad men but if their moms don’t start buying the Pop-Tarts or whatever it is people try to sell to 14-year-old girls these days, she won’t be able to sustain it. Still, lots more money will be changing hands before this is all over.
Ian Betteridge
Mar 30th, 2007
“So, it would be better if they used a term like “my PR budget” or “my ad campaign expense” for what they do in SL rather than “ROI”. Because it’s dropping $50,000 down to have a PR campaign — and that’s it.”
Ummm… ad campaigns do have specific ROI criteria, Prok. PR campaigns have specified measurement criteria that they have to achieve too. It’s nowhere near as fuzzy as you think.
urizenus
Mar 30th, 2007
I don’t think this meeting was about deal making. It was mostly about “let’s make some connections and educate ourselves and go back and tell our bosses”. 5 million is in effect zero for this crowd. The deals will come later and they will be in the hundreds of millions.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 30th, 2007
>Ummm… ad campaigns do have specific ROI criteria, Prok. PR campaigns have specified measurement criteria that they have to achieve too. It’s nowhere near as fuzzy as you think.
Ummmm….no you’re wrong, Ian, not in SL they don’t. You might draw analogies or reason by analogy but it could be all wrong. It sure as hell IS fuzzy in SL. Because it’s not like TV or the print media where people have had 50 years to make up metrics and analyse them and figure out what the numbers mean and how those eyeball numbers follow through to sales.
That kind of extensive market research has NOT been done — or at least is not widely available in the public domain — so you cannot at all claim that if you have X traffic on your big-ass corporate island in SL, it means Y sales in your real-life business. That’s just it. There’s a big gulf here. No one knows yet what the bridge is, whether making avatars have skateboards in Second Life on AOL Pointe makes them sign up for the free AIM at least and wear a t-shirt to finally then nail down to pay for AOL paid services. Trust me, AOL doesn’t know that. I listened very carefully to their panel discussion at this meeting. Their representative constantly used expressions like “exploration” blah blah. Eventually these panels will all be up on the web on the Virtual Worlds page and you can listen to all of them yourself.
PR campaigners may tell their customers they have these tools available and may make their clients pay for them. They are buying water in a sieve if they think in fact this is known. The analysis of advertising even for TV isn’t the peer-reviewed double-blind tested science you imagine *these days either* when people are going away from TV from droves and have abandoned print.
More and more, there will be the studies, but there are very likely to be a lot of fake and padded studies. Of course, marketing firms are in the business of making their clients think that they can provide value-add in SL, and naturally they themselves will perform the marketing research and skew it to however they need to skew it to prove to their clients that they have ROI. They may “prove” this in things like “number of blog posts” or “number of comments on our site” or whatever they do. This does not mean they made a sale.
BTW, are you a marketing guru, Ian? I thought you were a computer nerd.
Uri, it was the first of this type of big meetings between media planners or advertising executives and the virtual world gang, so no, nobody expected it to lead to millions of dollars. Still, they expected it to produce SOMETHING. If it didn’t lead to any initial deals or sealing of deals, it would be “off,” given that most of these companies have been getting their feet wet in SL for the last 6 months or so. This conference might have been the first time that some of the people got to meet in RL, for example, if they had only met in SL.
5 million, as a percentage of what the volume of this industry is now, is a pittance. And I’m not so sure we will see “hundreds of millions” within a year unless they can start drawing a bright red line between an island in second life with stuff on it and sales.
Impressions, ad-clicks, eyeballs all have a recipe in RL, when related to TV, radio, Internet, that translate into RL sales. We don’t really know yet whether what happens to avatars on islands in virtual worlds leads to sales, leads to indifference, or leads to shunning.
FlipperPA Peregrine
Mar 30th, 2007
I think that number is pulled out of thin air, and way too low. I think Uri’s on track; it seemed to me many of these companies were testing the waters. However, as with all conferences, the truly world-changing conversations happened in the hallways and after parties. While many of the conversations amongst the billion dollar companies were purely theoretical and hypothetical, I was glad to be able to show a few of the new proof-of-concepts I’ve done to some people, and establish some really great potential partnerships. Thanks for wearing you SLCC1 badge, Prok!
Ian Betteridge
Mar 30th, 2007
“Ummmm….no you’re wrong, Ian, not in SL they don’t. You might draw analogies or reason by analogy but it could be all wrong. ”
I’m not drawing by any kind of analogy Prok. I’m drawing on real-world experience of involvement in advertising and marketing campaigns. At the moment, the amount spent in SL is chump change: the kind of money save by cleaning your data and cutting a couple of thousand people off your DM mailing list because they’ve moved, gone bust, or died.
Because it’s chump change, the metrics don’t have to be particularly high. But as part of campaign planning, there will be metrics.
“Impressions, ad-clicks, eyeballs all have a recipe in RL, when related to TV, radio, Internet, that translate into RL sales. We don’t really know yet whether what happens to avatars on islands in virtual worlds leads to sales, leads to indifference, or leads to shunning.”
