Second Life Exploding
In Unlikely Segments

Second Life age band pie chart
Second Life—the self-described 3-dimensional online digital world imagined, created, and owned by its residents—is a community in nearly every sense of the word.

With the addition of an estimated 20,000 residents a day, Second Life is booming. Measured in Linden dollars, its virtual economy— up more than nine times in the last year—would be one of the fastest growing in the real world.

Think only GenMe millenials hang out in virtual worlds? Think again. As the pie chart shows, about one-third, or over one million of January’s 3.1 million participants are 35 and older; nearly 360,000 of them are over 45.

The following figures are taken from Second Life Statistics* for January 2007:

  • Virtual Economy: The number of user-to-user transactions increased 37% to 6.1 billion
  • Virtual Area: Land mass expanded 23% to 361 square kilometers
  • Real Time: Logged user hours increased 47% from 7.3 million the previous month to 10.8 million
  • Real Trade: Buyers and sellers traded goods and services worth just under USD $5 million
  • Real Citizens:
    United States 31%
    France 12%
    Germany 10%
    United Kingdom 8%
    Netherlands 6%

Fortune reports many large corporations are investing a portion of their 2007 budget on marketing in Second Life. IBM holds meetings there.

Still think it’s a virtual world?

*Source: Second Life.

Here Comes the Brand

Disney
You’ve always known a strong brand could make all the difference, right? Look at Coca-Cola®, McDonalds®, NASCAR®, and Starbucks®.

Disney’s Wedding Belles

The latest and perhaps most unique example of a brand pulling through ancillary revenue is Disney’s themed wedding dresses; just the thing for a generation weaned on cartoon classics produced by the animated empire. The dresses, from collections based on the characters Cinderella, Belle, Ariel, and Jasmine, take brides one step closer to a fairy tale wedding.

Never underestimate the power of a strong brand. That’s why companies list brand value as a line item asset on the balance sheet. It’s worth the effort to build value into your brand and think strategically about how it plays out when considering the wants and needs of your target markets.

Scrobble Anyone?

last.fm
Apple’s iPod changed the way we listen to music. The evolution continued with music recommendation sites like Pandora.com. Now, Internet radio site Last.fm has taken it a step further by adding social networking to the music mix.

Scrobble?

Last.fm users download a player that automatically logs or “scrobbles” any track played on the user’s computer and user-assigned searchable tags build an ever-expanding music database. In addition to access to millions of personal music collections, users have the ability to blog, chat, listen to each other’s stations, recommend music, and list music events in their area. It creates a forum for users to connect to each other based on common musical interests or geographic location.

While there are still limitations to this new medium, it’s the beginning of yet another gigantic step forward in the way we experience music.

Champagne Chair Design
Contest Winners Announced

Champagne Chair WinnersThe Design Within Reach (DWR) Annual Champagne Chair design competition winners have been announced. Click here to see who took top honors and prizes.

Customers Buy the Benefits

Tailor the message
It’s rudimentary, but when it comes to marketing your product or service, define the features, but sell the benefits.

Will it improve a business’ bottom line?
Will it enhance the user’s physical or emotional well-being?
Why should your customers care?

If you don’t know what your current or potential customers need or want, simply ask them. They’ll be more than happy to tell you.

To develop a successful marketing campaign, tailor your messaging to establish the benefit customers will derive from your product or service. Then take it to market.

Have a tailored campaign story to share?

More Thought

.THINK now listed on Alltop.com

under Branding. Grouped by topic, Alltop aggregates stories from “all the top” sites across the web (that’s their story and we’re sticking to it). View our .think listing, here: branding.alltop.

RapidoStart (Mac)

Here’s a free Mac app allowing you to call up, via customized abbreviations, any text string you copy and paste frequently. Best of all the text is placed pre-formatted - returns, bullets and all. It’s become a staple here at Brainstorm. You can download your own at app4mac.

PimpMyNews

If you can get past the vapid brand identity and UI, PimpMyNews, the talking social news site, is an interesting concept. The site will read your RSS feeds to you over your mp3 player, iPhone, etc. or computer.
[via: PR-Squared]

The iPlanet

NPI’s personal cosmos transport. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Happiness Machine, the iPlanet, a holiday product parody, promises a “thoroughly self-absorbed social media experience.”

Twitter Unseat Email?

