GOOGLE+ I AM IN YOU!!!! This is my new Google+ account. Eventually, I'll nuke the mitchw2007@gmail.com one to avoid confusion.

I am enjoying the simplicity. I created far too many Circles in my first weeks on G+. Now I have one circle: Following.

Yes, I am really, really glad to have Google+ on my Google Apps account. It was tedious switching between two Google accounts.

Jobs didn't have a license plate on his car. Some people assumed he was a scofflaw who was willing to pay fines out of his vast billions. But no, he just found a loophole in the law: California motorists have up to six months to put plates on their new cars. Jobs leased a silver Mercedes, and every six months he arranged with the leasing company to get an identical new car.

And the leasing company got a supply of nearly-new cars whose last driver was Steve Jobs.

Ha!

This webcomic just keeps getting better and better.

The cat has discovered pizza. I don't think I was that excited when I discovered sex.

I have to resist posting every single entry here from ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS

Redundant title.

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Wonder if he can replace the dock when he upgrades his smartphone?

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Time.com profiles several entrepreneurs who work alone, including Instapaper's Marco Arment and Pinboard.in's Maciej Ceglowski.

The point being: we have a massive police force in America that outside of lower Manhattan prosecutes crime and imprisons citizens with record-setting, factory-level efficiency, eclipsing the incarceration rates of most of history’s more notorious police states and communist countries.

_But the bankers on Wall Street don’t live in that heavily-policed country. There are maybe 1000 SEC agents policing that sector of the economy, plus a handful of FBI agents. There are nearly that many police officers stationed around the polite crowd at Zucotti park. _

These inequities are what drive the OWS protests. People don’t want handouts. It’s not a class uprising and they don’t want civil war — they want just the opposite. They want everyone to live in the same country, and live by the same rules. It’s amazing that some people think that that’s asking a lot.

John Cleese on creativity: You need to create a space and a block of time every day where you won't be interrupted and you're free to be creative.

It's the real thing

16 New York police indicted in the Bronx for ticket-fixing and other chicanery, 100 fellow cops swarm the courthouse to physically stop reporters from covering the trial, in one instance physically grabbing lenses and shoving reporters to the ground.

Cool illustration.

21-year-old man bet with his friends that he could fit into the baby swing on a playground. His friends bailed on him, and firefighters came after he was heard screaming for help at 6 am.

I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to this guy. I myself was an idiot when I was 21

Are video apps the new TV channels? Daring Fireball's John Gruber argues that video apps will eventually replace channels on smart TVs. You'll download the HBO app to watch programming there, the ESPN app to watch programming there, and so on.

This strikes me as too much work for the consumer. As it stands now, if we want to watch a program we go through the following procedure: (1) Record it on DVR. (2) If that doesn't work, look for it on Netflix, which we're already paying a lump monthly sum for. (3) If that doesn't work, look for it on Cox's video-on-demand channel. There does not seem to be a search-by-program-name feature on that channel, so we have to remember what channel the program was on. (4) If that doesn't work, pay for the program on iTunes.

I don't want to have to work that hard to watch TV.

The national debate has gone from deficits and austerity to jobs and fairness.

Occupy is essentially a conservative movement. The Occupy movement wants to restore America as a place where if you work hard and follow the rules, you will be rewarded.

Today's "ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS" to make you go "awwww."

According to this article, one Klout expert (there is such a thing?) advises you shouldn't talk to people with lower Klout scores than you, let you risk lowering your own Klout score to their level.

What a day in the life of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello was like:


A typical day for Jefferson started early, because, in his own words, "Whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun." He told of a fifty-year period in which the sun had never caught him in bed; he rose as soon as he could read the hands of the clock kept directly opposite his bed.