The aim will be brand building, largely, plus developing marketing experience in-house in metaversal campaigns. Both are things that can be measured, which means they represent ROI: brand perception is a factor in sales uplift (and it’s easy to do research to find out what impact the perception of your brand has on sales uplift – this stuff is well-established). Experience in a new, developing environment is, of course, a direct return on your investment: you might not be able to pin it down in dollars and cents today, but it will pay off in the future.
shockwave yareach
Mar 30th, 2007
:: on abandoning print, radio and TV
People have stopped buying newspapers and magazines because a) they got stupidly expensive, and b) there was nothing in them but ads. TV and radio are going a similar way – very little entertainment for the buck and more ads than you can shake a stick at.
It’s analogous to “pricing yourself out of a marketplace”. Sure, a group can charge whatever the market will bear for their product – that’s the American way. But do it too much and people will find other ways to spend that money. That’s human nature. And human nature isn’t going to vanish just so Clear Channel’s stock can rise 1/4 a point.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 30th, 2007
1. The number is NOT pulled out of thin air whatsoever. You’re merely saying that, Flipper, because I posted it. If you friends posted it, you’d love it up. That’s all that’s about.
I repeat, and I stand by my sources: they are in a position to know, and have a valid opinion which is reported. The challenge here is to those who are real reporters in this field; I’m a virtual reporter. But in real life, I can do what I would do in my RL reporting field, which is completely different than this one, and go up and ask folks. I found nobody was bothering to put the question from the press corps there. I’m happy to go and ask anything of anybody. My problem is that I don’t know the technical specifics down into the weeds of this field, especially the advertising stuff, to be able to ask intelligent questions of these particular types of folks.
2. I think it sounds about right, hearing about a few of the deals. It’s not way too low. It’s about right. And mind you, deals initiated or clinched at this conference is what the number is, not “all deals in the Metaverse” or “all deals that might come out of this conference once they talk to our IT people and we meet again in 3 months”. It’s deals NOW enhanced by this gathering, which was also simultaneously bringing to a head other connections made at things like SWSX or whatever, really going forward with real meetings and expense accounts and budgets.
3. Many of the companies were testing the waters. But some smaller ones, some bigger too, were really eager to go forward and had already laid groundwork to go forward before this meeting. They needed this like *yeserday*. Some of them had already been in SL or There for a while. They might have had one avatar just testing it privately without a company name on it before they got their whole company/unit/whatever involved.
4. You know, I wish some of the journalistic and blogster types at these things would get up off their asses, get off their laptops and stop slavishly typing every single fucking word that comes out of these pre-packaged and pre-fabricated panelists mouths, and instead of behaving like the fucking UN transcription team in the General Assembly, behave like reporters at the UN stake-out, that is, get up out of the chair, walk up to a *real-life person in real-life*, and stake-them out, wait to talk to them, grab them, and talk to them LIVE, even without a laptop, Blackberry or even notebook in hand, but just talk to them off-the-record, so that they are comfortable and you can then aggregate the opinions gathered.
Or come down to the microphones and ask a question in the room, or go right up to them afterwards, introduce yourself, and ask questions of the principles before they can palm you off on “their people”.
There’s something about the new media that makes people not behave like old-fashioned reporters, you know, wearing out shoe-leather and moving their feet.
4. I wore my SLCC badge not because it was SLCC, but because I realized that I might be registered under two names at this conference, and might not be able to demonstrate that I was Prokofy. Knowing the security at the Jewish Museum was about as tight as it gets, I didn’t want to face problems. I find that in any press situation, if you arrive with a bunch of ID tags around your neck and say you’re press, you can get through when some bouncer might otherwise not let you through, so I just threw it on along with a bunch of other irrelevant tags.
5. BTW, speaking of SLCC — four lies in four words (not about SL, not a community, not a conference) — you’re a disgrace, Flipper, and so are all of the rest of you in the SLCC organizing committee for banning me from SLCC this year. It’s *fucking retarded*, there’s no other way to put it.
You know, in RL this week, I must have been to 4-5 meetings, each in buildings or organizations that have security concerns, especially after 9/11. Some of them happen to be pretty high-profile buildings or agencies. There are some meetings I go to at the UN where you need 3 layers of passes/permissions to get in the door, your regular badge, that conference badge, and an additional mission or agency invite to get into certain meetings. I went to luncheons or receptions where alcohol was served GASP. I pass through this kind of stuff all the time, I’ve had clearances and checks and backgrounds run on me a million times, and I’ve never in my *life* every come across a situation where I’d be banned from something.
I meet with the ambassadors of countries all the time, and high-ranking officials, and even these very thin-skinned sorts of countries, knowing that people like me can be critical, don’t think to BAN me from their premises.
I’ve met with US presidents and top officials, Russian presidents and top officials in RL, I’ve been in the Kremlin and the White House and Bundestag and all over hell and back, and I’m *barred from the silly SLCC conference in Chicago*? I mean, is this *fucking retarded* or what?
