1. The line: I spent 4 years living in England, the rumored birthplace of queuing.  I know the rules of standing in a line, and I respect a good queue.  It avoids people trampling on each other, and that’s a good thing.  But, when a line is 1/4 mile and 3+ hours long, count me out.  I can’t think of a single reason why I’d wait in a line for anything longer than 30 minutes, except for maybe medical care or food, following a major disaster.  A week after the iPhone 3G came out, I stood the line in front of the Apple Store very briefly with a friend before discovering that it was still hours long, and the chances of getting a 16GB model were slim to none.  We left in favor of brunch. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to play with friends’ iPhone 3Gs, and I’m happy I didn’t wait longer in line.
   
2. You can only use one app at a time: As if the queues in front of the Apple store weren’t enough, once you get the iPhone home, you’ve got to line up your apps too.  That’s right, you can only use one 3rd party application on your phone at a time.  I gave up on PalmOS because it is a single threaded operating system that only allows you to use one application on the phone at a time.  I was excited for the iPhone 3G because I assumed that with the launch of the App Store, Apple would launch a device that enabled several apps to run at the same time.  Unfortunately, it’s one at a time.  Until this changes, some of the coolest mobile apps out there won’t work as well on the iphone as they do on other phones.  Being able to keep one app open while checking another app is a valuable feature, especially when you’re cutting and pasting information between applications.
3. No copy and paste: Speaking of cutting and pasting, you can’t copy and paste on the iphone.  TechCrunch reports that Proximi has an app called MagicPad, which is awaiting approval to launch from the App Store.  But, MagicPad won’t enable you to copy and paste from one application to the next.  The main ways I want to use copy and paste on a phone is to copy from my browser or email and paste into my calendar or contacts.
4. Built-in battery and abysmal battery life: 3G speeds, massive data streaming, and multimedia applications are a battery suck for mobile phones.  That’s why so many “smart phones” are still huge… They’ve got big batteries.  The iPhone 3G looks much more elegant than any of the other mobile phones on the market, but the battery life leaves something to be desired.  Most mobile phones have a removable battery, which means that if you’re a power user, you can swap in a spare battery if your phone goes dead. iPhone 3G has a built in battery.  So, if your battery goes dead, you need to find an outlet and wait for the phone to re-charge.  That’s especially inconvenient if you’re a road warrior or want to use your iPhone for all of it’s features – phone, music, applications, GPS, etc.  Also – anyone who has had a laptop for a couple of years knows that battery life decreases over time. The same is true with mobile phones.  I worry that after a year or so, battery life on the iPhone 3G will dwindle and replacing that battery (which requires monkeying with the hardware) will likely be expensive and time consuming.
   
5. Reported performance problems switching between many apps: I’ve heard reports from friends that when you download a large number of apps from the App Store (say 15) and open and close them throughout the day, the iPhone 3G goes a little nuts – blanking out parts of the screen, showing jumbled lines of text, etc.  To correct this, you’ve got to soft reset the phone.  This really only impacts power users, but it sounds like enough of an issue that I’d like to wait for a fix.
   
6. No turn by turn directions: iPhone 3G has integrated GPS but no turn by turn directions, which means that you can’t use it as a GPS while you’re driving.
   
7. I have a Love/Hate Relationship with Multi-Touch: Multi-Touch is cool, but sometimes, I just need a keyboard… In bright daylight, it’s tough to see an LCD screen.  The iPhone 3G’s “Multi-Touch” technology does not provide sensory input that allows you to feel what keys you’re pressing.  It requires you to actually see the keys.  I much prefer a QWERTY keyboard, though I would rather have a screen the size of the iPhone.  I’d love to see someone come up with a jelly case that incorporates a real keyboard on the back of the iPhone – so that I can look at the big, beautiful screen as I touch type.
8. Tethering isn’t possible: Most 3G smart phones allow you to ‘tether’ your phone to your PC – using your phone as a modem.  iPhone 3G does not.  This means, that you’ve got to buy a separate card for your Mac or PC to enable it to connect to AT&T’s network.  Wireless cards are cumbersome… I’d rather use my phone.  Apparently, I’m not the only one. Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that “tempers flared” when a tethering application that was briefly being sold on the iPhone App store was quickly taken down.
9. Removing the SIM card voids your iPhone 3G warranty: I work in the mobile industry and am constantly trying new phones.  To do this, I swap my SIM card out of one phone and into another.  Apple says that taking your SIM out of your iPhone voids your iPhone warranty.  Frankly, swapping my SIM should be my prerogative.  If I own several phones, I should be able to use whichever one I want – depending on the circumstances…. If I’m at my client site (Motorola), I may want to use my Motorola Q9H (smart phone), but if I’m going out for a night on the town, I might want to swap to a smaller, more portable phone that fits easily in my pocket.
   