RECORD-KEEPING

After rising, Jefferson measured and recorded the temperature. Around four o'clock in the afternoon, Jefferson repeated the measurement, as he found "the hottest point of the 24 hours is about four o'clock . . . and the dawn of the day the coldest." He also recorded the direction and speed of the wind and the amount of precipitation. From indoors, Jefferson could see a weathervane (weathervane.qt, 840K) positioned over the Northeast Portico of the house; he could also read the wind direction off a compass rose (connected to the weathervane directly above it) on the Northeast Portico's ceiling. Jefferson made note of the weather and other indexes of climate, such as the migration of birds and the appearance of flowers, throughout his life, wherever he was, including France, Washington, and Philadelphia. He shared his records with others in the hope of creating a national database of meteorological information.

Cat: "I SPRAWL ACROSS WHOLE WIDTH OF BACK HALLWAY NOW YOU STEP OVER ME K?"

Me: "Sure, but I'm carrying a dangerous overfull mug of scalding hot tea."

CAT: 'I A BYOOTIFUL PRINCESS!"

1) Streisand fans.

2) Some people like working in a crowd of strangers. It's a focus thing.

3) It disturbs me that I know what a teardrop tattoo on the face means. I've watched far too many cop shows on TV.

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I love the idea of auto-pause, and can't wait to try it out. I frequently have to stop walking for a moment or two, to re-tie my shoe or whatever, and stopping and re-starting RK is an inconvenience. (Via +Robert Scoble )

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Auto-pause when at traffic lights is simply brilliant!

I just took a quick look at the new Google Reader, with the streamlined UI and the +1 button that shares to Google+ (which is what I'm doing now). I know this was a controversial change, but I like it.

I would have jumped for joy at this news a few weeks ago. Now that the iOS mail app supports flagging messages, I don't feel like I need it (via +MG Siegler )

It's November already? November 2011? How is that even possible? Seems like only last week it was 1987.

It's New, Snappy, Spicy! For those of you who could not bear the old, non-snappy, bland version.

Latest on The CMO Site by +Michael Dortch

Why Companies Struggle With Marketing Automation


Marketing is the final frontier for business process automation. Where other business functions were automated long ago, marketers at many organizations are still doing things the old fashioned way. Why?

I asked this question at Focus.com, an online Q&A service for business decisions. Herewith, some of the more interesting answers.

http://www.thecmosite.com/author.asp?section_id=1326&doc_id=235191&

+Keith Dawson 's latest on The CMO Site

The End of Advertising: Same as It Ever Was

The latest round of proclamations on the imminent demise of advertising will meet the same fate the last round did, and advertising will soldier on.

My latest on The CMO Site:

Social Media Marketing Moves Into Executive Suite


Social media marketing is now a job for executives at brands such as Walgreens, HBO, and Red Roof Inn. Not too long ago, it was something fobbed off on college-student interns. Now, companies are recognizing that social media are strategic, and they want senior executives leading the way.

Sabrina Caluori, vice president of social media and performance for HBO, came up through the ranks. She had been director of marketing for HBO.com for four years before rising three months ago to the new role. The reason HBO created the position? Social media aren't just tactical -- they're strategic, Caluori told ClickZ.

So it turns out that if you refer to someone else's baby as their "vile crotchfruit," they take offense at that. Good to know.

Able was I 'ere I saw elbows.

Nothing says friendship like a packet of roasted seasoned seaweed

Lake Murray at dusk.

Grant Avenue, San Francisco, California, USA!

Check out the lettering on the sign behind the left pillar of the arch. That's not Chinese. There must be a story there.

Good cause. And I like the idea of wearing a little something patriotic.

Christmas comes early for Starbucks.

Love these chairs at company HQ. Note cupholders in arms for high-speed business deals.

I'm continually surprised and disappointed when PR people ask me, "What's your deadline?" It demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how journalism works here in the 21st Century. The Internet gives us the ability to be completely flexible. Yes, my story is scheduled to post tomorrow, but I can delay that if you tell me you can get me a good interview the next day. I can update the story after it posts. I can write a follow-up story. We have a lot of options.

When a PR person asks me, "What's your deadline," 90% of the time they don't get back to me with the information I asked about. It even looks to me like they started out looking for an excuse to get out of responding.

New sponge. I just KNEW we were in for a treat today!

