The claim that new marketing company 'crayon' was the first new company to launch in Second Life raised some eyebrows and hackles among the virtual world's denizens.
The backlash against the launch was as much about a community feeling invaded by corporations that threaten to suck the creative life out of the online world as it was about the semantics of the claim, set against the history of Second Life's three years of creativity and development.
Jason Pettus, editor of a magazine about Second Life says it best in a comment on company president Joseph Jaffe's blog:
"I think there are a lot of people worried right now about the potential 'MySpaceization' of Second Life; of the entire thing becoming just a glorified environment for corporate advertising, and with the creativity and innovation that has usually defined the grid suddenly having to take a back seat. I think marketers entering SL would do themselves some good thinking about this issue, and asking themselves, "So okay, how do we impress -those- people?" I think RL veterans will find a lot of resistance melting away for their new SL companies, once they start answering this last question more."
Jaffe's post in response to the backlash: A Learning from Second Life
"Coming through the launch process, I'm learned a pretty important lesson. Opening up a storefront/presence in Second Life is not dissimilar to a Wal-Mart opening up in a small town.
"Let's leave it at that."
The critics are right that crayon's claim that it's "the first" to do anything in Second Life comes off as hubris in the eyes of people who have put in years of very uncorporate hard work building a new online world. Having been pummelled by their neighbours in their first week of operation, I suspect the crayon folks will do a bit of reaching out to those who were offended, and will get on with serving clients from their virtual head office.
I'm not a Second Lifer, so I don't claim to have special insight into the online experience there. Steve Hall, another blogger who knows very little about Second Life, suggests the backlash would be better aimed at clueless corporations than at a startup like crayon. As Steve points out, most of their work will probably be to help their clients connect with social media communities and others far outside of Second Life.
Backlash:
Second Life Madness - Mimi Harris, Eastwikkers
A Gallery of Lies - Urizines Sklar a.k.a. Peter Ludlow, The Second Life Herald
Backlash Week - Ed Lee, Blogging Me, Blogging You
Fucktards in Cyberspace - Peter Ludlow a.k.a. Urizines Sklar, in The Strumpette
Response:
Marketers Will Not Destroy Second Life - Steve Hall, AdRants
crayon's launch news release
Disclosure: I'm virtual pals with a few of crayon's founding employees.
See also: Second Life Backlash Continues
Tags: crayon, socialmedia, promotion, publicity, secondlife,marketing
fwiw, I responded as well.
http://www.knowprose.com/node/16507
It's really simple. Some people thought the world was all theirs and were rudely awakened. Marketers thought it was a new world because they just found it and have been rudely awakened.
And the extremists are screaming for blood. Sound familiar? :-)
Posted by: Taran | October 29, 2006 at 11:32 PM
I'll say this:
- I think this so-called negativity is way overblown. If you look at 2 of your 4 links, they belong to: Urizines Sklar. I responded to Urizines with respect and openness and he responded with unmitigated hostility, anger and myopia.
- I would also disagree that we've been pummelled in our first few weeks...actually we've been open for business for less than 4 days :) We had plenty of SL pioneers in attendance at our launch.
- so all that remains is the claim to be first...I can tell you that this too has been blown way out of proportion. It is completely at the bottom of our priority list and what we were referring to was the fact we put our stock in SL to demonstrate our belief and complete committment. We could have launched in boutique hotel in NYC with reporters from WSJ and NYT, but instead we choose to walk our talk and use SL.
We are the world's first new marketing company (a term I coined) that simultaneously opened/launced in RL and SL. The "backlash" from change-resistent people helped use refine our pitch message (we're greatful for that)and imho, it diluted it somewhat, which long term only hurts everyone hoping to attract the attention of brands to help build the community and invest in the world...
I am proud of our decision to launch in SL and I am proud of Second Life
One final point...we are all SL residents. We didn't just arrive in SL a week before we launched. We are also all bloggers and know all too well how misinformation and exaggeration occurs.
I would call on all rationale bloggers to make sure they represent both sides of the story as you did and as Steve did in your two posts.
JJ
Posted by: jJ | October 29, 2006 at 11:42 PM
Godd comments, Taran and Joseph.
This (concern about effect of corporate involvement) reminds me a bit of the buzz that went around the Flickr community when it was acquired by Yahoo. Some very suspicious comments were made, including threats by some core users to take their photos elsewhere.