10. The iPhone 3G is locked to AT&T: You must use your iPhone with an AT&T SIM card.  I’d like the option of paying more for an iPhone to unlock it so that I can use it with a pay as you go SIM card when I’m overseas (to avoid overseas roaming rates).  I still use my AT&T SIM to check messages when I’m abroad, but it seems silly to pay $2/Minute to make a local call when I’m visiting London.

P.S.  8/4/08: #11 (which should actually be #1): The Daily Mail (authority on all things tabloid-worthy) just published the following article which claims: “Apple to launch the iPhone ‘nano’ in time for Christmas.”

Polaris Venture Partners general partner Simeon Simeonov is the latest to suggest that Google is working on a mobile Phone. In his blog, Simeonov divulges that Andy Rubin (who founded Danger and later, Asteroid, which was ultimately sold to Google) is working with a team of about 100 people on a Google phone.   He also sites other Google acquisitions as evidence of a forthcoming Google Phone: mobile applications company, Reqwireless and Skia, who makes a portable graphics engine.

Simenov’s blog is definitely worth a read. It is not the only evidence that a “gPhone” (as I’ve now taken to calling it) is in the works.  Back in December, UK paper, The Observer, reported that Google was in talks with Orange:

[Google’s] plans centre on a branded Google phone, which would probably also carry Orange’s logo. The device would not be revolutionary: manufactured by HTC, a Taiwanese firm specialising in smart phones and Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), it might have a screen similar to a video iPod. But it would have built-in Google software which would dramatically improve on the slow and cumbersome experience of surfing the web from a mobile handset.

In the last year (plus), Google has proven that it wants to be a key player in mobile by innovating in the mobile applications marketplace and making key acquisitions (including Dodgeball, which Simeonov didn’t mention in his blog).  It is easy to see the business reasons why Google is making an investment in mobile.  The mobile marketplace presents an opportunity for Google to expand its search and advertising empire.  According to Ovum Ltd., mobile advertising will become a $1.26 billion market by 2009 (a big jump from the $45 million market it was in 2005). With the social media markets exploding and the lines between social media and targeted advertising becoming increasingly blury, I’m particularly interested in seeing what sort of social media featuers the gPhone incorporates. I’d love to see Google put out a mobile phone with built in GPS and suped-up Dodgeball built-in.  If that happens, it would likely shake-up the mobile industry by encouraging innovation and possibly spelling the death of comanies like Helio and Amp’d.

Even if as the Observer suggests, the gPhone hardware isn’t “revolutionary,” my hope is that the software will be extraordinary.  Having worked for 18 months as a full-time consultant on Palm Inc.‘s Business Development/ Developer Relations team, I can tell you that a phone (hardware) is only as good as the software that runs on it.  Palm’s Treo is popular in large part because of the 3rd party software applications available for the device.  Palm isn’t the only company that appreciates the value that software brings to mobile hardware.  Motorola and Nokia both have impressive 3rd party alliance programs (MotoDev and Forum Nokia).  If Google puts out a phone, I suspect that it’s strategic advantage will be in the availability of as yet, unreleased, proprietary social and productivity-related software.  I hope that that the gPhone comes fully loaded with social features that help advance the mobile ecosystem and that any on-phone advertising is both tasteful and non-invasive.

Gather is a social networking site for adults. It is free, fun, well organized, and a little bit like vox, though it encourages cross posting of blogs, articles, comments, etc. around specific “groups” of participants with similar interests.  There are some really interesting blogs, conversations, and participants happening on Gather…

For example, one of America’s most well known criminal lawyers, Alan Dershowitz has a group on Gather and is in the midst of publishing a six part series of articles on a variety of controversial, and politically fueled topics.