Some people still like shit work. They can spend an hour moving Twitter accounts to special Lists, and then at the end of it look back and say “Boy, I spent an hour doing this. I really accomplished a lot today!” You didn’t. You did shit work.

I had about a dozen Circles on my first Google+ account. On this account, I have one Circle: Folkowing. I share everything to Public. Simple.

Confessed "coffee nerd" Marco argues the Keurig K-Cup won't kill great coffee:

People like going out for coffee. It’s an escape. It’s social. It can be a meeting venue. It can be a work environment. It’s a way to leave work for a half hour that your boss won’t think is unreasonable, especially if you bring some coffee back for your boss.

Profile of Warren Buffet, "the last honest capitalist as conceived by Frank Capra, pitting his provincial integrity against the big boys’ metropolitan guile, and sharing the spoils with the folks back home."

Buffett’s public image represents a singular cultural accomplishment whose difficulty is hard to overstate. Until Buffett came along, the notion of a folk-hero investor was an oxymoron in America. Before the 1920s, buying and selling corporate securities was regarded by ordinary people as an occult activity practiced by a shadowy elite acting in nobody’s interest but its own. This view changed, of course, when a prolonged bull market, widely promoted as unstoppable, started sucking in the Main Street masses. It was a golden moment. Then came the Crash. Suddenly the denizens of Wall Street seemed even more sinister, selfish, and cynical than they had before—an impression that lingered for decades. When the markets recovered a portion of their lost honor in the 1950s and 1960s, ordinary Americans kept their distance, intimidated by a Brahmin hauteur. The leading investment personality of the 1970s, Louis Rukeyser, for more than thirty years the host of TV’s Wall Street Week, had the patrician profile of a Founding Father, the flowing hair of a concert pianist, and the clubby nasal voice of a Harvard English professor. He was a true blue blood or a smooth fraud or some of both. What he wasn’t was one’s neighbor. Identifying with Rukeyser was impossible; this marble bust could only be beheld.

For his whole life, writer Tod Kelly cherished the story his father told about his second date with his mother, and how Kelly's not-yet-father-then ripped the mustache off a man who was being rude to Kelly's not-yet-mother. It was only when Kelly was an adult that he realized the story was bizarre, frighteningly violent, and inexplicable, because Kelly's father was a gentle man.

So after Kelly's father died, he talked to his mother.


“Hey Mom, can I ask you something?”

She nodded.

“You know the story of your second date with dad? When he lost all control and pulled that guy’s mustache partially off?

She nodded again

“I can’t figure it out. Since you didn’t know him at all really, why did you ever agree to see him again after watching him do something like that?”

My mom smiled.

“Oh, that never really happened,” she said. “Your father made it up one night when you were both so little, and you laughed so hard and asked him to retell it over and over, so he did. It was something you kids never got tired of hearing, but it was just make believe.” I laughed, a little relieved; this made more sense, and fit better with the man I grew up with.

We all sat there for a while longer, and then after a bit my mom broke the silence again.

“The real story of our second date was actually a much better story, I always thought. Would you like to hear it?”

I have a simple test for determining who to follow on social media. I've been doing it for years, but I only just this week articulated it to myself.

I look at the person's profile, profile picture, number of followers and number of people following them. That's standard, everybody does that, right?

Then I read their recent updates. If I find myself forgetting "I am evaluating this person to see if I should follow them," and I find myself just reading, then I follow that person.

I abandoned my original Google+ account last week, and started fresh here. The reason I did it is because the old account was with my consumer Google account, and this one is with my Google Apps account. I was tired of switching between accounts. Also, I figured at some point Google might do something that would make me really, really want to use Google+ with my Google Apps account, and I didn't want to have too much invested in my consumer Google account when that happened.

What I didn't think through was that people who had Circled my old account might not know to follow me here. I had 2,000+ people Circling me there, and fewer than 100 now Circle me here. I'm vain enough to be disappointed by that, and honest enough to admit it. Also, the quality of conversation for me is reduced with fewer people following my updates

But if Google+ has legs, if it's worth investing time in, then I'll gain back those followers and more. And I'm curious to see how that progresses.