The result has been that Flickr became more stable and continued to attract a lot of new people. I'm sure some people did move on, but there's no saying they wouldn't have found some reason to leave, anyway.
There will always be people who don't like change. Acknowledge them, respect them, and keep going.
Posted by: Eric Eggertson | October 30, 2006 at 07:12 AM
Great stuff. :-)
It's the tail attempting to wag the dog. The Flickr example is great, and if we look back to when marketers first took the internet seriously, we'll see much of the same. When it came to putting advertising on weblogs, it was much of the same... and I was decidedly against a lot of things myself. But to make things self-sustaining, they need to change and in time even geeks like me can see the need for marketing.
I'm not surprised at this point that over on Adrantes (http://www.adrants.com/2006/10/marketers-will-not-destroy-second-life.php ), Prokofky Neva called me an anti-globalist. This is further from the truth than anything, of course, but the question is 'why would I be called one?'. The answer lies more in the perspective of people who don't understand globalization in it's many regards. I can't claim the high ground there; globalization is not a very clear subject, but the main aspect is that markets get bigger. And I'm supporting larger markets; the bazaar over the Cathedral. So are the larger companies entering SecondLife.
Methinks we have reached the mud-slinging phase, which means that the angst should be over by Christmas. :-)
Posted by: Taran | October 30, 2006 at 09:31 AM
Those early residents in SL should have known this was inevitable. There are no utopias; not in RL, not in blogs, not in SL and not in space (when we really get there).
But, if one is familiar with social media (the norms, etc.), then a venture into SL should be relatively painless (but not totally, as our real life work habits creep in, i.e., being "first").
If the early SL residents don't get their cyber noses bent out of joint, all will be well. Just deal with any SL company or issue as you would in RL.
It's really that simple.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Driehorst | November 01, 2006 at 11:16 AM
>Some people thought the world was all theirs
Like some people think the blogosphere is all theirs lol -- tiresome!
I have to chuckle a bit at these scared media planners and ad marketers running from the old-media dinosaur-land of sinking sales and imagining that when they roll into SL with the same methods and merchandising of the dying old media, they are encountering some resistance because the people in the cutting-edge SL are somehow "conservative" or "resistant to change".
It's the marketers and merchandisers who are resistant to change. You can't just blast a message at people anymore or put an ad in their faces on TV or the highway in a one-way push-media operation. People resist or ignore it, and that's not conservatism, that's the new revolutionary reality.
There isn't any such thing as a homogenous "early settlers' group" anyway. There are waves of settlers of all types and politics.
I frankly still don't get what the crayonistas *do* except to claim to be the first marketing company to launch exclusively from inside an online world. So, nu? Now what? What have you done *lately*?
Um, Taran is "anti-globalist" in his attitude toward Nissan -- he resists Nissan coming to SL (though he's now now not admitting it) because he said "people fly in SL; they don't need cars" etc. etc. -- tekkie literalist stuff.
Well, why can't Nissan be in SL? Of course it can be. Can it sell cars in the microeconomy? Why not? If it gives them away for free, does that upset the microeconomy? Well, no more than the other oldbies who give away vehicles to enhance their reputation points. Will big business totally washout the fragile microeconomy? Collectively taken, yes, it might well do that. And that's something to be concerned about, and to ask corporations to think hard about -- why are they ruining the virtual neighbourhoods as they escape from the ruined neighbourhoods they left beyond in real life? If an amazon killed my neighbourhood bookstore and destroyed the used books market locally, do they have to come and do the same thing in a carefully constructed niched virtual world?
Taran would say, sure, if he has no stake in books. Taran is only for a globalization that is an inch deep and a mile wide and helps disseminate mediocre blog writings and tedious and tendentious Wikipedia entries.
Earlier and more recent settlers don't need lessons in how SL isn't a utopia; the old media and big business corporations desparate to get hip to the new culture are the ones looking for a utopia.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 07, 2006 at 11:08 AM
Crayon and Jaffe screwed up badly on so many levels. And as for "walking the talk", try visiting Crayon and see how many employees are there. Actually I'll tell you so you don't have to: none. Pathetic.
Posted by: Igor Slivovitz | February 24, 2007 at 09:59 AM