A change is as good as a holiday, they say. Seriously, I don't actually know anyone who says this other than myself; though I'm assured that there are some folks out there who do.

With that tragically underutilized platitude in mind, then, last week I posed a question to a spread of well-known virtual environment users (at least to those that I felt would actually respond) and collected the responses.

The question put to the respondents was "What's the single thing that the operators/developers could do to make you feel more satisfied with their virtual environment offering; what thing would help an operator keep you as a customer, or that would make some other operator more appealing than the one or ones you already have?"

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Vox virtualis

The Virtual Whirl: Vox virtualis originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 08 May 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There's no doubt in our minds that virtual environments are here to stay, for a significant fraction of the foreseeable forever. Love them or loathe them they're in their third decade now, and like the Web, it's now more a matter of how they fit in to the rest of the world, rather than if they do.

In education, virtual environments are now a part of an educator's toolbox and as education continues to combine, refine, and recombine tools, virtual environments will find increasingly better, more effective uses in education. There's no doubt about that among educators, even if the technologies aren't ready for widespread educational uses today.

Continue reading Educators find common ground in Second Life, for now

Educators find common ground in Second Life, for now originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Marketing in virtual worlds, particularly the collaborative virtual environments like Second Life, have been widely considered to have been failures among marketers -- particularly among those marketers who actually attempted it.

Meanwhile, on the education side of things, Ignatius Onomatopoeia has done exactly those things that seem to have escaped almost every Second Life marketing strategy we've seen. Faced with a lack of direction and engagement in his students in the virtual environment, he tested, trialled, adapted and used what actually worked.

Right now, you're probably thinking "Well, thanks a lot, Captain Obvious," and you'd be right. Because it is really, really obvious. It is also something that not many of these marketers actually tried. In fact, they all had a few things in common in their virtual marketing efforts.

Continue reading Virtual marketing failures: Apathy or hubris?

Virtual marketing failures: Apathy or hubris? originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.