What are your favorite foods to cook for yourself? I'm thinking I'd like to learn to cook something new. I eat a lot of frozen dinners for lunch, and I'm thinking I could save some money there and eat healthier too.

I've seen this myself. Hate it. Just because I follow a person on one social network doesn't mean I want to follow them on another. Auto-feeding Twitter posts to LinkedIn has made LinkedIn completely unusable for me.

I'm more frustrated about the changes to Gmail than Google Reader.

The Google Reader changes were harmless to me.I never used the social features before. It looks different now, but it's no better or worse than the previous look, for me at least.

OTOH, the Gmail changes are annoying. They moved around buttons and changed icons to no apparent purpose. It's exactly what's annoying about Microsoft Word. I have to search for the right button to mark a message as spam or forward an email. Plus, Gmail no longer seems to support saved searches (I think they used to be called QuickLinks), which I used several times a day.

If I had a time machine, I'd go back, find the guy who invented passwords, and give him a swift kick in the tuchis. That goes double for the guy who came up with the rules about password length, mixing upper and lower-case, not using dictionary words, and all the rest of that ridiculous fussiness.

Look at the latest ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS. Just look at it.

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I am amazed at the awesomeness.

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Now here's a serious science question for your Friday evening. On this note, I'm off for a pint.

+Loren Brichter 's Tweetie app was brilliant, but the official Twitter clients have a bit of designed-by-committee clumsiness. Good luck, Loren, and much sucess! I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next.

Google is thinking about quitting the US Chamber of Commerce over the Chamber's support of draconian copyright-protection legislation that would enable precisely the kind of Internet censorship we criticize oppressive countries for doing.

The kyooooooooooot!

Trying out Jettison, a $2 Mac app that automatically ejects external drives when you put your laptop to sleep. If it works, this app could literally save us hundreds of dollars -- I've been thinking of getting a Time Capsule wireless hard drive to replace my external drive, because I don't always remember to eject the external drive before disconnecting my MacBook Pro from its place in my office.

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AWWWWW

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Never in my whole short life did I ever think I'd be saying AWWWWW over bats.
BATS IN BLANKIES!! http://www.helloadorable.com/blogs/helloadorable/bat-burritos-errr-bat-ritos-28167

When you shut off your iPhone, do you leave it on whatever app you were last using, or press the button to go back to the home screen?

Macdrifter ponders app reviews and related matters:

1. If I like an app, I review it

2. If I hate an app, I review it

3. I do not leave bad reviews for free apps. It’s not worth my time and really, there’s little harm in a bad free app since Apple does a good job excluding malicious apps.

4. If an app interrupts my usage to ask me to rate it, it generally gets a worse rating

The slow motion bankruptcy of MF global and Greece should prove we're still on the brink of an economic meltdown that will likely result in a global depression. Why? These events demonstate how the global economy, like the Communist system before it, is run by a small group of central planners (that allocate the world's collective capital).

+John Robb has been making compelling arguments over recent years that the chief problem with the US and world economy today is too much central planning. The USSR collapsed due to too much central planning, and now the US and rest of the world is on the same course. In the USSR, it was government doing the central planning; in the world today it's banks and investors, with government as its lackey.

John is extremely pessimistic for the short-term outcome, and very optimistic over the long term. I find his predictions frightening. I'm a creature of the modern world. I work for a big company (it's a great company, btw -- I've been there 19 of the last 22 years, and I'd gladly do another 22 years with 'em), which exists to serve other big companies. We buy our food and products from big companies. I worry that if this system collapses, we will be, quite simply, fucked, and will not live to see the better world that emerges from it.

And I don't know what to do about it. I'm like someone who has been diagnosed as being in the early stages of a fatal illness; i try not to think about it, go about my business, and hope for a miracle.

Who doesn't enjoy riding in a sidecar racing around a velodrome?