Robert Scoble explores the notion in this BusinessWeek piece re: the running debate over where we’re headed with aging, albeit ubiquitous, email paradigms versus spam-free Tweets.
[via: Scobleizer]

Track the Hive’s Buzz

Aggregate the aggregators at Popurls.com—simultaneously follow the most current posts from all the top sites like Digg, Newsvine, YouTube and Flickr. Or, “find your favorite thing,” over at Buzzfeed.

Fountain

Peter Bruhn’s Swedish type foundry is preparing a new freshet of fonts to flow forth and flourish among us—according to Typographi and Bruhn himself.
[via: Sheer Brick]

Design by Metaphor

A word from A List Apart about design based on simile.

Master’s Color Palettes

Looking for a digital color scheme that will last the ages? Colour Lovers explores masters inspired color schemes.

Visualizing Volumes

Can’t see how your two soda bottles a day are impacting the environment? Chris Jordan’s images will help you visualize it. View his amazing statistical depictions at Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait.

Steve Jobs Unveils the Apple iRack

Regardless of your geopolitical views you’ll likely appreciate the satirical humor of this product parody sketch run amok.

Qbesq

Okay this would just be a goofy flash-based Spirograph-esque toy if it didn’t generate downloadable .svg (Scalable Vector Graphic) files—which it does. Pattern enthusiasts, meet Qbesq.

Those Funny Googlers

Here’s Google’s take on the phrase, “Across the pond.” Visit Google Maps, enter New York to London in the search field, scroll to step #24.

Tip: Reducing Firefox Memory Usage

How to reduce Firefox from a memory hog to a piglet. Caught this Firefox usage tip over on Ade Olonoh’s blog (see comments).

CSS Developments

If you’re a developer or just interested in CSS, check out this article entitled, #IEroot — Targeting IE Using Conditional Comments and Just One Stylesheet,” over on the PIE site.

The History of Branding

An iconic-rich, one-click site on how hundreds of the planet’s most noteworthy brands came to be. Updated daily.

The Hexafluoride Float

From the Bonn Physikshow—A lesson on YouTube regarding the denser than air properties of hexafluoride (likely sulphur hexafluoride) gas.

Worst Website Design, Ever?

Enter at your own risk. A proof of concept that design does matter. Havenworks.com hailed on Digg recently as perhaps, “…the most poorly designed website in the world!”

50 Essential Bookmarks

Originally published in Communication Arts November Design Annual 2006, here’s their list of 50 essential bookmarks. Conspicuously missing, sites such as Delicious, Technorati and Lifehacker.

Greetings Earthling

Sure to appeal to the megalomaniacal extraterrestrial in all of us. World, meet geoGreetings. When you care enough to send a satellite image.

A Modern Medium

An interactive glimpse into the the random and spontaneous feedback Jackson Pollock once realized in his medium—sans the clean up.

Impressive Product

Pressed toast with panache. From the, “Table Manners Collection,” Delfts Toast Pan by Minale Maeda. As seen on “ohmygooshness.”

Other Thoughts

Items we find compelling, of late.

Our latest top 20 list of inane musings from the Brainstorm office white board: Top 20 Thoughts on What No.15 Means

(at right)

.think Flickr

Objects of interest, engaging designs, diagrams, downloadable visuals and any other imagery we felt worth sharing.

Top 20 Top 20 Things to do (we did)
on the 4th of July

  1. Enjoy an apple pie in a Chevrolet…or a nutrition bar in a Smart Car
  2. Wax my upper lip
  3. Overdose on televised sports
  4. See Wall-E
  5. Midnight Parade – Anderson
  6. Read the Declaration of Independence (first part anyway)
  7. Blow off steam, or digits
  8. Enjoy the neighbors’ fireworks, late at night, for weeks
  9. Populate FunctionFox
  10. Rest my dogs
  11. Wax the car
  12. Wax nostalgic
  13. Watch fireworks…Just a thought
  14. Groove to the sounds of Baghdad (try Quantum Sonic Orchestra…or the Bamboos–nostalgia circa 1977)
  15. Fret all night that Homeland Security doesn’t run a keyword analysis and cough up #16
  16. “Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it”
  17. Grill some burgers & dogs cats
  18. Hope it doesn’t rain cats, burgers and dogs
  19. Grill the Burgher – and his dog – get to the bottom of this “independence”
  20. Join the kids in the bike parade
  21. Celebrate with the Katzenbergers
  22. See the entire board