Comments on: Things are not always what they seem.

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 05:21:40 +0000

I have to agree with Chris. Great post by the way. So many examples that you didn’t cite. In regard to ‘Second Life’, it’s a perfect example. Go into a Best Buy or Circuit City and ask around (employees and customers) if they know what ‘Second Life’ is. If you’re a geek, you may be shocked to learn the vast majority of people won’t have a freaking clue about what you’re talking about. They won’t even know what it is, much less play it. I think one of the points Chris is making is that these journalists, pundits, bloggers, etc. talk about these things as if they are a part of everyones life and they’ve conquered their respective markets. The way they are talked about you’d think they were mainstream. Here’s an example that I found particulrly irritating a few years ago. FLICKR. Man the hype never stopped and they had a tiny market share. The whole silicon valley publicity machine hyped them for 2 years straight all the while phtobucket was gulping down market share without even a mention. Where is FLICKR today? Kind of a middling also-ran in the shadow of market leaders that were ignored by the silicon valley intelligencia. Yahoo must feel like a bunch of chumps for all the money they wasted on Web 2.0 bling that no one in the real world uses. When I heard people from Yahoo lamenting that they couldn’t understand the draw and growth phenomenon of MySpace a couple of years ago (Russell Beattie comes to mind), I knew those guys were in trouble. Contrast that with a business that is run by adults and knows how to pick investments, News Corp.

By: Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:54:37 +0000

Worse, Second Life’s 1.3 million users is the number of users that have logged in at least once. It includes: secondary accounts and people who left immediately. The actual active number of active users is under 20,000. A chart I saw recently shows the average weekly use time of active users dropping off sharply.

Second Life is the perfect example of what aggressive PR can do. Unfortunately, their “game” is too confusing for the average person. Imagine what would happen if it made sense to normal people, and those million (more or less) visitors stayed and/or told their friends?

By: Ken Barbalace

Ken Barbalace — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:16:49 +0000

Face it Chris, you need a new PR man.

Seriously though the media does totally over blow the whole thing. At the same time the media is just being played by PR people who are really good at their jobs.

This is no different than the “old medias” PR hype is as important as having a good product with a good business plan.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 14:07:24 +0000

Certainly Second Life has a viable business model, but I’ve been hearing about it for way too long, back when it’s users were measured in 4 or 5 figures.

It has always had a larger media profile than it deserved. Not saying it deserves no media profile, just that what it has is greater than it deserves.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 05:41:44 +0000

I don’t mean to pick at your blog post, but I think it is important to be accurate in what you’re trying to stay.

With Friendster, you are right. No arguement there. Especially when they opened up registrations to anyone. They were on to something when it was restricted to EDU/school registrations only.

With Second Life, I’d have to say this is a totally different kind of site. Its subscription based, and they sell their in game currency/property for real world $. The “game” itself is quite boring in my opinion, as it isn’t a game.. but a second life with a fairly large learning curve. You can play for free, but then you don’t have access to land purchasing and development.

I don’t think it is fair to lump Second Life into this category of overly hyped businesses from the news. Second Life deserves the hype, given it isn’t some free informational website (online literature), or free service (friendster).

By: Nico

Nico — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 04:57:23 +0000

In my opinion…good marketing can win over good quality/traffic at any time.

Perception is defenitively very important.

By: ToddW

ToddW — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 02:42:33 +0000

Glad I’m not the only one who looks at some of these things and thinks “WTF” or “That’s not popular!”.

I think the large media can really skew reality. SF or NYC it doesn’t matter the media can blow it out.