I spend 3 days hanging out with all the biggest names in the Metaverse merely doing my little blog and Herald job, and no one bans me, no one calls the security, nobody runs screaming. They all talk to me, they all say they read my stuff, they all let me at the microphone to ask questions that they then nod vigorously about and say are excellent. Every single one. All of them. So you’re the hysterical girls’ clique in sixth grade frightened of your own shadow, banning and shunning someone because they criticized you ACCURATELY on a blog, and then screaming to your lawyers about SC Internet histrionics cases like Joshua claiming fake death threats you all concocted out of your ass, and then claiming “a lawyer” advised you to ban me, and all looking at each other, and Jeska Linden, about who really made the decision, and ducking it. It’s really shameful.
At least if you fucktards are going to ban me, let one of you stand up and take the heat. Stand up like a man, and say, I, FlipperPA Peregrine, ban Prokofy Neva from SLCC, or let Jeska, who is cowaring behind the collective, stand up, and say, I, an official of Linden Lab on this organizing committee, take responsibility for banning Prokofy Neva.
Or don’t. It really doesn’t matter to me personally, as I’ll be boycotting it *anyway*.
I wasn’t going to say anything, but since you decided to be a juvenile jack-ass and try to play “gotcha” over some fucked-up SLCC badget, I’m right back atcha Flipper. You’re a disgrace. Grow up.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 30th, 2007
>I’m not drawing by any kind of analogy Prok. I’m drawing on real-world experience of involvement in advertising and marketing campaigns. At the moment, the amount spent in SL is chump change: the kind of money save by cleaning your data and cutting a couple of thousand people off your DM mailing list because they’ve moved, gone bust, or died.
You’ve still not getting it. We’re talking about an estimated figure for the deals that went down this week. Period. And we’re estimating the volume of business *right now* for what metaversal development agencies make *right now*, $5 million and $100 million. I’m not finding ANYBODY directly around these deals disputing this. You’re not around them. You’re talking out your ass then. What is your point? The figure is too high for what is actually is now? It’s too low for what might some day grow out of it? Then say that.
>Because it’s chump change, the metrics don’t have to be particularly high. But as part of campaign planning, there will be metrics.
The idea that because the big companies have millions of dollars to burn on PR that they can just drop wads on SL is one of the biggest fallacies I see among developers. It’s a dangerous fallacy. They don’t. And don’t let them spoil you. These are people whose revenues from advertising in media are SHRINKING and they are SCARED. They drop money here and there in exploratory efforts but it’s like saying “let’s go to Tokyo and try it” — if Tokyo doesn’t pay off, they close it up quick, it’s over. If these metaversal companies don’t deliver something more than a few hits in the old print media, they are in trouble.
The metrics may exist for ad campaigns — and in RL, as I know from direct experience, you have all kinds of metrics like number of phone calls after the TV spot at your organization, number of clicks on your website after the campaign announced on TV, number of returned postage-paid envelopes, blah blah blah. Sure, those things are known. THEY AREN’T KNOWN FOR SECOND LIFE AS WELL. Why? Because you can only access avatars in virtual worlds, not at their homes at 8 pm on the telephohe with a survey, and you can only access them haphhazardly, as they fly around, and try to fly away from you.
I have my own rough-and-ready metrics measurers I use in my SL business. I blogged about it today:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/03/proks_diy_marke.html
Once again, Ian, you’re being argumentative merely out a sense of inner “rightness” that doesn’t match other people’s outer experiental information. a) You don’t appear to have an SL inworld business and can’t get a real feel for what is involved and don’t see among your personal list of friends the enormous amounts already changing hands and b) if you have a RL business actually grounded in something involving a product, pitching it, and selling it, you don’t know whether that same kind of activity is relevant or workable in virtual worlds. You appear to be the usual semi-academic, semi-consultant, semi-blogster with a big opinion. Great. Bring it on. But real experience often trumps it. I’m here merely to ask the questions about it as it isn’t my field, either.
>The aim will be brand building, largely, plus developing marketing experience in-house in metaversal campaigns. Both are things that can be measured, which means they represent ROI: brand perception is a factor in sales uplift (and it’s easy to do research to find out what impact the perception of your brand has on sales uplift – this stuff is well-established).
It might be well-established for RL and RL media; it isn’t at all established yet for virtual worlds. I took a look at the studies people had at this conference; they are impoverished, non-existent, pathetic. And they know that, and that’s why some of the bigger companies have bigger and long-term plans to get some really more serious studies going.
This study getting all the yapping on Google news has a mere sample of 200 Germans or 200 whatevers that a German ad company could reach. So sure, a German company with new SLers, including die-hard tekkies and BDSMers and whatnot, are going to hate American advertising and spout off about American branding in SL. So? If it were a Heineken at their favourite thrash band concert they might not care. I don’t see why the hardcore niche demographics of 200 Germans has to be thrust on an unsuspecting and uncurious public as a finding that “70 percent of all Second Life residents hate advertising” (it’s not even how the actual survey was phrased).