Today, Borders launched a new group on Gather, making it one of the many companies that is now using social networking to further business by reaching out to prospective customers.

Borders-community

Gather works on a revenue sharing model, not unlike other social media sites like Revver.  Here’s how Gather’s  CEO describes it:

Gather is a place for you to connect with people who share your passions. It’s a place where you can contribute thought, art, commentary, or inspiration. We will reward you for all the great things you will share with others in your communities of interest. And together, we think we will create a pretty special place to hang out online.
Gather will make money by displaying advertising to people who use Gather’s services. It just seems fair that we share our advertising revenue with you based on the quality and popularity of the content you contribute on Gather. We will also share some of our revenue with you if you choose to use the site actively, exploring content that others write, searching on Gather and on the web, and inviting your friends, family, and colleagues to use the site. We will pay occasional users in points that you will be able to use to purchase goods and services from Gather partners in a few months. We will pay frequent users, who write great content consistently, in cash if they choose.

I think Gather is a really interesting site. I like the way that it makes adults with similar interests discoverable to each other.  I’ve only used it for a short time, so I’ll be interested to see what my longer-term impressions are.  To test Gather.com a bit more and hopefully extend the readership of this blog, I’ve set up my own Gather group: socialmediagroup.gather.com. I hope that people will use this group to share information on social media, social networking, web 2.0, mobile 2.0 and related topics.

Do you use Gather? If so, post a comment and let me know what you think.

I know, I know, this blog is meant to be about social media and social networking, but I couldn’t resist writing about another piece of new technology that I know well – the Treo 750, one of the newest GSM Windows Mobile phones on the market.  On January 5th, Palm, Inc. announced the launch of the Treo 750 on Cingular.  This is the second major release from Palm in the last couple of months.

I’ve been using the Treo 750 as my primary phone for the past seven months (I was a business development, developer relations, and marketing consultant at Palm, Inc., so I got early access to the device**).  The Treo 750v has the same hardware as the Treo 750 but the two devices are branded differently because they’re on different carriers (Treo 750v on Vodafone, Treo 750 on Cingular).  Despite having spent significant time working at Palm, I believe that the following review unbiased and fair.  In my opinion, as a power-user of mobile phones, the Treo 750v is the best smartphone on the market, but as with every product, there is always room for improvement. (more…)

Further to my posting about WAYN I learned about TripHub.com, which helps users organize trips with their friends and family.  It combines travel research facilities, blogging capabilities, and invitation tracking (like Evite) into one easy interface.  The site allows users to shop for hotels, flights, and activities and share this information with others.

There’s an important distinction between sites like WAYN and TripHub.  While WAYN focuses on “chance encounters” and helping users find travel partners, TripHub allows users to interact with those who are already in their network of friends and familiy and organize the details of a trip with a specific list of invited participants.

TripHub features a very easy, well designed user-interface and integrates with leading travel sites like Hotels.com, Expedia.com, Orbitz, and Travelocity, which makes organizing the various aspects of trips within the US easy.  Users planning trips outside of the US, will still find TripHub useful for communicating with prospective and confirmed travel groups, but digging on external sites for foreign hotels is required, as Hotels.com, only allows users to search for hotels located in the states.

While I think that TripHub is a neat site as-is, there is room for the incorporation of additional social networking features.   Namely, I’d like to see users be able to post personal profiles and search for like-minded people who are looking for specific types of travel partners that are going on trips to particular locations.  For example, it would be great if users could post their profile on TripHub and ensure that only a specific demographic could see it and connect: (i.e: men and/or women between X and Y ages, located within Y miles of X city in Y state and Z country, looking to take a X day long vacation, costing between $X,000-$Y,000 to one of the following “wish list” locations (by city, country, or continent, etc.).  Alternatively, it would be great to see TripHub partner up with WAYN or a similar site to allow users to find travel partners and then plan trips accordingly.  I’d also like to see TripHub integrate with an international photo-sharing and printing site so that users can share pictures from their trips and the option to order each other’s photo books after the trip.

