Here is the chat transcript from my talk at Idea University in Idea City in Second Life. It’s titled “Seven Internet Trends: A Primer for Marketers.” The purpose of the presentation is to give traditional marketers a framework for understanding the Internet, because many of them are overwhelmed by it.

Thanks for everyone who attended. As you can see at the end, a nice discussion followed.You: Welcome to Idea City!
You: I’m Kweisi Mfume, aka Joel Greenberg in RL.
You: I’m a Sr. Planner at GSD&M in Austin, TX.
You: This is the first in a series of lectures we’re planning.
You: Next week, Rad Tollet, Planner at GSD&M will give a talk entitled,
You: “The Culture of Connectivism: How advertising must change when information wants to be free.”
You: Please join the idea city group for announcements.
You: Welcome Gabriella, please choose any seat you like.
GabriellaFaith Kellner: thanks!
You: There will certainly be time for questions in the end, but please ask questions whenever you like.
You: I’ll be posting the transcript of this talk on my blog at http://blog.ideacity.com. If you don’t want your comments published, please IM me and I’ll delete them.
You: This seven trends presentation is something I’ve been giving for about 18 months now.
You: Being SL, much of this should be familiar to you.
You: so you can look at it as a peak into the traditional marketing world.
You: I found that people were struggling to understand the Internet.
You: So, I put together this presentation to develop a conceptual framework for thinking about what people are doing on the Internet.
You: This is different from what people are doing when they watch TV, or read a magazine…which is participate.
You: A good primer for understanding this is Henry Jenkins’ new book, “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide“
You: This is not a primer about media in the traditional “media buying” sense of the word. I leave that to the media planners….
You: Any questions before I dive in?
You: Ok, let’s go!
You: Trend #1: Extreme personalization.
You: I’ll introduce a trend and then give you a few examples to illustrate it.
You: What the computer as a media device allows us to do is personalize our experiences in many different ways.
You: A popular example is NikeId.com
You: where you can customize your running shoes.
You: The shoes I’m wearing I purchased at the Reebok store in SL, where I customized them.
You: Hi Romain, welcome!
You: A nice chunk of profit comes from the customization website.
You: Next, of course is TiVo.
You: The box itself is a Linux computer.
You: In additional to personalizing your TV, it personalizes how you access the device.
You: You can program TiVo on the web and through the cell phone.
You: This way, it fits into your life.
You: So, if over a third of all Americans between 25 and 29 mod…or personalize…their own bodies with tattoos,
You: is it any wonder people want personal experiences, as opposed to one size fits all approaches?
You: It’s not about technology; it’s about people’s desire to be themselves, to control their own lives, their own identity.
You: Trend #2: Remix Culture
You: Digital means things are easy to change, to mash up, to remix.
You: “Remix” comes from the DJ world.
You: (Sometimes I feel like the guy in 1955 who’s explaining rock n roll to the parents when I give this talk to clients) :)
Raquel Devoix laughs
You: A good example of remixing is when Jay-Z remixed samples from the White Album to create his Black Album.
Kim Chihuly: /chuckles
You: He released his lyrics on the Internet and other’s remixed them.
You: The most famous remix was DJ Dangermouse remixing Jay-Z’s lyrics back over the music of the White Album to create the Grey Album.
You: Then others joined in to create the Blue Album, the Black and Tan Album.
You: and my favorite, The Black Album (Hot Buttered Soul Remix)
You: To sit down, left click on a chair and choose “Sit”
You: Hey romain.
You: Of course, DJ Dangermouse went on to fame as 1/2 of Gnarls Barkley.
You: More and more websites are allowing programmers to take their data and “remix” it with other data to create something new.
You: A good example is www.housingmaps.com, which takes Google Maps and mashes it up with Craigs Lists’ 4 sale information
You: to create a map of all the properties for sale in or rent in a given city.
You: As I said before, being SL, this stuff may be old hat for you, so look at is a glimpse into the marketing world and where many traditional marketers are at.
You: Mashups are so popular, Yahoo!’s stated goal is to expose all their data to programmers so anyone can mashup Yahoo!
You: This way, Yahoo! is used in ways even they can’t anticipate right now.
You: Please fee free to take any seat you like. Welcome!
Poinky Malaprop: how many of these widgets actually are ‘remixes’ combining more than one API?
