The World According to Jennyfur

Sometimes it pays to be snarky and mildly offending… at least I don’t have to change my blog title in light of “Fake World” makers Linden Lab’s new mandate reported by Tateru Nino of Massively regarding usuage of Second Life names and logos in conjunction with third party products and websites.

Flip/Tim and I have been entrepreneurs in Second Life for the better part of the past four years, in which the use of “Second Life”, “Linden”, “SL” etc. as part of a business name or url has been widely accepted and endorsed by Linden Lab. This is evident in the numerous Second Life related websites that have cropped up over this time.

I believe the process for naming the Second Life Community Convention and for using the SL name and logo within our own only involved an email expressing permission, a direction to download said logos from the website and eventually this was put into writing in mid-2007 as part of the formal contract between the convention and Linden Lab.

Beyond the SLCC, Flip/Tim has worked extensively on SLBoutique (now OnRez), SLTrivia and SLPTO. The later two I suppose fall into the trouble zone and will need some appropriate attention whether it is filing for use of the url or changing the name entirely. I know that we are not alone in our contempt for this new decision.

Granted some of the language is vague with no indication of how strict or lax the enforcement will be. The change seems sudden and on the heals of the recent announcement that Philip Rosedale will step down as Linden Lab’s CEO, one can easily wager to guess what may be next coming down the virtual pipelines.

For now, I view this action as a slap in the face to all of the enterprising individuals who helped to build Second Life into what it is today. Linden Lab developed the product and platform, but without the countless enterprising residents engaged in forging the vision for virtual worlds far and wide since late 2002… Second Life never have grown to its current size and popularity.

Read more about changes to trademarks and Linden Lab:

Second Life Corporate FAQ regarding Trademark Use

Second Life Brand Center

Linden Lab Asserts Control of Name and Image @ Massively.com

The metaverse is a buzz this afternoon as the news broke across Reuters that Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale is stepping down. Rosedale assume the role of Chairman of the Board, replacing Mitch Kapor. Kapor will still remain on the Linden Lab board.

The news has been reverberating across numerous Second Life related blogs and forums and twitter to name a few. Some regard the change with welcome arms citing many issues with Linden Lab’s management style in the face of a downturn of press and numerous issues with the grid. Others fear that this may be a red flag signally financial duress for Second Life makers Linden Lab. Some are speculating that perhaps, Linden Lab will soon be bought out by another company.

Every now and then I still get asked when I am taking a long term hiatus from Second Life? what I am doing? will I ever be back? why I left? and so on and so forth. The easy answer was that I just burnt out on Second Life and needed a break after having spent the majority of the past four years in the spot light for one reason or another. It is sad for me to admit, but co-founding and running the Second Life Community Convention from 2005-2007  is one of my biggest regrets. If I could turn back time, I would never have gotten involved with it. That is not to speak negatively of those who have been and still are involved with the convention. In a lot of ways the negatives vastly outweighed the positives of that experience. I’m not overly bitter about it, just reviewing it with my usual pragmatic criticism. If I can’t learn something from these experiences, they end up being kind of pointless.

One of the reasons I left Second Life last summer was that I realized that I was too deeply emotionally invested in all things Second Life. A lot of things effected me much more than they should have or than I ever wanted them too. Since July or August, I’ve gotten really into playing World of Warcraft and it has helped me in so many ways to detach emotionally from gaming and/or virtual environments. I enjoy playing World of Warcraft, but stay drama free on all fronts. I’m not emotionally invested in the people in my guilds or anyone else around me (well accept for the few RL friends of mine who also play WoW). Playing WoW is something that I enjoy doing, but it is not all encompassing the way Second Life was for so many years.

Now, I am starting to try and figure out how I can approach Second Life in the way that I have approached World of Warcraft. I do want to get back into Second Life again at some point in time. I just need enough time to let the past be buried and to not be emotionally attached to any aspect of it. I’ve considered retiring Jennyfur Peregrine or at least not using it as a primary account when I return. I’m not sure whether or not I want to get back into content creation or if I want to explore something new. I’ve considered doing something with the music scene in Second Life, well not the existent one, but bringing more bands into virtual worlds. as I continue my explorations of music and new media.

I’ve been keeping up with all that has been going on and am interested to see how web on a prim, mono integration and Havok 4 affect the Second Life client. I’ve also been keeping my eye on the Open Sim project and all that.

Introduction

In my preparation to speak as a panelist at the Philadelphia Future Salon on the topic of music and new media I’ve actually had to formalize some of the pro’s and con’s of the subject matter. It has been an interesting experience to say the least. I have explored various methods of social networking and Web 2.0 applications for music promotion. I can safely say that there is no one sure fire solution or best method, but it does help to know what the pit falls are and how to avoid them and/or deal with them.

The MySpace Band Phenomena

Anyone who has ever used MySpace has gotten numerous friend requests from bands they never heard of all the over world. Some find this an annoyance and others use it as a tool to find new music. Just about every band has some sort of presence on MySpace. What remains to be seen is how difficult it can be for a smaller, independent band to maintain their MySpace page and to affect fan base growth. Setting aside the slow process of sending friend requests to endless droves of potential fans, many of MySpace’s functions are broken or just not optimal for proper use. For instance:

- A band cannot send out an email message to their fans if they have more than 2000 friends. There is, at this time, no way to segment or to send a message by location. You have thousands of people at your fingertips and no way to reach them en masse. Who wants to send 10,000 individual emails manually one at a time?

- The only way to message your “fans” is by posting a bulletin that probably no one will even notice. The new feature to subscribe to friend feeds for status and profile updates is hampered due to restrictions on the number of feeds one can have. That is not even considering the question of whether or not you fan base will use the function to see your updates.

