Community Mobilization

Trendwatching.com

Trendwatching.com has an entire digest dedicated to the virtual world and some of the upcoming commercial applications.  I liked the article form a 'hey that is neat' perspective but what they did not address was how the residents feel about the incursion of advertisements and branding into their worlds.  I look to the real world where residents are fighting the development of Walmarts.  All I can say is that when entering a community it is wise to relay understand its residents before making investments. I love that they mentioned the Second Life Relay!

PeopleAggregator launches this week

The PeopleAggregator, a Marc Canter project that has been in the works for some time, launched this week.  It has received some very good reviews from the like of Marshall Kirkpatrick in Tech Crunch for its ability to let the user have near complete control of the data.  Marc has worked very hard on the philosophical and technical aspects of this design.  The RSS Backbone and open standards build is something that should carry forward into all web design from this point out.

As a community building tool I can see P.A. as a template that network builders can use to create their own niche networks for specified groups.  This is less of a new technology and more of a new opportunity for those looking to create something of their own. The PeopleAggregator home site has a wealth of information on how this is a product and less of a website. By best to Marc and his team for creating a very robust and flexible platform here.

MObile Mobile Phone in Kenya

Today's Rocketboom has a field report from Rudd Elmendrop on a pair of Polio afflicted me who have come up with a brilliant business plan and are executing it well in Nairobi Kenya.  The men have attached 'home phones' that happen to use mobile phone signals to their carts.  It seems the rates are cheaper since the phones are large and bulky and were intend to sit in a person's home.  The field report scratches the surface of the discrimination the disabled face in Kenya, and at the same time revels in the spirit of entrepreneurship and the inexhaustible human spirit.

Dave Evans Hot Topic

I am sitting here in Chicago at my final installment of the American Marketing Association's Hot Topic education session.  This morning Dave Evans of Digital Voodoo gave a very compelling speech on the values and importance of word of mouth marketing.  He gave exceptional examples and relay engaged the audience.  He came and sat down my be and proceeded to pick out the peanut-butter cups from the candy jar.  I highly recommend Dave as a great engaging speaker on the word of mouth topic - and make sure you have some peanut-butter cups.

Second Life sees First Major Retailer

Springwise reports that Second Life now has its first major retailer - American Apparel.  Vendor of very soft T-shirts used in many cool shirt printing facilities such as GoodStorm, and Shirts by Sam, American Apparel purchased an island and built its own shop there to sell virtual clothing to avatars.

I will watch the development of this outlet to see how receptive the SL community is to a major retailer setting up shop inside SL.  If anyone can create their own shirt then what is the social capital involved in an AA shirt?  AA prides itself on not being a sweat-shop shirt factory and that is very cool - yet items (especially simple items) are beyond commodities inside SL.  Everyone can make them!  If this is a branding and awareness move then I applaud them for making an effort in the SL community.  Maybe AA will host a kiosk for Second Life Relay For Life shirts?!

NSA and ESNA

Excuse the alphabet soup - the national Security agency may be using the phone records to create visualizations of our calling patterns, as mentioned in this BusinessWeek article. The use of calling patterns to establish social networks and information flow is nothing new.  Peter Gloor at MIT worked extensively on using e-mail traffic destination as a way to define evolving social networks. One of the neat social implications of this is the examination of all sorts of other networks with in communities.  You can check on how well your volunteers are communicating, or the kind of crowd your children are going out with. 

In the age of the metaverse geo-spatial and proximity monitors will be a more telling indicator of social connectivity and preferences.  Cellphone will be able to detect and determine social preference based on proximity and call and text records.  This information will be even more valuable - know not only who you are in contact with but who you physically come into contact with.

US Wage Glut - Bad Scenario on the Horizon

This WSJ article about the inability of the US to compete in the future job market is very scary stuff, especially when you consider the main bulk of our constituent base. Again it reinforces that the wards of the future will certainly be economic and we are not preparing sufficient battalions of well education and creative talent.  Nikita Khrushchev  may have had it right all along - maybe we will get buried - if not in debt maybe in an inability to compete.

Second Life Relay noted at Blogher

Beth Kanter (any relation to Marc?) writes up the Second Life session from Netsquared on Blogher.  She was nice enough to talk a bit about our Second Life Relay For Life event comming up July 22-23. In her posting she vistis the Full Moon art meuseum and discovers one of our SLRFL donation kiosk and posters.  I was very please to see these kiosks up all over the SL and have been seeing some amazing fundrasing ideas so far.  SLRFL this year is going to be HUGE! I hope Beth will stop by and blogher about it!

American Nation Building at its Best

This is an excerpt from a forthcoming book from Larry Grubbs - A University of Georgia professor.   I read the snippet and was shocked and amazed that we are able to make the same mistakes in nation building as we did in the 1960's.  Clearly we have not taken the opportunity to learn from our past.

Bringing "The Gospel of Modernization" to Nigeria: American Nation Builders and Development Planning in the 1960s
by Larry Grubbs

Drawing on recent studies of development discourse, this essay explores the impact of two American academics affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Nigerian economic planning in the 1960s. Their published and unpublished writings provide a dramatic demonstration of how development discourse skewed American and Nigerian perceptions of reality, contributing to the failure of nation building during the First Republic. American "secular missionaries" promoted a "gospel of modernization," a vision of Nigeria as a self-confident, unified nation-state that would offer Africa a model for development. They predicted the Nigerian National Development Plan of 1962–68, funded by American aid and private investment, would provide a "significant historical demonstration" that American-led modernization produces development and democracy. Instead, Nigeria's economy remained locked into neocolonial trade patterns, corruption blossomed, and ethnic conflict and political opportunism culminated in a bloody civil war from 1967 to 1970. Nigeria entered the twenty-first century with a staggering external debt, widespread poverty, and painful dependence on the West.

Community Site Development is Misguided?

Over on Release 1.0 Rafe Needleman posted his thoughts on the recent explosion of Social Network Sites. He is very skeptical of the longevity of this category and to be frank I do not blame him.  The continuity and fickle manner of youth members is notorious - fashion and fads come and go very quickly in this market segment. Ergo if the business strategy is to capture this market you had best start by trying to herd cats.

HOWEVER if you are creating a space that caters to a specific segment of people a la' Dogster.com I believe you may have a slightly longer lifespan.  Moreover if you site provides a valuable service - Craigslist - you may fair better still.  Finally if you are able to galvanize a feeling or an emotion like fighting cancer, like the American Cancer Society's Cancer Survivor's Network, you have an even better chance of captivating an audience and maintaining a long term valuable relationship. To build on Rafe's sentiments about competing with 'My Space', I say don't compete - just build something that is meaningful.