You: For Yahoo, I assume they have different teams working on different apis, so I don’t know the exact answer.
You: However, I’ll talk a bit about netvibes.com and yourminis.com, which combine a number of API’s.
You: Does that answer your question, poinky?
Poinky Malaprop: yes.. I’m a bit skeptical about the remix trend
Poinky Malaprop: it was big in 2004-2005.. but am not sure it has panned out
You: Still, it is an interesting trend.
Poinky Malaprop: agreed.
You: Trend #3: The audience is participating - Obviously! :)
You: Being in SL, you get this.
You: Even CBS is getting it.
You: At his keynote at the recent Consumer Electronics Show,
You: CBS President Leslie Moonves brought Philip Rosedale on stage along with the founders of Youtube and Sling media to prove that they are experimenting with the audience participating.
You: So, here’s a way to think about this stuff…
You: A podcast is a mic that reaches around the world. The tools are cheap, if not free. Distribution is cheap, if not free.
Calhoun Mimistrobell shouts: ++++++
You: Blogs are a printing press that reaches around the world. Tools are cheap if not free. Distribution is cheap if not free.
You: Vlgos are cameras…you get the picture.
You: With this tech, what are you going to say?
You: One interesting form of audience participation is machinima, or using video games (or SL) as a movie set.
You: An interesting example is “A Few Good G-men”, where a designer took the courtroom scene from “A Few Good Men” and recreated it in Half-life 2.
You: View it at: http://tinyurl.com/3×5ylz
You: The codex is a machinima series shot in Halo 2 and created by High School seniors in Dallas.
You: It has been downloaded over 13 million times.
You: Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Codex
You: Red vs. blue is a war farce shot in Halo 2 by Roosterteeth productions in Buda, TX just south of us in Austin.
You: Microsoft decided not to sue them for copyright, but instead cut a deal with them to show Red vs. Blue as part of their marketing.
Raquel Devoix: Smart
You: Counterstrike is arguably the most popular 1st person shooter made. It started as a mod to Half-life.
You: Valve, the company that makes half-life, eventually hired the creators of Counterstrike.
You: I’m spending alot of time on gaming because I think it’s a great illustration of the audience participating.
Poinky Malaprop: and you get cool screenshots for your slides..
You: :)
You: You could say, I’m mashing up their screenshots with my words!
Shamir Katsu: Gaming generates a lot more user enthusiasm than spreadsheets.
You: A final example is that Sid Meir’s Civilization IV has some pretty powerful programming tools they make available to their audience to create their own mods.
You: The next trend is that we’re always connected.
You: We’re always connected to each other via our cell phones, but what’s not so obvious is….
You: we’re always connected to our stuff and our interests.
You: Need I say more? [picture of the new Apple iPhone]
You: :)
Raquel Devoix: New slide?
You: Anyone not know what this is?
You: OK.
You: Yahoo! Go keeps us connected to our stuff, no matter what device we have.
You: Ebay connects us to our buying/selling on cell phones, even.
You: RSS keeps us connected to our interests.
You: Right now, not too many people use RSS.
You: But I’ll go out on a limb and say these numbers will triple or quadruple 1 year after MS Vista is released.
You: Poinky asked about mashups, widgets, and API’s.
You: Here are two good examples: Netvibes.com and yourminis.com.
You: They offer many different widgets that pull data in from many different places.
You: With them, you can create your own “desktop” or information system.
You: From a marketer’s point of view, they are a good example that you need to spread your “brand” around and let people incorporate it into their own worlds, easily.
You: Not just make a website and think you’re done with it.
You: A corollary to always connected is that content can be everywhere.
Shamir Katsu: Do you think that creative commons licensing helps with this? [I didn’t answer this because I was too busy typing and not paying attention, but yes, it does! However, I think we’re going to see a parallel universe of CC vs. All Right Reserved content.]
You: i think the real significance of the iPod is that it taught us we can keep our record collection in our hand.
You: Now, we’re developing the expectation of being able to take all content everywhere.
You: The hardware manufacturers will make devices that keep us connected with each other and our content.
You: Seems like the only people holding this back are the lawyers and content owners. :)
You: A good example of this is the Slingbox, which rebroadcasts your TV, cable box, DVR, etc. to wherever you are on the net.