If you’ve used TripHub before, please post a comment with your thoughts.  If you’re a non-VOXer, and would like to post a comment, send me an email with your comments, and I’ll post them on-line.

I’ve been hearing a lot about WAYN (acronym for “Where Are You Now”) over the last few months.  WAYN is a social networking site focused on travelers, where community members can exchange travel tips and meet others who will be in the same place at the same time. With some calling it the “MySpace of Travel,” I figured it was time to do some research and take WAYN for a test drive

WAYN’S HISTORY:

Headquartered in London with back office operations in Poland, WAYN was founded in 2002 by three friends, Pete Ward, Jerome Touze and Mike Lines.  Initial funding came from Friends Reunited founder, Steve Pankhurst.  At the end of November 2006, WAYN secured a $11M (£5.7M) from a combination of high-profile investors including Brent Hoberman (co-founder of UK-based budget travel company, Lastminute.com), Esprit Capital Partners (British VC fund), Adrian Critchlow and Andy Phillips (Co-founders of Active Hotels), David Soski and Hugo Burge (Cheapflights) and Constant Tedder (co-founder and MD of Jagex).  This month, Hoberman will join WAYN as non-executive Chairman.

WAYN has experienced exceptional growth – from 45,000 users in 2005 to over 7 million today. The site boasts users from all over the world, but it is especially popular among the “gap year” contingent in Commonwealth countries like the UK, Australia, South Africa, etc., where many students travel the world for a year before going to University.  Unsurprisingly (given the estimated number of US passport holders), WAYN doesn’t yet have as much traction in the US. The following graphs from Alexa are useful indicators of the progress WAYN has made over the last three years:

WAYN Daily Traffic Rank (3 year trend through 4 Jan 2007):

Wayn-daily-traffic-alexa

WAYN Daily Page Views (3 year trend through 4 Jan 2007)

Wayn-daily-pageviews

WAYN Daily Reach Per Million (3 year trend through 4 Jan 2007):

Wayn-3yr-alexa

A site re-fresh in March of 2006 did well to bolster membership, and according to an article on Yahoo Finance, there are more improvements to come, thanks to the recent $11 M investment of Hoberman and Co:

The Funding will be used to create new revenue streams, expand the team – particularly in Poland where WAYN’s back office operations are managed; enlarge the geographical base of the company and increase the range of online and offline products offered, including a tailored trip planner; expand the ability to share experiences with others using rich media content; and provide exclusive travel and lifestyle benefits to its members. WAYN will also be upgrading its IT infrastructure to help ensure that it is able to support its fast growing active membership base.

WAYN’s competitors include: igougo.com, Gusto.com, Tripmates.com, Tripconnect.com, TripAdvisor.com, and VirtualTourist.com, all of which offer a slightly different flavor of on-line travel networking.

WAYN REVIEW:

Advocates of sites like WAYN believe that being able to broadcast your location to people in your network will revolutionize the way that people meet and interact.  As a management consultant, who used to travel to unfamiliar locations regularly, I like the idea of being able to immediately know if I’ve got friends nearby while I’m traveling and/or meet other travelers who are gong to the same location.  However, I also recognize the potential dangers of broadcasting your location to the public – especially if, say, you’ve got a stalker or your friends have ever called you a weirdo magnet.  Putting privacy issues to the side, I was excited about the idea of WAYN and looked forward to engaging with the community.

I started off by clicking the “Take The Tour” button on WAYN.com, which, as it turns out, like the rest of the site, was a bit slow.  (Good thing that some of the $11 Million investment in WAYN is going towards improving the site’s infrastructure.) Throughout the demo, a side banner flashed repeatedly: “It’s 100% FREE to join WAYN! Register Now”…This, as it turns out, is a bit misleading (more about this shortly).

After trudging my way through the flash demo, I clicked the “Join Now” button.  Registrants are asked to upload information about themselves – including visual descriptors, interests, contact details, mobile number, the details of trips they’ve been on/are going on, and more.  Users also have the option of uploading all of their contacts from several popular web-based email programs.  The enrollment process was straightforward, but it was also a bit clunky and time consuming (extensive drop-down menus that couldn’t be tabbed through, limited options to choose from under “interests”, etc.).