So…how do you measure? I don’t think ANYBODY is in a position to say WITH ANY CERTAINTY at this early juncture that they put up an island in SL, and sold more widgets. They’ll only know when they know. When? How? I think we need to ask A LOT of questions about it. Brand recognition does translate into higher sales; it works that way in political surveys too, where if you can get a recognition factor even of a candidate believed not to be popular or not having a chance, and that figure is higher, then you can expect he actually will get a percentage of the votes higher than might be expected. That’s why pollsters spend a lot of time on recognition. But it’s NOT KNOWN if it works in SL. People may flee from brands in SL; they may use them subliminally and virtually but NEVER translate that into SL. Philip Morris, if they decided to sell Marlboros in SL, and give away those cool black jean jackets with the stencil of the Marlboro man on them, and sell the the cigs for $8.00 US like they do in RL, *would sell them even at that price* because people would think they look cool, and smoke them without harm in a virtual world. They won’t buy them in RL, however. See my point?
If there ever was a country that had a zillion experts on marketing and advertising, it’s America. And if there ever was a field filled with people very consumed with their own egos and very aggressive, it would be advertising. Yet I don’t see that these people are making the statements you are making that there is some hard-wierd science to how to calculate this *in virtual worlds*.
Why do you think someone like Paul Hemp of the Harvard Business Review is investigating all this, even just posing the question as to whether the avatar and the person behind him is the same demographic, etc.?
Experience might not pay off at all. Think of how many very, very experienced inworld businesses there are in SL. And think of how 97 percent of them will never be hired by a RL company in SL, nor a metaversal marketing company. Experience in a world is often the LAST thing a company wants, especially big companies that want loyalty to their culture and their brand above all.
Experience in a new, developing environment is, of course, a direct return on your investment: you might not be able to pin it down in dollars and cents today, but it will pay off in the future.
marilyn murphy
Mar 30th, 2007
ahem. i’m not real bright. i know it and try to deal with it as i can and not bother others with it.
as sort of a filtered down overview of this situation…well.. doesn’t it seem that there is some way to invest in somebodies stock somewhere that..because they are the company or companies that take the right course of action in this or the next year that will truly create or back the system or platform that becomes THE RIGHT ONE.
like in the old marketplace, if you had invested 500 dollars in playboy magazine when it first went public in the early fifties, in 1969 it would have been worth 20 million, i heard that somewhere. or invested in nabisco, before it was bought by some tobacco company and then sold out, etc..etc.. just wondering which would be the right horse to back here.
please bear in mind im not real bright, but isnt this sort of like the guy who found the gold nugget at sutters mill? and then the people who made the real money were the shopkeepers who sold to the people digging for the gold.
Prokofy Neva
Mar 30th, 2007
>People have stopped buying newspapers and magazines because a) they got stupidly expensive, and b) there was nothing in them but ads. TV and radio are going a similar way – very little entertainment for the buck and more ads than you can shake a stick at.
That’s an interesting statement. The advertising and infomercial so overwhelmed the media that people got sick of it. I find that it’s an annoying experience even to read the New Yorker these days with all these perfume ads, cardboard car ads that disturb your ability to hold the magazine, etc.
The cost of delivering video and even wire news from other countries got very, very expensive, and that’s why they closed foreign news bureaus and that’s why America’s experience of other countries has been dumbed down, and even with those cost-cutting measures, it’s still too expensive.
It’s an example of how a revolution in media, when they went from hot type to cold type (as it actually used to be called for awhile)in the 1960s-1970s, brought with it all kinds of unintended consequences. All the computerized type-setting people sold the old hot-type people in small towns all over America a line that said, oh, you’ll save money, dump the old presses and buy this other stuff. Oh, you’ll save time. And it did in some areas….for awhile. You couldnt’ stop this revolution.
But then it brought with it all kinds of other costs, and increased need for technical expertise. I remember an old friend of my father’s who was a hot-type salesmen for town newspapers much of his life, and when the conversion was made to “cold-type” even before the Internet era, how he was thrown out of a job and forced to drive a news delivery truck.
Revolutions always dislocate people and sometimes destroy them and they always bring with them more costs than they save, in my experience, and few of the revolutionaries EVER want to admit that.
Where once, a newsman in a foreign capital working as a low-paid stringer for low wages, with a pad of paper would telegraph his story in a telegram that cost 40 cents, and a copy-boy working slave wages would type it up and take it to a news editor and put it on his in tray. Today, a foreign stringer, newsman, copyboy, are all too expensive to maintain along with their expensive infrastructure of comptures, DSL lines, etc. etc. and they are all scrapped.
Watching the horrific excesses of expenditures that go on in television when I’ve worked for television crews, I’ve always wondered when the party would be over.
Nacon
Mar 30th, 2007
Wow… watch Prok go on a long run her non-sense theory.
And you’re right, Prok… we should ban you anyway.
larryr
Mar 30th, 2007
Uri, it was the first of this type of big meetings between media planners or advertising executives and the virtual world gang, so no, nobody expected it to lead to millions of dollars. Still, they expected it to produce SOMETHING
“actually these same media companies previous “vps” came to “Virtual Worlds 1996″ in SF and were treated to very much the same conversations and visions of web3d futures.
