“the hype surrounding Second Life doesn’t match its actual marketplace impact…the growth rate of Second Life users has slowed since its peak in October 2006, while user engagement (as measured by average time spent per user) has leveled off at just 12 minutes per month. This is in stark contrast to other highly publicized sites such as MySpace and Facebook, which are seeing steady increases in both the number of users and the intensity of user engagement.”
Death of SecondLife
SecondLife is dying and I don’t think there is anything that Linden Lab can do about it. I always considered SecondLife to be a glorified online Sims, but I have to admit I am surprised at the sudden decline of its user base. This just goes to show how the neglecting to improve and add to your existing product can render it stale and unused. But is that really why SecondLife is failing? Is the product just outdated and substandard right now? Or it because geeks like me actually returned to our FirstLifes? Eh, most likely the former. Geeks like virtual worlds. The SecondLife world just sucks.
In an interview recently with TimesOnline, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, gave a warning to social network sites such as Facebook and, in essence, to would be developers on the Facebook platform…
“I think these things are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a … faddish nature about anything that appeals to younger people.”
While this could all be a negotiating tactic, since they follow reports that Microsoft is weighing up paying as much as $500 million for a 5 per cent stake in Facebook, I think it has its merits. Fanboys seem to put Facebook in the same league as Microsoft and Google, building businesses solely around the Facebook platform. If you’re looking for a two year exit, then that’s fine, but if you have longevity in mind, you may want to reconsider you’re options.
Facebook is popular now, much like MySpace, Friendster, and Xanga were popular in preceding years, but where do you think they will stand three years from now? I already posted on my feelings on Facebook’s future before. Really, what makes Facebook any different from the fizzed out SNs of the past? Is the news feed so revolutionary that Facebook is not simply YASN?
Recently launched just this past week, Sketchcast is trying to bring a new way for bloggers to communicate to their readers. With Sketchcast, bloggers can record a sketch, optionally with your voice speaking. The tool is well done and simple enough to produce a sketch in a couple of minutes. Though I don’t see any opportunity for Sketchcast to make huge money here, “sketchcasting” appears to be a great way to to better explain difficult topics, put a visual spin to a complex opinion, or maybe to just draw phallic jokes.
I myself see it as Blog Pictionary! First one to guess the sketch below wins a cookie.
With instructional video site Graspr’s launch at DEMOfall07, everyone seems to think Internet users want to be taught something. Now don’t get me wrong, I like to get my learning on like everyone else, but the sheer amount of sites trying to host instructional videos is ridiculous. We already have 5min, eHow, Sclipo, SuTree, Expert Village, Instructables, and VideoJug. And none of these sites seems to offer anything innovative in terms of video hosting. They’re all basically YouTube clones slapped with an instructional video theme.
I guess nothing’s wrong with second place.
This seems to be just further proof of the video craze currently on the webosphere. Everyone’s trying to be #2 behind YouTube for video and I don’t blame them. With YouTube’s big buyout, if anyone can even get just 5% of the market, thats at least a $80 million dollar company. But why did Graspr enter a space that was already so crowded? I seem to think web users would rather relax and watch Paris Hilton get grilled than learn how to cross stitch. Maybe I’m just not into instructional videos, but what do you think? Is there really a chance for any of these instructional video sites to stand the test of time?
If you have ever tried to search online for local small businesses, you’ll know that it can definitely become a pain at times. Tiny listings, out of date websites, and wrong contact information plague online local advertising. That big yellow phone book tucked in the corner of the room is still the main stay for local businesses.
A new self-funded startup out of Hollywood, CA wants you to throw that yellow book away. Just launched at DEMOfall07, FastCall411 offers a unique spin to online local directory search. With some clever use of AI, VOIP, and parallel dialing, FastCall411 claims to connect you to with reliable, proven local businesses. Need a plumber quick? Click ‘Search’ on FastCall411 and instantly a list of plumbers with reliable track records in your area are listed. Click ‘FastCall’ and instantly all those plumbers are called at the same time. FastCall411 then uses some method to decide which plumber exhibits the best in customer service (most likely call response time, or voice similarity to Mario’s), and then connects the user to the business.
Close, but no cigar.
FastCall411 is a step in the right direction, but it needs to go a bit further in order to draw some big attention. Simply connecting consumers to businesses is not enough. FastCall411 needs to offer ways to compare these small businesses. Price comparison is the main reason people call multiple plumbers in the first place. Also, until FastCall411 can garner enough listings for some major cities (it only serves Los Angeles right now), the yellow book will still be the main place people look for their local Mario.
Among the many DEMOfall07 companies launching their products, YuuGuu and DimDim have released their offerings into the web conferencing space. In short, web conferencing allows users to share (or screencast) a presentation, even their whole desktop, with their colleagues over the internet. Common problems that are faced in this space are high cost, required downloads, and laggy response time. YuuGuu and DimDim are joining the few web conference software companies that offer their service for free. Both services also offer a unique conference bridge for every meeting, allowing a phone conference on top of the screencast. Current main players in web conferencing are Webex, Adobe Acrobat Connect, Citrix GoToMeeting, and MS LiveMeeting. All these are paid services.