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Hungry now. (via +Jason Brooks )

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Here's the Krispy Kreme bacon cheeseburger (Lutherburger) photo I took back in June 2008. I casually uploaded it to flickr, and it took on a life of it's own. I got emails from people asking for the hi-res version for publication ("sorry, it was taken with my iPhone...") and even ended up on Shepard Smith's show on Fox News, the clip of which was on The Daily Show's "Moment of Zen".

Spring ahead ... fall down? How does that work again?

Those Soviets, they knew how to build scary-beautiful buildings.

A couple of these were still in service when I was a kid.

Just what it says on the tin: Miniature chairs, made from Triscuits

Wright's classic of architecture reproduced in toy plastic bricks.

Forget China: the $10 trillion global black market is the world's fastest growing economy -- and its future.

Black markets and off-the-books businesses employ half the people in the world. And it's not just people selling produce and bootleg DVDs on sidewalks; one Nigerian entrepreneur is importing thousands of electrical generators from China. They work outside the law to escape government regulation and restrictive licensing laws.

Writing lessons from Heinlein. An essay by John Scalzi:

In a general sense, I think Heinlein is a fine writing teacher — his enduring popularity after many of his sf contemporaries find themselves slipping out of print suggests there’s something about the writing that is atemporally appealing; that is to say, as fresh today as when it was first written. And whatever that is, it’s worth study and worth emulating (so long as it’s married to one’s own individual narrative gifts; no point writing exactly like the man, after all).

But one has to be careful not to focus on the wrong lessons. One of science fiction’s misfortunes is that what many people take away from Heinlein is the man’s penchant for “hard SF” wonkiness and his polyamorous libertarianism. Few of the writers who try to replicate these aspects of Heinlein’s corpus do it very well, and indeed, with the latter of these subjects, Heinlein himself had a tendency to go overboard. In any event, not everyone likes reading (or writing) hard SF or polyamorous libertarianism.

More enduring lessons from Heinlein come in how the man handled characters — both in how they existed in his writing and how they talked and interacted with other people. If I could boil down what I see as Heinlein’s Theory of Characters. It would come to these four lessons:

A day in the life of Thomas Jefferson:


A typical day for Jefferson started early, because, in his own words, "Whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun." He told of a fifty-year period in which the sun had never caught him in bed; he rose as soon as he could read the hands of the clock kept directly opposite his bed.

RECORD-KEEPING

After rising, Jefferson measured and recorded the temperature. Around four o'clock in the afternoon, Jefferson repeated the measurement, as he found "the hottest point of the 24 hours is about four o'clock . . . and the dawn of the day the coldest." He also recorded the direction and speed of the wind and the amount of precipitation. From indoors, Jefferson could see a weathervane (weathervane.qt, 840K) positioned over the Northeast Portico of the house; he could also read the wind direction off a compass rose (connected to the weathervane directly above it) on the Northeast Portico's ceiling. Jefferson made note of the weather and other indexes of climate, such as the migration of birds and the appearance of flowers, throughout his life, wherever he was, including France, Washington, and Philadelphia. He shared his records with others in the hope of creating a national database of meteorological information.

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Bacon-wrapped Twinkie Stonehenge. Yeah, that's healthy. (Via +Yas Mean )

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I am a firm believer that anything wrapped in bacon ultimately tastes better.

(Yes that is a Bacon wrapped Twinkies Stonehenge homage)

Spam subject of the day: "Kinky Destiny Holmes wants to bang you octopus candle." Good to see the octopus candle fetish community represented.

Just watched tonight's "Boardwalk Empire." Parent-teacher night for the Darmodys must have been really bizarre.

My personal blog seems to have been added to some kind of list of people who run ads and pay-to-play posts. I get a couple of solicitations a month.

Today's gem: Someone wanting to write "high-quality" blog posts about dental issues.

PR people, if you want to know why journalists hate you, this is it:

Friday I sent Google PR a query asking for an update on Google+, specifically when branded pages were launching. Got a response saying they'd get back to me early this week. Today I open AdAge to find a big story abut how Google+ is launching branded pages, featuring an interview with +Bradley Horowitz .

Way to flip me the bird, Google.

I am pissed off.

