Steve Ellis

Because Avatars need communities too

Steve — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:10:00 GMT

Who let the human in the building?

In a slightly mind bending move Linden Labs, who built and run Second Life, acquired the Swedish company behind Avatars United, an online community for avatars, or more precisely, a community for the real world humans who create avatars to role play for them in various MMORPGs and virtual worlds, including Second Life.

In a quote within this post, Mark Kingdon, CEO of Second Life says:

"When we talk to the users who sign up but then decide not to stay, they say they left, in part, because they had a hard time finding people to hang out with. Either their friends weren't there, or they have a hard time meeting new ones inworld, or sometimes both."

Personally I'm not that excited by Second life (yet) but I do like a good community building strategy, especially with a developer program thrown in.

Acquiring an online community which enables the real people behind the avatars to connect and share via social networking tools and mechanisms, seems a logical way of fuelling new participants to Second Life and encouraging deeper engagement, it might even broaden the appeal to people who like their communities to have a human dimension.

Tags: Second Life, Avatars United, virtual worlds, communities,

Ever seen a microsite full of interactivity & video inside a 55k banner ad?

Steve — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:05:00 GMT

Want to see a whole microsite experience squeezed into a teeny tiny banner ad? The Mass Effect 2 launch campaign is now live at MSN UK Gaming.

What's all this about? See the previous post. World's first interactive and expandable banner ad (we reckon)

Mel Carson at Microsoft Advertising has posted on the banner here.

Correction: I'm told after opimisation the banner is only a tidy 41k

World's first interactive and expandable Silverlight banner ad (we reckon)

Steve — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:41:00 GMT

Normally I'd shy away from ever claiming a 'world's first' - someone, somewhere must surely have got there first? But in this instance we think we are on solid ground.

Working with the team at Mediacom we have been busy putting the finishing touches to a digital advertising campaign to launch Electronic Arts' next big title: Mass Effect 2. The campaign launches next week.

The brief was screaming out for the use of special effects to create a compelling in-game style of experience. Microsoft's Silverlight was perfect for the task. Deep Zoom and Smooth Streaming offered our creative team angles for creating a game experience effectively within the digital banner (that's a static image taken from the banner experience above - and another below. I'll post a link when the campaign is live next week).

Everyone including the client loved the concepts and creative solution. Just one small problem. When we came to discuss the opportunity with Microsoft Advertising, none of the usual suspect ad serving companies were capable of serving expandable and truly interactive Silverlight banners.

Undaunted we spoke with Ad Dynamo, the South African HQed ad serving marketplace. Ad Dynamo were up for it. Together we have spent a couple of months planning and building the world's first genuinely interactive Silverlight ad serving capability as a collaboration with Ad Dynamo, ourselves and the folk at Microsoft Advertising.

So when the Mass Effect 2 campaign launches on MSN next week, it'll feature the world's first ad served expandable Silverlight banner. The campaign is getting broad exposure on the MSN homepage, amongst other locations, so it'll be seen by millions of visitors.

Our Silverlight team - and the client - are all excited by the creative experience achieved. But being a restless bunch, they have already moved on to explore what other creative effects are now possible to deliver within digital advertising formats that can be enabled by Silverlight ad serving.

And, obviously, Microsoft is pleased to open up the world opportunity offered by Silverlight's capabilities to advertisers and creative teams. I suspect it is an area many creative agencies aren't currently equipped to explore. If creative agencies want to know more about the project, or need some help in using Silverlight to create rich experiences, get in touch.

Update: the Microsoft Silverlight product team have posted on this project here. Thanks chaps.

My blogging penance

Steve — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:14:00 GMT

The price of not blogging for three months (blame it on the end of financial year; Christmas; snow on the keyboard, whatever) is to have to sit and delete 52 pages of spam comments.

Still some of them are noble attempts at English as a foreign language.

Two favourites:

"I think the post is decorous and on point. This send indeed helped me in my assignment."

"Superbly I suppose that this enter is something which necessary more distinction of your readers."

More decorous and on point enters and sends for the distinction of readers to follow.

Tyranny of Twitter: herd instinct prevails

Steve — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:20:00 GMT

There have been various pieces of analysis put forward to debunk the view that the web increases diversity, and to put forward the contrary view that it limits choice by fostering the herd instinct.

Now, e-Marketer has a post - Twitter Power Users Solidify Dominance - suggesting that Twitter is dominated by a small number of A-list tweeters, and that this domination is self-perpetuating.

Apparently the top 0.1% of Twitterers grew their followers by 275%, the top 1% grew by 146% and the top 10% grew by 126%.

Data driven design? Analytics vs aesthetics?

Steve — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:17:00 GMT

Something else for marketers and especially designers to embrace - data driven design.

James Governor has a great analysis of the drivers behind Adobe's Omniture acquisition - Adobe Omniture: Data meets design. Here comes Google! if you are a marketer or a designer read it and understand how our world is changing.

