Marketing 2.0

Second Life in the Classroom

Interesting article in the Ithaca Journal about a new course at Cornell that deals with the business being conducted within Second Life. While $1.5 million in transactions take place everyday, there's no regulation similar to the "real" world. Professor Bloomfield refers to it as the "financial wild west."
Link: The Ithaca Journal - www.theithacajournal.com - Ithaca, NY.

A Mansion in Second Life

How much would you pay for a home in Second Life? How about $3.1 million? Coldwell Banker has created a virtual model of one of its premier listings and so far it has attracted several thousand visitors. Whether the SL demographic is consistent with luxury home buyers, well I do wonder about that. What's interesting here is the use of virtual worlds and new media to supplement a very traditional sales process. When the technology advances a bit you can imaging walking into Coldwell's virtual listing world and walking through many houses to find the right choice.

Link: Real $3.1 home causes a stir in virtual world, Second Life - Aug. 9, 2007.

The Boss Puts The iPod to Work

Here's another sign that iPod is the new king of all media. Many companies are now using pods as training tools for their employees. It's an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal on how major corporations are downloading content such as language lessons, sales tips and messages from the CEO to their staff.
Link: The Boss Puts The iPod to Work - WSJ.com.

Backing Up

I recently had a problem with my main computer, an older G4. It's been in the shop for two weeks (don't get me started on that) and I have been unable to access important data and applications from my hard drive. Although I back up about every six months, this was a good reminder of what can happen if you suffer a hard drive failure. How often do you back up?

Guy Kawasaki had a similar problem recently and he offers several good resources for Mac users on his weblog.

Link: Signum sine tinnitu--by Guy Kawasaki: Prevent Dumbness: Hard Disk Specials.

What Can You Do With RSS?

Robin Good offers an excellent overview of the many traditional and new applications for RSS technology. For example, it's the underlying technology facilitating media sharing sites such as Flickr and Jumpcut. There's lots more in Robin's summary.

Link: What Can You Do With RSS? - Robin Good's Latest News.

Google Goes Video

It's another sign than 2006 is shaping up to become the year of video. Web pundit Robin Good predicted it and now we have Google launching a video download service. This is going to be big. You will see all kinds of content currently available only on cable television or locked away in the archives somewhere suddenly available for download. Think of the marketing opportunity for studios and production houses to generate additional revenue on content produced and paid for in the past. The archives are going to be opened up like never before. I saw a sure sign of this the other night when I found an old episode of Dragnet for sale on iTunes. Two dollars per head for an episode that ran about 40 years ago. As Dire Straits might say, "Money for nothing and chicks for free."

Link: CNN.com - Google announces video�expansion - Jan 6, 2006.

IBM's Podcast Guidelines

Here is a sure sign that podcasting is catching on in the corporate world. IBM recently published guidelines for its employees who are involved in podcasting. There have been several publicized incidents of employees at other companies getting fired for their blogging activities so it's a good bet that we'll see similar incidents with audio content. This just points out the need for companies to have a policy covering all forms of online publishing that staff may engage in.

While this may feel like an infringement on personal freedom and expression, it's important to separate the organizational and individual voices. Like it or not, if you identify yourself as an employee of any specific organization, what you publish online will influence your organization's image.

I found IBM's guidelines interesting because some relate to legal issues like confidentiality while others discuss production value (set the bar high for audio production and content quality). Of course, IBM is interested in protecting their corporate image and brand equity (and why shouldn't they?). I complement them on being proactive. Good communication with staff and clear guidelines go a long way in avoiding messy problems.

This article comes courtesy of Business Blog Consulting, an excellent resource that I recommend.

Link: Business Blog Consulting: IBM's Podcast Guidelines.

RSS Marketing Plan

Here is a good article from Rok Hrastnik on using RSS technology in place of traditional e-mail marketing. With all of us battling and filtering spam from our e-mail accounts, RSS offers a good alternative - a permission based approach where customers elect to subscribe to your feeds. The advantage here is that content flows smoothly through an RSS reader or web browser rather than clogging up an in box or getting trapped in a spam filter.

Link: Your 7-Step RSS Marketing Plan.

Podcasting for Knowledge Management

Here's an excellent post from Jay Cross' blog on the use of podcasting to disseminate corporate knowledge. Jay references the practices at Cisco systems, where they have created a video-on-demand library of training and knowledge content that engineers can easily access. In many cases people prefer to download MP3 audio content to their iPods and go from there. Fascinating stuff and worth a read.

Link: Internet Time Blog: iPod, iLearn, iSell.

Can Podcasting be Profitable?

Podcasting has generated a lot of buzz lately, especially since Apple integrated the technology in iTunes. You can now subscribe to any number of Podcasts and download them to your computer or your iPod.

The hype is revving up — this will replace traditional media, radio is dead, blah, blah, blah. Yes, it's a cool technology but can it generate revenue? Is it simply another means for individual expression (no doubt valuable), but ultimately another excuse to spend more unproductive hours in front of your computer?

I think that podcasting can be a valuable tool for corporate communications. Company updates, customer support, technical guides, training — these are all potential applications that come to mind.

Whether podcasts can be sold by subscription is another matter. I'll leave that to others to argue. The smart people over at Wharton are thinking about this phenomenon. Here's a link to a recent Wharton article that discusses the business potential for podcasting.

Link: Podcasting: Can This New Medium Make Money? - Knowledge@Wharton.