Cover to "The Super Barbarians" by John Brunner. Great old sf book cover illustration, via Pulp of the Day

Add The CMO Site to your Circles and get ... something. We're still figuring it out.

Somewhere, a 14-year-old boy is extremely proud of himself after thinking up this headline.

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Despite Successful IPO, Groupon & Daily Deals Face Uncertain Future


Groupon's IPO Friday was the biggest since Google's. But the IPO won't put to rest questions about the daily-deals business model's staying power -- or about Groupon's accounting practices.

For marketers, Groupon-style daily deals are most attractive on the local level. National brands rarely use such methods. (Perhaps unaware of this, Google Offers announced its first national deal, with REI.) One reason local coupons aren't all that popular with big brands may be that a successful Groupon campaign requires a fair amount of hands-on marketing attention, and in some cases business-process consulting as well. These are not things that the central marketing departments of national brands are in a position to offer. (Watch for a blog post about lessons learned from a practitioner's Groupon experience, coming soon to The CMO Site.)

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Facebook Struggles to Get Big Brands to Open Their Wallets

By +Mitch Wagner


Ford is the latest national brand to get big value from a Facebook marketing campaign, while spending only pennies on Facebook itself.

The Wall Street Journal takes an in-depth look at a Ford Motor Co. online campaign for the 2012 Focus, centered on a Facebook page "hosted by an orange-colored puppet that in a few weeks won over a new, younger audience for the once-stodgy compact." The campaign harvested more than 43,000 Likes.

"While Ford shelled out an estimated $95 million to advertise the new Focus across a broad range of media, it spent just pennies on the dollar for Facebook ads."

Here's Doug, the puppet. If this commercial doesn't make you smile, you're a robot:

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Federal PepsiCo Investigation Threatens Standard Marketing Techniques

By Joy Reynaldo


A consumer complaint to the Federal Trade Commission against PepsiCo's Frito-Lay division could, if successful, eliminate a wide range of social media and so-called "advertainment" tactics from the marketer's toolbox.

On October 19 the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and three other consumer groups filed an FTC complaint against PepsiCo for "deceptive and unfair marketing practices." They claim that three digital marketing campaigns of the company's Frito-Lay division -- Asylum 626 (launched in 2008), Hotel 626 (2009), and Doritos Rihanna Late Night (now closed, but here's a case study video on it) -- have unfairly played on teens' vulnerabilities. A CDD press release says these campaigns are deceptive in three ways:

On my personal blog:


I started work on another novel this weekend. This means I’m currently working on:

- Two novels and two short stories in various stages of revision.
- One novel, newly under way.
- One more story waiting to be revised.
- Another story which I’m seriously considering trunking, while maybe cannibalizing the characters and situations for some future work.

Yes, I know this sounds like I have become the guy who’s always starting things and never finishing. ...

How to tell the difference between 'friendly banter' and sexual assault, for the benefit of Herman Cain, because I know this kind of thing is difficult:

IS FRIENDLY BANTER:

"[My city's sports team] is much better than [your city's sports team]!"

"I can't believe you listen to that awful [pop music genre]!"

For nerds only: "You're such a loser for [using/not using (pick one)] an iPhone!"

IS SEXUAL ASSAULT

Groping a co-worker in the car after she came to you for career help, putting your hand up her skirt and trying to push her head into your lap.

See? Difficult to figure out at first, but actually pretty simple once it's explained.

You're welcome, Mr. Cain!

Do you use video chat much? I used it a lot in 2010 and liked it, and now I seem to have gotten out of the habit.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I worked with a lot of people who used Skype video a lot in 2010, and now not so much.

Lego porn (video). This is deeply, deeply wrong.

The many deaths of Steve Buscemi (video). Wood-chipper about a minute in, Sopranos about 37 seconds later.

Promo for new animated movie based on the "Borrowers" books. Looks great. (video).

I loved the books, and I loved the movies, even the one with the guy from Green Acres with the special effects that looked cheesy back 40 years ago.