After registration, I was taken to a landing page.  It was here that I learned that while WAYN is free to join, membership is not particularly useful unless you pay for an upgrade.  Strangely, information about the different tiers of membership and associated costs are not advertised on WAYN’s  home page or at any point in the registration process.  In fact, you don’t find out about pricing until you complete free registration and start interacting with the site.  Even then, the only indication that there are different tiers of membership is a banner on the right hand side of the member’s main page:

I was frustrated not to learn about the various tiers of membership, before taking the time to register my personal details.  I think it is important for websites to be up-front about costs.  As it turns out, standard membership is free, but full membership costs $9.99 a month, with discounts if you order three months or one year at a time (3 month commitment= $5.99/month, 1 year commitment= $2.99/month)*.

Wayn-membership-compare

There is also an innocuous third tier of membership called VIP, which isn’t well explained until after you’ve upgraded to Full membership:

Wayn-full-vs-vip

My initial impressions of WAYN.com post-registration were mixed.  On the plus-side, WAYN allows you to:

• See the self-declared location of each of contacts/friends on a world map and learn about their upcoming trips
• Make new contacts/friends who are going to be in the same place as you
• Send an SMS to any of your friends/contacts worldwide
• Chat on-line using the WAYN Instant Messenger
• Upload all of your contacts from Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail to your WAYN account in one click – see who is already a member of the site and see the location of members
• Tell friends/contacts where you’re going and keep on-line Travel Journals to share with those in your network
• See who you know that is on-line and find out who has been looking at your profile
• Upload your photos and store them by location
• Maintain a WAYN-specific mailbox to send email to any of your contacts or groups of contacts.
• Chat with your contacts and other travelers via the WAYN Forum/ chatboards.  Get travel advice and make new friends

There is no doubt that WAYN is feature rich, but the user interface design and web taxonomy leave plenty of room for improvement.  My initial thoughts are as follows:

• Crowded real-estate – overburdened with ads and text.  I don’t believe that users who pay a subscription fee for a social networking service should also have to  see a barrage of unsolicited ads once they’ve logged into the site.
• Confusing interface – The layout on WAYN’s landing page is frustrating.  It is difficult to find what you’re looking for quickly.  The menu banner is down the left hand side of the page (as opposed to the top of the page as with most websites), so you can’t see all of your options without scrolling down the page.
• The website and menu taxonomy are ill conceived:
  • The menu items don’t appear to be listed in any particular order.  They’re not listed alphabetically or in an order that I would classify as useful.  “Search,” for example, which I suspect is one of the most popular menu items, is hidden amongst a stack of less useful menu items and a rotating advertisement.
  • There are too many menu choices and there is duplication across them.  For example, the “Who is online” button links to a page that only shows you members that are on-line in a particular country. Users can’t narrow this down to a state or city.  This is completely useless for users in an enormous country like America.  If you want to know who is on-line in a particular city, you have to pick the “search” button in the menu, which appears three buttons below the “Who’s Online” button. (see pictures below of one WAYN page in three parts – It was too long to screenshot in one go).
    

Wayn-screenshot

Wayn-screenshot-2

• Search is cumbersome –

• When you click the “Search” button, and do a search, it is impossible to narrow down the search results by adding criteria without clicking the “back” button in your browser until you get back to the main search page.
• If you want to find users that are close to you in age, you’re limited to only searching within the following age classifications: 18-20, 21-24, 25-30, 31-40, Over 40.  You are restricted to searching one group at a time. This is inconvenient to anyone who is on the upper or lower end of a particular age range. It seems odd to me that users can’t set their own age search criteria (e.g. 28-36, etc.)
  

Aside from disliking the interface, I struggled to find members with whom I had much, if anything in common.  As with any social networking site, WAYN is only as good as the network of people who use it.  WAYN doesn’t appear to have a critical mass of users in San Francisco, CA, USA.  Despite this, I did get a ton of pings people in far-flung locations with creepy looking pictures emailing to say “Hello.”  This was quite possibly the nail in the coffin for me and the current version of WAYN. There’s nothing quite like getting loads of unsolicited emails from letchy looking men, with whom I share nothing obvious in common and who look old enough to be my father to turn me off of frequenting a website. As I’ve said before in my blog, with the growth of Social Media/Social Networking, privacy is key. As a paying user, I feel that I should be allowed to specify the demographic details of the people who see my profile – not just the people I search for – say “Men and Women between 26 and 38 who plan to be in London between X and Y date.”