And yes, more than 5 million dollars in deals occured then as well.
i know because i was there…:)
cube3
larryr
Mar 30th, 2007
4. You know, I wish some of the journalistic and blogster types at these things would get up off their asses, get off their laptops and stop slavishly typing every single fucking word that comes out of these pre-packaged and pre-fabricated panelists mouths, and instead of behaving like the fucking UN transcription team in the General Assembly
this is very funny….:)
i wish that it was the virtual worlds work, not the virtual words blogs/bloggers that gets the attention.
prok, one word- EDITOR.;)
dont have all day here……:)
Tenshi Vielle
Mar 30th, 2007
/me rolls her eyes and reaches behind her chair for a pillow and places it squarely over Nacon’s face… waits for the death throws to stop.
Nacon
Mar 30th, 2007
Wow… watch Tenshi having obsession about me in every possible way to destroy me digitally wherever I go. (?)
And yes, I agree with Larryr, I’m there too (don’t bother), too many people are just hoping to find something to invest and/or buy. In fact, just getting annoyed by every idiots in a suit asking stupid question about profit and incentive plans when they have NO FUCKING clues how such things work into marketing world with people and its mass media.
“Is it really neat?”
“Neat enough to put it up in your ass with an ads screaming at you about a really really good deal about some crappy shit pills that tastes like dirt and vomit, oh for sure.”
Not looking forward to help out more idiot with big bag of cash into any kind of investments when I can invest myself into business world. Knowing that it’s not the business that need to look at, it’s what people want to look at. That now I know I won’t attend this retarded convention ever again.
FlipperPA Peregrine
Mar 31st, 2007
So many words to speak in virtual realms, blogs, forums… but all the cowardice in the real world of not responding to a simple “hello.” I think that speaks far more volumes than anything else! Did the $5 million number include the deals I put together? You know, the ones I didn’t tell anyone about? That number is completely pulled out of thin air.
Cocoanut Koala
Mar 31st, 2007
“Russian presidents and top officials in RL, I’ve been in the Kremlin and the White House and Bundestag and all over hell and back, and I’m *barred from the silly SLCC conference in Chicago*? I mean, is this *fucking retarded* or what?”
Yep. Bunch of babies. Which is why I’ve finally just blown them off.
coco
Prokofy Neva
Mar 31st, 2007
>So many words to speak in virtual realms, blogs, forums… but all the cowardice in the real world of not responding to a simple “hello.” I think that speaks far more volumes than anything else! Did the $5 million number include the deals I put together? You know, the ones I didn’t tell anyone about? That number is completely pulled out of thin air.
I don’t shake hands or talk with people who ultimately display themselves to be not only virtualy roaring assholes but roaring assholes in reality. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and tried to befriend you and talk to you at SOP II and SLCC I, but since you went on behaving like an asshole and refused to accept criticism about SLCC in the most thin-skinned and hysterical parochial girl’s school manner, I’m done.
Trying to force someone to say “hi” or force them to concede to sit down and have a drink with you when you’ve horrendously griefed them on forums and been an asshole is violence, Flipper, and you know it — it’s a form of social tribalization I refuse to accept. I refuse. I won’t go along with it. It’s wrong. Aimee Weber is someone who actively wishes ill and harm to my real life and virtual life, and believes stalking is something I’ve brought on me, and deserve. Joshua Nightshade is vermin, who stalks me and does sick shit with my RL picture. What…I’m supposed to sit down at a table and break bread with people like that???
Basically, what your Toxic Twenty group does is lie, first of all, lie about your own crimes and your friends’ crimes, real stuff like stalking people, harassing them, treating them like shit for years. It’s all documented, and you know it. Then you lie by not being straightforward and normal on forums, lie by exaggerating ridiculous things, lie by being selective about the truth, lie about what’s really important, lie by being literal and hammering someone for “posting on a forums” when they in fact said they no longer poster there — and don’t — and only come back in self-defense.
That’s being a school-yard bully and a liar. I hate school-yard bullies and liars. Um, let me say this much, champ. I weigh at least 190 pounds, gosh, maybe more, I’m not in fighting shape. So I’m pretty sure I couldn’t beat Aimee in a school-yard fight, she’s taller and heavier and might sit on me and has more determination to scratch my eyes out. I think I could beat you, though Flipper, as tall as you are, by sure persistence, probably with a lucky kick while you’re looking at something else. And I have no doubt that I could demolish this little pathetic dweeb Nightshade. So look out, better keep Aimee by your side.
Refusing to speak to you, Aimee Weber, or Joshua Nightshade isn’t cowardice, it’s merely respect for those people who are holding an event and hoping it won’t break into shouting matches. If I took you assholes on, I can guarantee it will result in a shouting match and possibly worse.
Nacon
Mar 31st, 2007
Well geez, Prok, here’s an idea…. Leave.
Mem
Mar 31st, 2007
Well gee Prok, from reading your last comment I can’t for the life of me imagine why they’d proactively ban you from SLCC this year.
Prok- “I think I could beat you, though Flipper, …probably with a lucky kick while you’re looking at something else.”