You: Or on a cell phone.
You: Here are some shots from CES last week.
You: Hi Debs. welcome!
You: Screens were everywhere.
Debs Regent: Hi Kweisi, sorry if I’m late
You: Not at all. Glad you’re here.
You: The screen on your right is of an International Harvester CXT with screens in its wheel wells!
You: I don’t think we’re going to go that crazy…
You: but these tricked out vehicles are about our fantasies.
You: What do screens everywhere say about them?
You: Trend #6: Extreme collaboration
You: again, you guys probably know this stuff.
You: What’s interesting is that the web server that runs 70% of all websites was created by a group of people working together across the Internet: Apache.
You: Anyone can get the source code.
You: Anyone can contribute, if they have the technical chops.
You: Hi Madeliene. welcome.
You: Please take any seat you’d like.
You: Of course, wikipedia.
You: This is were traditional marketing folks really struggle.
You: “How can I ever trust wikipedia, if anyone can edit it” They ask.
You: The answer is because, “it’s fairly accurate and it gets corrected fairly quickly.”
Poinky Malaprop: like the entry for Anshe Chung
Raquel Devoix: It is the hundreds eyes theory of open source.
You: IBM did a study two years ago on the average time it takes for a mistake to get corrected on wikipedia.
You: Anyone know the average time they found it took ?
You: anyone?
Raquel Devoix: I’d guess 2 days
You: anyone else?
Ikarus Santos: 2 minutes
Debs Regent: 2 seconds
You: Ooh, Ikarus. You know your stuff.
You: Five minutes!
Ikarus Santos: yes
Raquel Devoix: Wow.
You: Cool , huh?
You: And the wikipedia foundation consists of Jimi Wales and two employees.
You: Another interesting example is ecotonoha.com, NEC’s “green” site.
You: Here, anyone can add a leaf to a virtual tree.
You: After 100 leaves, NEC plants a real tree in the real world.
You: Most of their trees have been planted in Australia.
You: It’s an interesting PR angle…
You: Finally, Trend #7 is about what we’re doing here, kind of.
You: All right, all these online games are about many things. One is people exploring their own identities.
You: Back in the day, Everquest had a large audience on at the same time. [90,000 people at once, at it peak.]
You: You know, I think this all obvious to us, so I don’t think I have much to really say that’s new, here.
You: However, for people who are in traditional media, this is new to them.
You: The time people spend. The people who are into online games and environments.
You: It’s no longer true that the average person who plays video games, or participates in SL, is a 16 year old boy in their mom’s basement.
You: Hasn’t been for years.
Raquel Devoix: The average age is somewhere in the 30s
You: For SL, the average is around 30.
Ikarus Santos: Ii think 35
You: For SL, it’s 65% male 35% female
You: (My numbers are from last spring).
Ikarus Santos: :)
You: For active users, LL says the split is closer to 50% male 50% female.
You: Then of course, SL kind of blows traditional marketer’s minds.
You: So I end [the presentation] with SL.
You: :)
You: Here are the trends, in a nutshell.
You: I hope this helps you explain to folks how to think about the internet, from a useful marketing point of view.
You: That’s about it.
You: Any questions? Comments?
Ikarus Santos: thank you kweise, very interesting
Shamir Katsu: What do you think open source SL will do? [Again, I didn’t see this while typing. Sorry Shamir. I think Open Source SL will allow developers to create new functionality that will then be incorporated back into the LL release. Once LL open sources the server, the SL community will have a form of insurance against going under if LL goes under.]
Lacy217 McLuhan: thank you kweisi :-) good lectuer
You: thank you for coming. Glad you liked it.
Ava Milner: Thank you so much. Great lecture!
jeremy Neumann: Kweisi - I have a question.
You: I talk more about this on my blog.
You: yes, Jeremy
jeremy Neumann: I work for a traditional content producer - a book publisher.
You: yes
jeremy Neumann: And we’ve done most of the things shown in your trends.
jeremy Neumann: And got good brand recognition for the, - but the question I am always asked
jeremy Neumann: is “where is the money?”
Raquel Devoix nods
You: Great question. I won’t duck it.
You: The problem we’re experiencing is that traditional advertising is not as effective as it used to be.
You: There’s so much of it. 3000 commercial messages a day by one estimate.