- Bands play gigs all the time. MySpace has an event invitation and listing function. Guess what? It doesn’t work very well. Sure, they tell you that you can invite from your friends list by geographical location, but after a hundred tries you get the same error message. So, if you have the gumption, you can spend days if not weeks going through your friends list and manually sending invites to them.

- While MySpace’s privacy functions were sorely lacking, this has thrown another hindrance into the mix when bands try to send friend requests. There are only so many CAPTCHA’s that one can look at before their eyes go buggy. More and more people do not even accept friend requests from bands. The irony here is that many bands do not accept friend requests from other bands. Oh, the hypocrisy.

This is not to say that bands should steer clear of MySpace or other social networking sites. My advice would be to set realistic goals and expectations of having a presence on MySpace. Setting up shop there does not equal instant success or that you can legitimately claim a fan base of 10,000 just because you have that many friends associated with the page. MySpace should function more like an abstract or one-sheeter where you can find pertinent information on the band and see it all in one concise place.

First, you need to ask yourself a few pertinent questions. “I have 10,000 fans of my music or do I really?” How many of those fans have visited the bands MySpace page and listened to the music more than once on their first visit to the site. Once you are at the level of Snow Patrol and the likes, you probably don’t need to ask this question because your record sales and touring will be enough proof of your measure of success. People will be sending friend requests to you by the thousands, not the other way around. The next question you need to ask is How many of your bands MySpace fans will actually buy a CD, download your music from iTunes (or other site), purchase band related merchandise or attend a concert? Its hard to track vital metrics about the band’s site beyond how many times a song was played or downloaded and how many page views you have. Mind you, you could easy sway this data because every time you look at the page or refresh it, it counts as a page view.

A MySpace page should not be the bands only website. It should supplement the website. It can be beneficial to have both though it depends on what you are hoping to gain. I can’t tell you how many band pages I have looked at where the the website in the profile is listed as “you are looking at it”. While a local booker at a club or bar venue may be thrilled to look at only a MySpace page, however if you are pitching your band to a booking agent or are trying to license your music or find funding, you may not be taken seriously since for all intents and purposes anyone can make a MySpace page. The glut of flashy advertising on them is also a turn off.

It seems like every day some new social networking site is being launched that is not even taking into account how many music services are cropping up all over the place. While MySpace is the most prominent social networking tool for musicians, most other websites have or are developing some sort of music based platform for their product.

Facebook Musician Profiles:  Facebook arrived a little late in the game in 2008 to developing a specific type of profile for artists and musicians and they differ greatly from their competitors at MySpace. Most of the ones I see are either made by the artist represented, most likely by their record label or management teams. The rest are made by fans of said musician or artist. I suppose the same is true for other social networking sites.  Facebook is often lauded for its approach to preventing spam and obnoxious advertising. This makes it slightly more difficult to seek out fans for a musician profile page. The easiest way to do it is to send a message via Facebook to all your friends and attach the profile. In essence you aren’t sending a “friend request” per se, just a simple message. But, this takes a bit more thought in crafting a pitch so that potential fans will actually look at your profile rather than just deleting the message. Very few attempts at “cold calling” exist in Facebook, I have yet to receive a message for a fan profile request from anyone I did not know. If a music group uses this method of profiling, their numbers might not be as high as they are on MySpace, but you might have a more targeted audience that may just actually come out to a show or listen to the music. In addition the the profiles, you can create a group about the band, though I find that groups are often overlooked in Facebook because their are no notifications of the updates.

Twitter: for those unaware of the phenomena that is Twitter, in a nutshell it is a microblogging site where the premise is “What are you doing right now?” in 140 characters or less. This site can be used as an announcement list of sorts where you can send brief communications to your fan base.

*I never actually finished this post, there are many many music or musician specific social networking sites out there that deserve looking into more in depth.

I am participating on a new media panel coming up in a week focusing on the topic of “Music in the Era of New Media”.

Here is the event information:

Being a musician in the modern era has offered a huge wealth of tools
and opportunities, however, this can also be overwhelming. The same
thing can be said for the modern media business: how do you promote
yourselves in a vast sea of competition? Which tools are effective?
How do you separate your work from the pack? What artists and
businesses have been successful?

And, of course, the most important question: how can I get people to
listen to music, while still having an opportunity to make a living,
and maintaining the quality of my work?

We will be addressing these questions – and many more, hopefully
brought by you. Our panelists include:

John Allers: program director Radio 104.5 WRFF-FM – or better known to
us, the best local supporter of local artists, Clear Channel
Jennifer Vatza: local band manager; new media promoter, Web 2.0
socializer; virtual worlds expert
Darren Morze: local musician (Manic Mirrors) and studio engineer (Plan
B Studios) in both analog and digital
Ben Morgan: Music Director, Millcreek Tavern; Founder, Musictech
mailing list; Past associate of The Future of Music Coalition, Elektra
Records, CDnow

As usual, we will be having a fairly open discussion with the
panelists, not a lecture. We hope to see you Thursday, March 6th,
at our meeting location:

1835 Market Street
14th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103

To attend, simply drop an email to Frank Taney, our kind sponsor from
Buchanan Ingersoll, & Rooney – francis(d0t)taney(at)bipc(dot)com – if you don’t
have time to register, feel free to show up, but you may have to wait
a few minutes while the front desk contacts us.

We always gather between 5:30pm and 6:00pm EST, and start at about
6:15pm. We’ll have the discussion until about 8pm, and people who want
to join us for a cocktail afterwards at Elephant & Castle at 18th and
Market are welcome.