That sure sounds like premeditation for a unprovoked surprise act of physical violence?
Prok-”And I have no doubt that I could demolish this little pathetic dweeb Nightshade. So look out, better keep Aimee by your side.”
Umm right, they sure don’t have any reason at all to ban you Prok. Nope no thinly veiled, less than subtle, threats of violence and harm in the above posts from you hey?
I’d feel perfectly safe to have you drinking your way through any conference I attended, no reason at all to think you’d waddle up unprovoked in the middle of a dinner and start calling names incoherently with slurred speech, spittle flying in a breaking hacksaw alto. (Oh wait you did that already at SLCC 1 didn’t you?) Yep, no reason to believe after the above quotes you’d ever snap and come at someone with a half full can of bud or a handy butter knife and “demolish” them “while they’re looking at something else”. Safe as houses, truly.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 1st, 2007
Except that you did sit down; you sat down at our table, next to us, next to my friends, partook in our company, while we were all kind and polite and respectable. You couldn’t take me at all, as demonstrated by your first death threat and then running in terror when I tried to be the bigger person and say hello to you.
You don’t have respect for anyone at all, especially those who are holding an event. If you did, you would have the maturity to either not show up at their events after bitching in your blog about how they’re the Satans of the Internet (yet you’re totally content drinking their free beer) or grow a spine in person.
What a sad, sad person you are.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 1st, 2007
And, “at least 190 pounds,” – ROFL.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 1st, 2007
>Except that you did sit down; you sat down at our table, next to us, next to my friends, partook in our company, while we were all kind and polite and respectable. You couldn’t take me at all, as demonstrated by your first death threat and then running in terror when I tried to be the bigger person and say hello to you.
There isn’t any death threat, you pale, clammy little vermin. Grow up and find some real life and stop acting out violent and sick shit against people who are mother figures. Grow the fuck up. I didn’t sit down with shit. I made sure that a journalist I had already been briefing got in touch with all the SL people at the conference. End of story. I didn’t realize who all the people were at the table. So that was like an alt gotcha.
Your constant propensity to lie, manipulate, make up shit, and needle and play gotcha with other people merely reveals the emptiness in your own soul. What a typical specimen of the modern youth and what a lament we must make for our civilization.
>You don’t have respect for anyone at all, especially those who are holding an event. If you did, you would have the maturity to either not show up at their events after bitching in your blog about how they’re the Satans of the Internet (yet you’re totally content drinking their free beer) or grow a spine in person.
Um, I have a feeling you haven’t gotten the memo on this one. This is not an event about SL fanboyz and loserz like you. You
must have it mixed up with SLCC and the teledildonics. And the beer isn’t sponsored even by the people organizing the event, but in my case, was bought by two game and advertising execs who were in town there and just fetched up there randomly. I’m not aware that I’ve ever called ESC, which is a big sponsor of the Metaverse Meet-up in general (but not the only one), the Satan of the Internet. As for drinking their beer, I think I had a Budweiser once at Jerry’s but I can be sure to pay it back next time if that’s going to compromise me. The Thai restaurant was one of those “everybody kick in there share” thing as was the party at my house. The metaversal millions aren’t so lavish yet that they can rent out hotel suites and have champagne on ice sculptures.
>What a sad, sad person you are.
You’re the person who’s sad, Joshua, and you know all the reasons why, from your sad pathetic life, and your physical manifestation in this life which has only earned you ridicule and humiliation. I don’t care. You don’t get to inflict that shit on other people.
Mem, since you’re on Comments Watch for any hint of anything violent in RL, be sure to go and read SC for all the gross things done to my RL picture, and also check out all the things I’ve endured from people like Joshua, who has done sick shit like send me a picture of my RL house door to let me know “he knows where I live” and all the rest.
And if you’re looking for a case of lurid forums comments, go over to the other threads where somebody is putting a pillow on somebody else’s head and watching their lifeless body stop moving. I’m surprised you didn’t get at that one.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 1st, 2007
No, alcoholic, I saw you go up to the bar more times than even Flip who was footing the tab for the group of us.
I spoke with your “journalist” too (actually, he talked to us first, and we were gracious enough to let him know you were there) and boy was he interested in getting some of your choice quotes; I can’t wait to email him all of your current Aimee tirades:
http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showpost.php?p=211015&postcount=366
“It’s important to call you a fat cow, and get at the root of your problem. Perhaps it might help you to get over yourself and appear in public more now that the worst is over.”
“No, I just need to speak the truth about you. You are a fat cow. So is Jennyfur. My God, even more of a fat cow than when I last saw her. The fact that I’m an even uglier fat cow doesn’t take away from the fact that you too girls are fat cows, and are miserable.”
Lacking anything else to criticize, you’ve resorted to horrific personal attacks on others. Awesome!
I never did anything with your real photo. I played around with a bust that W-hat gave me; they’re the ones who created it, I only added a slight flare. I also didn’t send -you- anything, I sent Coco a chatlog that was reported to the Lindens by the person who got in touch with me. Good try lying though! But given your gripes with Aimee, the fact that you’re bothered by what W-hat did to your picture is indicative of your own uncomfortable appearance:
“If you were, you would have shown up at all the meetings in the last 3-5 years and had your picture in the paper. But the contrast is too great, and you were and are insecure. You are a fat cow. Deal with it.”