A couple of other nitpicky observations about WAYN – The “About us” section doesn’t say anything about WAYN as a company.  There are no executive profiles, discussions of corporate philosophy, or corporate aspirations listed.  In addition, the bottom of the home page, which hypes “WAYN in the News” features seven media logos, but none of them are hyperlinked.

Don’t get me wrong – WAYN is a fantastic social media concept with a lot of potential – both for prospective travelers and for travel businesses.  The ability for travelers to connect with each other and share inside experiences on their travels is phenomenal.  For businesses, sites like WAYN offer an opportunity to make their on-line ad campaigns more targeted and maximize the results of on-line ad spend.  As The Times Online recently reported:

Smart travel companies are using these sites to improve their business. They spot the targeted advertising opportunities offered by a site such as WAYN – where, for example, they can discover that 500 people in the Oxford area are thinking of going on holiday to the West Coast of America.

It is very probably that with $11M in the bank and leadership from Brent Hoberman, WAYN will evolve into the type of site I’d like to use.  For now, WAYN is a good start with a lot of opportunity for improvement.  To summarize, what I’d like to see:

• Less cluttered UI
• Better website taxonomy
• More bang for the buck (e.g. no ads/ pop-ups) OR a free, ad supported service
• Streamlined search facility
• Increased base of US users
• Improved privacy features for paid-for users

Have you tried WAYN? If so, please post a comment.

*Thank you to WAYN, who provided me with full membership (for one month) to evaluate the site.

Today, I got a very nice email from the Marketing Manager at Indeed.com.  She wanted to provide clarification on a few of the comments that appear regarding my December 30th posting about job trends in social media.  However, as a non Voxer, she couldn’t provide comments. She says she tried to enroll for Vox, but she ran into problems registering, so she emailed me instead.

I’d love to see a couple of new features added to Vox – including the ability for non-Voxers to comment on posts without registering for the service.  Just because you want to respond to a blog doesn’t mean you want one yourself.  One of the greatest features of Vox is the ability for users to make their posts public or private. Those of us who choose to make our posts public, want to see members of the public comment!  I’d love to see public commenting incorporated as a feature.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Vox…

• It is free and easy
  
• It is organized well
• It is easy to find people with similar interests
• There is a sense of community
• I got a great address for my blog
• etc.

But, there are a handful of features that I’d like to see added.  In the past few weeks, a few people have emailed me asking why I don’t switch to another free service like WordPress.  Yesterday, I signed up for a WordPress account to try it out. I didn’t like it as much as Vox, but it does have some of the extra features I’d like to have.

For now, I’ll stick with Vox, but if any of you great folks at Six Apart are reading, I’d love to see the following incorporated into Vox:

• The ability for non-Vox users (members of the public) to post feedback on Vox blogs
  
• A counter tool.  Right now, it is impossible to know who is reading your blog without getting comments/email.  And, since members of the public can’t comment, that makes the number of comments limited.
  
• The ability to incorporate HTML code into blogs (for things like buttons, etc.)
  
• The ability to hyperlink photos/logos in blogs
  
• Tracking back on comments – allow bloggers to respond to comments that appear on their blog without having to post a new comment of their own
  

If you’re a Vox blogger who would like to see these features as well, please write a blog entitled: “Six Apart: Why Can’t Non-Voxers Post Comments? (and other feature ideas)”. Please use the tags: blog, Vox, comments, trackbacks, Six Apart, and whatever else you feel is appropriate.   Alternatively, feel free to post a comment on my blog with your ideas.

As always, if you’re a non-Voxer and have feedback, please email me.

I was reading my daily dose of social media press releases when I came across a Social Media company based in Los Altos, CA called – Five Across (founded by ex Apple and Adobe developers).  Five Across provides social media and community building software.  Today, Onstream Media announced a series of “teaming and services agreements” with Five Across. “Ho hum” you say?  This is actually pretty interesting.