You: So, marketing is getting more expensive [because we’re fouling our own nest with too many messages; it’s harder to break through].
You: The money is in building a rapport with the audience and essentially letting them tell their friends.
You: Online, it’s the influentials. Off line, it’s friend to friend.
You: In your business, how many sales are due to people saying to one another, “You need to read this book?”
You: More than are a result of Oprah’s book club?
jeremy Neumann: that is what I tell people - word of mouth is now online…
Debs Regent: can I make a comment
You: please do, debs.
Debs Regent: are we speaking sales or marketing here though. In marketing it’s hard to evaluate where the money is through the feedback of direct sales
Debs Regent: there is no discernable tie in
Debs Regent: any comments on that?
You: Jeremy. Sales or marketing?
You: let me get closer, so we can chat.
jeremy Neumann: it is always hard to evaluate the results of marketing spend.
Debs Regent: Jeremy speaks of word of mouth, which is vital
jeremy Neumann: And marketing and PR are becoming intertwined.
You: The way I look at it, is that sales are for when customers are ready to buy.
Debs Regent: yes, true Jeremy, very
You: However, we need to get them ready to buy. That’s where this stuff comes in.
Lawrence Capra: hello
You: Hi Lawrence.
jeremy Neumann: or intruiged enough to talk about it.
Debs Regent: like marketing is discreet from sales, this type of marketing is a discreet entity from conventional marketing
You: Yes, I think it is something new and discreet from conventional marketing.
Debs Regent: in my view
You: It’s a combination of both what the technology allows us to do and our new expectations.
You: I think there’s a valid distinction to be made between millenials and boomers for example in how they interact with companies and with one another.
You: This stuff works well for millenials
You: because they are all about the group, self expression, tweaking.
You: Except for the boomers that actually made the Internet, I think it’s a struggle.
You: and traditional marketing may be better.
Poinky Malaprop: / alot of these examples, wikipedia, Grey album, iPod, craigslist, are several years old, wouldn’t we have seen more recent, more compelling examples of some of these trends if they were truly influential?
Geminian Teazle frowns
You: They are old. The problem is that I haven’t updated them, not that they aren’t there :)
Raquel Devoix: I have a comment on the money aspect.
You: I think we saw an explosion and now we’re figuring out what to do with it.
You: yes raquel
Raquel Devoix: If you think about the way the web (as mainly html) developed first it was “your brochure online” now what percentages of sales come through websites now
You: hmmm…
Raquel Devoix: The same with the new mediums. I have looked at some of the “companies on SL” and they have “their store online” but it doesn’t use the medium in the full depths of its ability.
You: Don’t know numbers. I know it’s a large percentage of sales for Dell..
You: anyone have the numbers handy?
Raquel Devoix: Business is still grasping the new tools
Debs Regent: regarding Dell..
jeremy Neumann: Amazon now takes 20% of book sales..
Raquel Devoix: And they were there early.
You: that’s a big percentage.
You: The thing I’m suggesting is that, especially for the millenials, they aren’t struggling with the tools at all. It’s [like] air to them.
You: And they are a bigger generation than the boomers.
Raquel Devoix: But….we are starting to see more people learn to turn it into money. Look at the growing number of successful businesses on SL.
Raquel Devoix: Businesses just need to tap the Millenials.
You: :)
Geminian Teazle: and not all boomers have difficulties with technology by the way … there are a lot of us in SL
You: I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend.
Geminian Teazle: we boomers are used to it *chuckles*
You: It’s not that this stuff is going to replace traditional marketing. It’s going to live along side it.
You: Likewise, TV is not going to go away.
You: But, it will morph into something different.
You: And, in terms of marketing budgets, TV will see less and new forms of marketing will see more $$ allocated to them.
You: Gaming is interesting because gamers are passionate and gaming companies are willing to try new things to reach them.
jeremy Neumann: which is happening dramatically already…
You: so jeremy, what do you tell your co-workers?
jeremy Neumann: well - we believe the old marketing models are pretty much broken.
jeremy Neumann: And that we need to use new media and new techniques to inspire conversations about our books and authors.
jeremy Neumann: And that, as you said, from these conversations buying decisions will come.
You: I find it interesting that netvibes.com and yourminis.com are both UK companies.
jeremy Neumann: And we also talk to traditional retailers and explain this to them..