You libeled ESC, criticized, harassed and stalked their employees, then show up at their house and drink their alcohol extensively. You’re a drunk and I know this now moreso than ever; Friday night was quite the liberation. You’re pathetic, -pathetic-, and don’t have the spine to back up your own threats in person. What a coward.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 1st, 2007
Oh and yes, please, contact Jerry and offer to pay back as much alcohol as you’ve consumed from him (which is far more than one beer, babe), and please post a receipt online because otherwise I don’t believe you one iota.
urizenus
Apr 1st, 2007
An alchoholic writing for the Herald? Unthinkable! (Well, actually its a job requirement.)
I thought the metaverse meetups were BYOF (bring your own forty). If I knew Jerry was serving I might have shown up.
>The fact that I’m an even uglier fat cow doesn’t take away from the fact that you too girls are fat cows
That one is going in my Big Book of Prokisms.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 2nd, 2007
“(Well, actually its a job requirement.)”
It shows.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 2nd, 2007
I was bought two beers by other people at this Metaversal meet-up, as anybody who actually was talking to me can note, and as as I’ve stated. I didn’t “go up to the bar multiple times”; if someone happened to be standing at the bar and talking and I saw them, I might go and talk to them. I didn’t *buy* beer, and there are two people, each of whom bought me one beer each. Joshua always imagines that if he keeps lying about people in a really bald-faced pathetic way, he can go on getting the attention he craves by hitching his wagon to them. It’s really sad and pathetic. He lies and lies and lies. And everybody already knows that about him and already feels sorry for him and already kicks his pathetic little ass around SC over their own internal issues.
I have to laugh out loud at the prospect of these sectarians spending their time sending all their ridiculous threads to this journalist. I already talked to him weeks ago for some hours in fact just telling him the SL basics, and not getting into personalities and gossip, which isn’t how you talk to a journalist. He’s a grown-up, and he’ll be able to sort it out. If anything, SC will discredit itself by all these kinds of antics — so hey, keep it up.
>I never did anything with your real photo. I played around with a bust that W-hat gave me; they’re the ones who created it, I only added a slight flare. I also didn’t send -you- anything, I sent Coco a chatlog that was reported to the Lindens by the person who got in touch with me. Good try lying though!
This beats all. My RL photo was used to make these busts. Here’s what Joshua calls ‘a slight flare’. He takes two giant copies of these ugly busts, that are made to look really grotesque, many stories high, and he puts them together and builds them giant tongues so they can French kiss each other. He then posts a picture of that on Second Citizen. It’s really gross. He puts that up on the forums and laughs like a 12 year old boy, which is where is growth and his mind are arrested. He also starts thread after thread claiming to spot me multiple times in RL; that he sees me with an umbrella when it’s raining; that he almost went up to talk to me — sick shit like that. He demands that I accept a fax from him proving he isn’t Nolan Nash so that he can capture my work fax number, etc. Everybody knows this who has read SC this year.
The vicious mysogeny of Joshua Nightshade is also everywhere in evidence; it’s scary.
What he also did was pull this stunt which is the oldest kid’s trick in the book familiar to every parent. “I have this friend, see…” He sends a picture of my real life door to Cocoanut (not just a chatlog; a picture of my RL door at my apartment building for Christ’s sake_, and tells this whole fable about how “someone” who is “obviously an alt” showed it to him and he’s “very concerned” that they are stalking me. It’s hilarious.
Stalkers and victimizers often show that pattern of false, obsessive care for their victim along with sick hatred. Joshua has all the red flags. He’s definitely the creepy kid you walk very far away from in any setting.
I asked everyone who came to my house on Friday to buy their own beer. It’s just too expensive for me to buy 30 people beer and also not practical. It was much easier to just stop at a deli and let everybody pick their own brand and carry it, because at that time of night the store next to me wasn’t open. Sure, it’s cheap, but I wasn’t exactly planning to entertain 30 people in my dinky apartment all of a sudden. Perhaps I can do more next time.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 2nd, 2007
I don’t really have to demonstrate anything to you about the photograph; the Lindens know, which is why the account is banned. In the seven times you’ve invoked that story, you’ve changed it seven times. You can’t even keep track of your own lies. Which is it Prokofy? Earlier on you said I sent the photo to you and told you I know where you are; now it’s that I sent it to Coco. Make up your mind.
I did send the chatlog and photo to Coco because I thought you deserved to know someone was out there doing that, but that you would go totally insane if I told you. As demonstrated. Nice to know I’ve pegged you right.
oh, and you’re an alcoholic.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 2nd, 2007
Oh and know what’s worse than having someone send around a photo of your door? Calling someone a rapist using their real name because you don’t like them. Getting Typepad to take that down was immensely satisfying.
shockwave yareach
Apr 2nd, 2007
Geez. It’s a new world with all infinity of possibilities open to you all, and all you do is spit venom at each other?