The New York Times profiles Coffee and Power, the latest venture by Second Life founder

Coffee and Power is a business with both feet in the real world. It's a virtual economy that allows people to bid on skilled work -- web site design, programming, making Halloween costumes, whatever -- using a virtual currency exchangeable for real dollars.

While he is still chairman of Linden Lab, the company that created Second life, Mr. Rosedale talks about that venture in the past tense.

"The problem with creating an immersive 3-D experience is that it is just too involved, and so it’s hard to get people to engage," he said. "Smart people in rural areas, the handicapped, people looking for companionship, they love it. But you have to be highly motivated to get on and learn to use it."

My question about Coffee and Power: What problem does it solve that isn't solved by Craigslist?

A treatment that kills so-called "senescent" sells has the potential to allow us to live healthier into old age (while not living longer). It's still early stages yet - don't get your hopes up.

I love the graphic they picked with this article.

Lifelike humanoid robot walks, runs, does push-ups, pursues Sarah Conner (video)

The "milkshake test" fails with Second Life:


So when you evaluate the next big thing, ask the Christensen question: What job is it designed to do? Most successful innovations perform a clear duty. When we craved on-the-go access to our music collections, we hired the iPod. When we needed quick and effective searches, we hired Google. And looking ahead, it’s easy to see the job that Square will perform: giving people an easy, inexpensive way to collect money in the offline world.

But what “job” did Second Life perform? It was like a job candidate with a fascinating résumé—fluent in Finnish, with stints in spelunking and trapeze—but no actual labor skills. The same was true with the Segway. No one was interested in employing a $5,000 walk-accelerator. (Though, to be fair, Segway eventually got a part-time job saving tourists from exercise.)

Second Life is a service designed to help you meet and interact with new people over the Internet, much like other online communities. It works that way for hundreds of thousands of people today. I'll stipulate that it failed in that it never gained the popularity that its advocates, including Linden Lab, predicted for it. But it didn't fail from lack of utility -- it failed for some other reason. My theories: Too hard to use, not conducive to mobile computing, too different from everything else people do on computers.

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Re-sharing my own post, because thinking about it further, I think this article is simply full of shit. Second Life ONLY failed if you take the standard that it had to be adopted by most people. It was successful by EVERY OTHER CRITERIA. It made money, and was a source of innovation and personal growth, for a lot of people. And it continues to do that for many.

Sure, Philip Rosedale thought it would be mainstream, and many of us believed that, and we all turned out to be wrong. So fucking what? And Second Life would not have achieved the success it did without world-changing ambitions.

As for me, I'm hoping to attend a Second LIfe event this evening. I hardly ever get inworld anymore, but I do every once in a while.

cc: +Wagner James Au +Laurence Simon +Harper Beresford +John Jainschigg

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The "milkshake test" fails with Second Life:


So when you evaluate the next big thing, ask the Christensen question: What job is it designed to do? Most successful innovations perform a clear duty. When we craved on-the-go access to our music collections, we hired the iPod. When we needed quick and effective searches, we hired Google. And looking ahead, it’s easy to see the job that Square will perform: giving people an easy, inexpensive way to collect money in the offline world.

But what “job” did Second Life perform? It was like a job candidate with a fascinating résumé—fluent in Finnish, with stints in spelunking and trapeze—but no actual labor skills. The same was true with the Segway. No one was interested in employing a $5,000 walk-accelerator. (Though, to be fair, Segway eventually got a part-time job saving tourists from exercise.)

Second Life is a service designed to help you meet and interact with new people over the Internet, much like other online communities. It works that way for hundreds of thousands of people today. I'll stipulate that it failed in that it never gained the popularity that its advocates, including Linden Lab, predicted for it. But it didn't fail from lack of utility -- it failed for some other reason. My theories: Too hard to use, not conducive to mobile computing, too different from everything else people do on computers.

Has anybody been able to get the Second Life viewer Version 3 to run on the Mac?

No good has ever come of a Second Life conversation where people ask each other their RL ages.

And, oh, btw, I'm 22 and 6'3" tall iRL, with washboard abs.

Largely symbolic. The White House would have vetoed overturning Net Neutrality anyway.