You: There’s alot of innovation going on around the world in terms of these trends.
Ikarus Santos: bye all. Thank you Kweisi, i need to go.
You: Thanks so much for coming!
jeremy Neumann: Sorry all - on that note I need to disappear as well. Thanks Kweisi and everyone else.
Poinky Malaprop: will there be a transcript published?
You: Thanks everyone!
You: I really appreciate you coming.
Lacy217 McLuhan: yes me too…..bye every one
You: If you want to chat at any time, please IM me.
You: Hey!
You: Thanks for coming!
You: whew! I’m going to take a break!
You: :)
Shamir Katsu: Nice change to explain to techies instead of marketeers?
You: oh, hey, we’ve got skydiving, horse, and other stuff around the island. Enjoy!
You: join the Idea City group, if you’d like to receive upcoming announcements about lectures.
You: hey shamir.
Shamir Katsu: hey kweisi
You: I think the techies know this stuff.
Raquel Devoix: Yes but it is good to know how to talk to the marketers
Shamir Katsu: We just don’t think of it as significant in and of itself, as in, its effect and use, as much as others might.
You: :)
You: I think it’s a big, societal trend.
Poinky Malaprop: did you have community as one of your trends?
Debs Regent: Microsoft have seen this coming for a very long time
You: You know, I don’t. I need to work it into collaboration.
You: or something.
You: Community is the real trick here.
You: And the real difference between SL and it’s predecessors.
Raquel Devoix: It is the societal aspect.
You: I’m thinking that community is the key to sustainable marketing.
You: yep, the technology and entertainment companies are the ones that really get this stuff.
You: I have said in talks that I think we’re going to see the rise of the Chief Community Officer in corporations.
Raquel Devoix: That is an interesting idea.
Poinky Malaprop: well, the largest industry block in SL seems to be car companies
Raquel Devoix: But that makes sense.
You: The question comes down to what we were talking about earlier, sales vs marketing.
Raquel Devoix: The collaborative aspects gives way to a way to have communities since th RL “Neighborhood” has become so rare and weak.”
You: Many marketers see community as an extension of CRM. I don’t.
You: What do you mean, Raquel?
Raquel Devoix: We commute so much we live in a distributed way.
Raquel Devoix: Many don’t know their neighbors or even share their interests.
You: I see. Yes, community implies connection….over time.
Raquel Devoix: Online provides a virtual way to have proximity to your friends.
Raquel Devoix: Like SMS taking off.
You: Always connected :)
Raquel Devoix: We want to connect in a personal way but RL distances make it hard.
Raquel Devoix: SL provides a way that is not quite so foreign as, say, mud to have that closeness.
You: I see it as the ability to expand our community, because we’re not limited by space.
Raquel Devoix: Exactly.
You: Oddly, SL adds back what’s been missing all these years [on the web]. 3 Dimensions!
Raquel Devoix: Look at SL groups, or peoples pics.
Raquel Devoix: Yep
Raquel Devoix: *picks
Raquel Devoix: Our picks show our communities and interests.
Raquel Devoix: As do our groups.
You: Yes, they’re the social filtering of SL.
Raquel Devoix: That’s sort of where tagging has been going as well
You: Yep!
You: I bet we’ll be seeing more tools for that in SL over the next year or so.
Raquel Devoix: Especially with going open source on the client.
You: Poinky, any thoughts on that?
Poinky Malaprop: hmm
Poinky Malaprop: more tools would be nice
Poinky Malaprop: and the PlayOn group at PARC is doing a lot of great work investigating what tools work
Poinky Malaprop: so hopefully we’ll see some good advances there
Poinky Malaprop: I was also thinking that relationships in SL are often a lot “thinner” than in RL
Poinky Malaprop: ie. I hang out with you because we’re both interested in a narrow topic
Poinky Malaprop: but outside that topic we may have nothing in common

Raquel Devoix: I think that depends on the person and the community.
You: Hey, I’ve got to get going. Thank you so much for coming.
You: I’d love to talk more, please IM me or send me an email at joel_greenberg@gsdm.com.
Raquel Devoix: Thanks for having the talk.
Maryrose Mariani: Thanks Kweisi
Poinky Malaprop: thanks kweisi
Debs Regent: Thank you Kweisi
You: Thanks everyone. See you soon!