Agree to disagree and just ignore the people you don’t like. Simple, yes? And much easier on the blood pressure, too. If your buttons are so easily pushed here, I shudder to think how easily manipulated you all must be in RL.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 2nd, 2007
Eh, come back to me once Prokofy has put your real name online next to a link to your website and the words “rapist.”
I couldn’t care less what she does in SL. When she crosses the line and starts making up lies about how I’m stalking her because I reported someone else, or the aforementioned website thing, that’s when I’m bothered and rightly so. Those actions are beyond the pale.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 2nd, 2007
Shockwave, I don’t “spit venom,” I fight back when people lie about me. That’s important to do. Otherwise the lies get worse and worse and people hound you out of SL itself. I’ve seen them do it to other people. Other people cave. They don’t fight back. I do.
I haven’t told the story of Joshua’s stalking of me “7 different ways”. I’ve told it exactly the same way. Joshua couldn’t send me anything because I correctly have him on mute. He sent a picture of my doorway to Cocoanut, telling a completely concocted story about “someone who is a days-old alt obviously” who is “sending this around” and showing fake concern. He *asked her to send the photo and card to me*. That’s what he is lying about. He is on the record, and he knows it, and Cocoanut knows it, that he *asked her to alert me to it and asked her to send it to me*.
That’s why I can ACCURATELY and CORRECTLY say that he SEND A PHOTO TO ME.
Why is this obviously concocted? Because abusive people always show this pattern of suddenly showing absurd concern for their victims and try to rehabilitate themselves and make it appear that suddenly, they are good Samaritans. It’s all about getting power over people, trying to keep the attention on themselves, and trying to make people fearful. I fall for none of this because I see through the pattern.
By cooking up an alt story and sending a picture of my door to Cocoanut, Joshua can a) feign that he is doing good b) attempt to throw people off balance and get them to think he’s now doing good and c) instill fear in me that people have my door’s picture.
Um, it doesn’t work. Because I cut through the bullshit. I report the whole thing to the Lindens. They can see through it too. Indeed, they did. If this alt can’t be traced to Joshua, what of it? It’s a transparent gambit. Stalk somebody, harass them, then suddenly go, oh, I need to get involved now with an alt who is doing this and let Prok’s friends now that OMGODZORZ111 she’s being stalked. Pretty sick stuff.
The idea that Joshua “got Typepad to take something down” is patently absurd. Anybody is welcome to contact Typepad about that. Both Cocoanut and I corresponded with Typepad about Joshua’s wierd postings to my blog (before I finally banned him as someone causing me RL harm by stalking me and posting alleged “sightings” of me). There was nothing about any rapist written or removed. Typepad didn’t do anything. Typepad couldn’t possibly remove this without telling me, even if it were true — but it’s not. Typepad has taken no disciplinary action against me or warning or anything — in fact, all they’ve done, upon seeing what Joshua was up to, was notify me that I should call the police and file complaints about the stalking Joshua.
That’s what Typepad has done.
Joshua thinks if he keeps lying baldly and flatly he can go on getting attention. Some people think the strategy to deal with someone like this is to ignore them to avoid them getting worse. I’ve done that some months; it doesn’t work. I’ve seen the entire SC in fact gang up on Joshua and browbeat him to death about his lying and manipulation on other things, and still keep him around. He enjoys that kind of pummelling, it’s the only way he knows how to “belong”.
I fight back against this shit by exposing it. Each time someone lies about me, I post a detailed rebuttal. Otherwise, you get people like shockwave thinking it’s about “venom” when it’s about psychopathic lying and stalking.
I recall Joshua really intensifying his stalking of me back when I decided simply to stop posting original threads and discussions at Second Citizen. I went to a new forums called SL Home Page. Joshua showed up there to bait and poke at me, as they all did. And I simply fought back. Fighting back is important. I definitely need more company in doing this.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 2nd, 2007
Wrong again!
You don’t have me muted, firstly.
I sent the photo and chatlog to Coco, yes, because I thought you had the right to know someone was fishing it around. If it were me, and someone had contacted someone I didn’t get along with in an effort to dig up information about where they really live, I would certainly want to know about it, whomever was telling me. I knew, however, that you couldn’t be counted on to act rationally, so I did ask Coco to tell you, and Coco also promised me she would leave my name out of it because I knew that would temper your ability to see straight. So much for that.
I reported the stuff to the Lindens far before you did. That’s why the guy is banned, and I’m not. You don’t know anything at all and you misrepresent everything. You have no proof of your claims, just a lot of lies, paranoia and bullshit. Much like your other claims about what happens on SC. There was one person, who’s rather a lot like you, who had an issue with me, and he also did a good job of shooting himself in the foot.
Typepad did take the comment down (because I highly doubt you did it yourself), and they also told me to press charges against you for it. That’s a standard reply, btw. You weren’t treated to any privileged commentary. You started ranting and attacking a lot of people violently, and those same people contacted your website to get your stuff taken down. And it was. It’s pretty simple.