US Govt announces its own AppStore

Steve — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:39:00 GMT

Looks like everyone needs a healthy developer ecosystem these days (except Skype). Yesterday, Vivek Kundra, CIO of the US Govt announced their very own AppStore for government cloud services, called Apps.gov.

Coverage here in the New York Times, and in Mr Kundra's own blog post.

Reminded me of a developer program we had specified and costed for the UK Govt. in considerable detail quite some years ago. We'd even started to feel optimistic about it proceeding, but then the government chose to invade Iraq and overnight all discretionary budget was redirected to bullets and bombs, not software.

Skype closes its developer program. What?

Steve — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:11:00 GMT

GigaOm reports Skype has closed its developer program: Skype Kills Extras and its Developer Ecosystem. Strange indeed.

We haven't needed to look closely at Skype's program but the comments with the story suggest it wasn't a happy place before this news.

We are seeing and meeting more and more technology companies, and increasingly also traditional media and retail organizations, who are getting the point about developer programs, something that tech companies have known for years. As I speak we are working on designing or running programs involving operating systems, mobile devices and enterprise apps.

Steve Ballmer said (probably at about 100 decibels) its: "developers, developers, developers". And if you don't like hearing it from Microsoft, then just ask Facebook or Apple.

As Skype exit the world of developer ecosystems, there is every likelihood they will be trampled underfoot by the crowd of companies rushing headlong into that arena.

Social networks. Virtual goods. But real cash

Steve — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:10:00 GMT

On Wednesday the New York Times had a piece on the unlikely but multi-billion dollar market for purchasing virtual goods for real cash - Asian Social Networking Sites Profit from Virtual Money.

Yesterday the Guardian's Victor Keegan had a post - Is Virtual Boom our Industrial Revolution? - on the same subject.

Clearly, if the real economy is still scraping along the bottom of the curve, it may be best to look online for virtual salvation.

Twitter continues to generate friction (still)

Steve — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:45:00 GMT

Venerable UK journalistic institution, John Humphrys caused a kerfuffle around making his first tweet today - here on the BBC web site.

UK Govt got slammed (wrongly) for reportedly appointing a Twitter Tzar - here the story put to rights by Charles Arthur.

My favourite comment about Twitter, recalled from memory, was from Stephen Fry, something along the lines of: 'its called Twitter, not Meaningful Debate'. The name and the 140 character limit, should give everyone some clues.

Elsewhere Milo at TechCrunch Europe highlights the curious leadership of the UK in Twitter use and early adoption. Why is that? There's something counter intuitive about supposedly buttoned up Brits tweeting day and night. Anyone have a theory?

The Altimeter Group: Galacticos one and all

Steve — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:49:00 GMT

Great post from Jonny Bentwood here and again here on the allstar line up now gathered at Altimeter Group - love the description of the assembled luminaries as the Galacticos. Really hope that nickname sticks.

They are Charlene Li, Ray Wang, Jeremiah Owyang and Deborah Schultz.

It was always going to be hard for Charlene to refer to herself as a Group, with just the one employee, so now she has three partners, Galacticos one and all.

Altimeter aren't trying to pigeon hole themselves as an analyst firm, the term consulting is used and they distance themselves from competing directly with Forrester.

Selling consulting as a service is a tough gig though. Only so many hours in the day (and all those blogs and tweets to get done). And even at Galacticos day rates, one wonders whether the services model can be scaled to give them the leverage their massively high profiles should command. Interesting to see how it evolves.

For anyone involved in engaging 'influencers', well, yet more complications. Altimeter aren't an analyst firm or media or (exclusively) bloggers but are obviously critical influencers of buying decisions, both directly and indirectly, so need to be engaged. And, if Altimeter justify close engagement, then who else? Defining exactly 'who is what' consumes a lot of time among professionals in analyst relations and influence.

Increasingly in the world of influence, taxonomy, tiering and segmentation, just can't be bent around every evolutionary twist in the story and the players involved. My new answer is: trust me, they are influencers, Because They Are. It's as simple as that.

Success always has a price

Steve — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:13:00 GMT

Interesting post - and especially comments - on the issues with Apple's AppStore from Dave Weiss.

If you are building a developer community - or any kind of community for that matter - from a standing start, be aware that if you do manage to succeed, you will simply encounter different sorts of challenges.

Building communities

Steve — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:32:00 GMT

OK, not a real post just lazy linking, but well worth a look at Jeremiah's post on How to kick start a community.

Metia interviewed by Channel9 at Silverlight 3 launch in UK

Steve — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:52:00 GMT

Andrew recently presented at the UK launch of Silverlight 3. Looks like Microsoft's very excellent Channel9 were in attendance in the form of Mike Taulty, and grabbed a quick interview with Andrew and all the other speakers, here's the link.

UPDATED:

Here's a link to Jason Slater's take on the Silverlight and Expression 3 UK launch