What the agreement means is that combined service of both companies will allow Five Across’ customers (companies, sports teams, etc.) to add multimedia experiences to their on-line social networking facilities.  Developing their own social networking platform is just one way that organizations etc. are keeping in touch with their customers and fans.  Adding the ability to upload user-generated content to their websites will positively increase the way that Five Across’ clients reach out/ market to their constituents and the way that those constituents interact with each other.

If anyone else out there besides me was wondering, “Could Five Across somehow be related to Six Apart?”  The answer is no.  Six Apart’s name was derived from the number of days between the co-founders’ birthdays.

Today, the New York Times Co. began offering NYTimes.com readers the option of posting articles on Digg, Facebook, and Newsvine.com.  This new functionality now appears to users along with other, standardized options like “print” and “email” on free articles, but these new sharing options are not available on premium “paid-for” articles.  To read more, click here.

• Are you looking for a thrill and hoping to strike it filthy stinking rich?
  
• Are you a risk taker with disposable income and time on your hands?
• Want to own a huge house in a great location?
• Want to make friends on-line?

If you’ve answered “YES” to all of these questions, forget about buying lottery tickets or founding a start-up, why not invest in real estate…VIRTUAL REAL ESTATE?*.  Never before has property in California and New York been so affordable.  Since launching on September 26, Weblo.com has managed to flog the entire (virtual) state of California on its site for $53,000 USD.  New York State sold for $18,433 and the Canadian province of Ontario sold for $16,900. Weblo is a virtual world – the first one to virtually duplicate the real world of properties, cities, states, and Internet domains – on-line.  According to Weblo:

The virtual mayor of Washington D.C. sold his city for a 300 percent profit. The virtual Empire State Building, originally purchased for one dollar, recently sold for $250. Members flip virtual properties for profit just like in the real world.

Weblo is a one of several emerging web-based social networking sites that revolves around a “Metaverse”.  In his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson coined the term “Metaverse” to refer to the virtual reality-based Internet world, which might evolve in the future.

Weblo is unique because it is the first on-line virtual world/ “metaverse” that virtualizes “real cities in the real world.”  However, Weblo is by no means the first or biggest “virtual world” out there.  From what I can tell, that accolade goes to Second Life from Linden Lab of San Francisco.

Second Life launched three years ago and has quickly become one of the most interesting social experiments on-line. The virtual “World” of Second Life is currently “inhabited” by 1,855,135 members – Avatars, who are imagined and controlled by real people from all over the world.  Unlike Weblo, the “World” (metaverse) of Second Life does not mimic property and countries in the real world – the topography is wholly imagined and developed by its inhabitants.

There is a “Marketplace,” which uses its own currency (Linden Dollars) to buy and sell virtual products and real estate inside the Second Life metaverse.  Second Life’s “inhabitants” interact with each other within this metaverse – just as real people interact in the real world.  Members create “virtual” products (3-D digital representations of real-life products or imaginary inventions), which they buy and sell inside the metaverse.  Linden Lab sells (and rents) virtual real estate to its inhabitants, which those inhabitants can then buy and sell themselves.  Second Life is free to join, but members pay $9.95 US a month to own land, and they pay a Land Use Fee proportional to the amount of land they own.

The Second Life Marketplace is thriving, and Linden Lab and the avatars aren’t the only ones benefiting financially… The real people controlling the avatars are trading in Linden Dollars for real ones – lots of them. According to Linden Labs, the Second Life “Marketplace” generates “millions of US dollars in monthly transactions.” Linden Dollars are being exchanged for US Dollars on several on-line currency exchanges (including LindenX) in record numbers.  In the last 24 hours alone, the equivalent of over $655,000 US Dollars has been spent inside the metaverse of Second Life, and the LindenX traded nearly $107,000 US Dollars.

Last week, Ailin Graef, the real-life person behind Second Life Avatar, Anshe Chung, announced that over the last two years, she has amassed the equivalent of $1 million US dollars of assets within Second Life’s metaverse, largely by buying and selling real estate.  Graef and her husband, Guni Graef, live between China and Germany and own their own real-life business focused on the “metaverse” (on-line virtual worlds), which includes perpetuating Anshe Chung’s real estate assets within Second Life.

