pollos y juevos
My good buddy Ben Richardson sent me a link to a story that pertained to a discussion we’d had previously. As the riplounge ad-network-virtual-world-thing has just dropped beta-styles, it put me in the mood for a good old-fashioned analogy festival!M
I figured that I may as well man up and publicize all of the slander I talk behind closed doors… So my response to Ben’s linking me to this mashable article, and a short subsequent visit to riplounge was as follows…
———————————————————
Interesting…
Here’s the thing about that: building an “ad network virtual world” is a bit backwards, isn’t it? It’s like building a “wait-in-line and pay-your-bill house” that also happens to be a restaurant that serves food, or a “hangover house” that also happens to be a dance club. Ok, weird analogies, but d’you see what I mean there? People go to a restaurant to eat… paying the bill is a kind of annoying consequence… people go to dance clubs to dance and meet people… the sweat smell and hangover are bothersome side effects. The latter is part of the experience, and even can lead to some interesting stuff, but it’s not the reason you engage in those activities.
You build the virtual world that’s fun for people to use, that has a real focus on empowering users to express themselves toward other users, socialize and make friends, make enemies, whatever they want to do … then you build in promotional stuff and advertising so that you can continue delivering that experience to them for free. And you make those promotional elements and advertising/marketing contextual and even useful/rewarding for them.
You build the restaurant, and then as a necessity you charge the customers for what they consume.
Anyway, I just want to see how they draw their users and make it sticky. Says they have avatars, locations, etc., but so do alot of other places, and those other places have probably been designed with more focus on fun than advertising… but maybe i’m wrong
Ah, here’s another one: it’s like a “lose all of your money” environment that also happens to be las vegas 
-M