YuuGuu
Up first, Yugioh YuuGuu. The product was just launched recently and, after a few minutes of playing around with it, I like it. Granted it doesn’t have the features some of the paid offerings have (it lacks the ability to screencast just a certain application), but what it offers for free, it does well. Simply add your YuuGuu buddies to your “buddy list”, start a meeting, and click “Share”. YuuGuu even allows users to hand over mouse and keyboard control to any member of the meeting.
DimDim
DimDim is another free web conferencing app and its open source, allowing some flexibility. One thing that separates DimDim from YuuGuu is that it doesn’t rely on software downloads as much, which is very nice. Users have the ability to upload and share a presentation to DimDim’s Flash-based service, in which case nobody has to download anything. However, if the presenter wants to screencast their whole desktop, the presenter alone would need to download DimDim’s software. DimDim however does not have the ability for presenters to transfer mouse and keyboard control to other meeting members.
Why pay for something if you can get it for free?
Web 2.0 is all about free. Free everything. Free images, music, videos, and, most importantly, free software applications. Paid services are a thing of the past. If you are a early startup looking to offer a paid service, look damn hard into a way to offer the same service for free. Cut unessential features, rework frameworks, or just fire somebody. Really, these days people expect free paid products.
Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, recently defended the company’s Facebook application AceBucks on his blog. Basically with the application, Facebook users can obtain virtual currency called AceBucks by doing certain actions such as adding other partner apps, frequenting a partners’ store, sending an invite to a friend or playing the jumble word game, Griddle. These earned AceBucks can then be used to buy virtual goods in the AceBucks Mall, to bid on items via AceBuck auctions, or to buy stuff from other AceBucks members.
AceBuck critics have cited past virtual currency flops and have pointed out the fact that Facebook is already developing a payment platform which would be a direct competitor. Michael defends AceBucks by responding that it is not in the market to compete with PayPal or any other virtual currency to real currency exchange. He claims AceBucks to simply be a “Facebook-wide loyalty program”. In his own words:
“…while AceBucks has been set up as a currency — you can earn ‘em and then burn ‘em — it really is a Facebook wide loyalty program that rewards users for doing stuff that we want them to do.”
Why the hell do I want AceBucks?
Seriously, why the hell do I want AceBucks? It seems that most people are still waiting for Michael to answer that question. If users are going to spend their valuable time earning AceBucks, there better be a pretty nice reward, not some paltry array of items with whom AceBucks happens to have partnerships with.
It seems to me that Michael, along with a lot of people, are trying to ride this “virtual goods” Web 2.0 wave brought along by MMORPGs. However, they all see to miss the target on the number one rule. Great incentives. MMORPGs have this ingrained into their framework where more virtual currency rewards users with more powerful items used to progress further into the game. There is no such “progression” outside of a MMORPG. I can’t level up my Facebook profile and I don’t want to buy boring little jpeg images that can be displayed on my profile. Unless web companies can offer substantial incentives (much like the way poker sites reward play money users with real money), virtual currency outside a game setting will never work.
It seems we may be seeing the possible beginnings of new trend in Web 2.0, a multi-layered web experience. Similar to being able to chat with others as you watch television, sites like Diigo and coComment are bringing web conversation out of the websites that previously confined them, onto a platform that spans the whole internet.
Should you find this useful? I hope so. Aside from the obvious group collaboration benefits, people are now able to voice their opinions about a website, on the website, but above the website’s moderation. Think a blog is racist? Comment to warn future visitors. Had a bad experience ordering from a certain online store? Leave the experience for others to read before they buy. That free porn website full of viruses? Share the knowledge before other pervs make the same mistake.
I believe this space has huge potential to enrich the common users web experience. Hell, I just might hack one myself.
Diigo.com just announced their relaunch of their site at DEMOfall07. This version 2.0 release carries some new features as well as many UI improvements with everything just looking a little bit more “Web 2.0″. Diigo touts themselves as a “integrated suite of online research and social tools that transforms the Web into a writable, participatory media”. In reality, it’s pretty much del.icio.us meets SharedCopy.
Basically, users can either install a browser plugin or use their “magical” javascript bookmark to store, highlight, comment, and share websites as they browse the web. Highlights and comments are sent to Diigo, so that others in your Diigo “group” can now see those same modifications when they visit the same website. This creates a multi-layered web, where basically a conversation takes place about a website thats not integrated into the website. The browser plugin also has some other nifty side features like “highlight and search” and “highlight and blog” allowing you to quickly steal share content you find on the web.
They also just announced a partnership with WebSlides allowing you to convert your bookmarks into slideshows that you can then publish to your our website.
SecondLife is dying and I don’t think there is anything that Linden Lab can do about it. I always considered SecondLife to be a glorified online Sims, but I have to admit I am surprised at the sudden decline of its user base. This just goes to show how the neglecting to improve and add to your existing product can render it stale and unused. But is that really why SecondLife is failing? Is the product just outdated and substandard right now? Or it because geeks like me actually returned to our FirstLifes? Eh, most likely the former. Geeks like virtual worlds. The SecondLife world just sucks.
In an 
It seems we may be seeing the possible beginnings of new trend in Web 2.0, a multi-layered web experience. Similar to being able to chat with others as you watch television, sites like 