Graef isn’t the only one making substantial money through Second Life.  The Times Online reports that real-life software developer, Gareth Lancaster, 33, from Derbyshire, England, makes a second income of between $20,000 and $30,000 US Dollars a year by selling virtual roller skates and vending machines in Second Life.  Over the last two years, Lancaster, operating as his Second Life avatar, “Moopf Murray,” has sold 60,000 pairs of virtual skates (for $60 each) to other avatars in Second Life.

Second Life has managed to grow virally very quickly– initially by appealing to highly technical users and expanding its user base to non-technical people from there.  Users don’t need to be technical to participate in Second Life. Linden Labs offers users tools that make building an avatar and participating in Second Life possible for anyone who knows how to use a computer.  Second Life gives its users an opportunity to be creative/build things, work with technology, play a game (of sorts), make money, and more – all from their computer.

Second Life is one of the greatest success stories in social media to date. With a growing subscription base of over 1.5 million users (nearly 700,000 of which have logged in within the last 60 days) and a thriving economy that is worth real world money, Second Life is attracting lots of attention – from marketers, press, and prospective users.  It is a virtuous circle that looks set to continue.  Second Life is much like a more elaborate version of top selling video game Sim City (which has sold millions of copies over the years), except that it is much more interactive and entirely built by its inhabitants and evolves in relevancy to the real world over time.

Marketers are seeing this potential.  This phenomenon is well documented.  Earlier this year, in the Harvard Business Review, Senior Editor, Paul Hemp wrote about the benefit of marketing real products to Avatars.  Hemp believes that metaverses like Second Life are fertile marketing ground because, “marketers [in Second Life] have the opportunity to interact with engaged minds.”  Plenty of real life companies agree.  In June 206, American Apparel was the first store to open up a store inside Second Life.  In September 2006, Starwood Hotels opened up a preview version of their forthcoming real-life hotels in Second Life. was the first real life company to open a hotel in Second Life.  Reuters has assigned a reporter to Second Life whose avatar reports on the goings on inside the metaverse of Second Life.  The list of companies that are involved in Second Life is impressive and growing.

Despite all of the press, plenty of members of the public haven’t heard of Second Life.  Of those people who have heard of Second Life, plenty of them don’t “get it” or understand why it is a compelling marketing tool.  Case in point, when I told some of my friends, family, and former colleagues who read this blog that I’d be writing about the successes and future potential of Second Life, I was met with blank stares and looks of confusion.  For those who don’t understand it, Second Life can seem more than a little bit bizarre, and it’s easy to see why.  As 35-year-old Second Life member, Mitch Joel writes in his blog:

As I get more involved in Second Life, I am starting to realize how psychotic I must sound when I talk about it in real life (or First Life).

Trying to explain the benefits getting a “Second Life” to people who already have a full “First Life”, will be one of Linden Lab’s greatest challenges.  In an interview published yesterday,  journalist Stephen Hutcheon asked Ailin Graef something a lot of people are wondering:

Why [do] otherwise intelligent people would spend real money on virtual assets, none of which could ever be seen as necessities and all of which can only ever be used inside the Second Life community?”

Graef’s response was priceless:

This question is closely related to another question: Why do otherwise intelligent people spend real money on so many things in the real world that are not necessities? I mean, what do we really need to survive and to stay healthy? How much of our spending, even in real life, is driven by the desire for individualisation, self-expression, entertainment or communication?

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t spent time Second Life or purchased virtual real estate (there or anywhere else). It’s not that I’m opposed to trying it.  At the risk of sounding geeky, I find the possibilities of Second Life fascinating.  The trouble is that I have my hands full with a very busy “First Life” of my own – a large percentage of which is already spent on-line emailing, blogging, researching, and social networking.  At this point in my life, it’s tough enough to make time for a First Life being myself – never mind paying for a “second life” acting as a fictitional avatar.

*Note on the first paragraph– I’m not being serious.  If you’re looking for an investment strategy, talk to a licensed investment advisor (I’m not one).