Real life brands behave the same in Second Life

Nic Mitham at the K Zero blog (a marketing and branding company) has posted a map of all the real-world brands he could find operating in the virtual world of Second Life. It’s a hard-wired map which would well do with uploading to Flickr so that people could start to tag it with their own knowledge. This needs a little crowd sourcing… Here is the link to the big version.

Marketers failing inside Second Life

Hamburg-based research firm Komjuniti has published the first extensive survey of Resident attitudes toward marketing in Second Life. MTV, Coke, Dell, American Apparel – they are all at it. The results [PDF] are that 72% of 200 respondents said they were disappointed with real world company activities in Second Life; just over 40% considered these efforts a one-off not likely to last. Only 7% of respondents in the Komjuniti study

120pc UK mobile penetration?

Mobile Today has a neat graphic for subscriber takeup in the UK: However, where is 3? As Ed Cross says: What it looks really interesting is the total cumulative amount of subscribers in the study to be 66.7 million, this number does not consider "3", lets add maybe another 5 million for their probable share?, Tesco Mobile, Dot Mobile, and any other MVNO's i am not aware of (EasyMobile closed

Mobile is the next mass medium

Or so says Tomi Ahonen on Communities dominate brands: Mobile as the 7th mass media is as much superior to the internet, as TV is to radio. Today at 2.7 billion mobile phone users, there are three times as many mobile phones as personal computers (and over a quarter of all internet access is already from mobile phones). There are nearly twice as many mobile phones as TV sets. Twice

Virgin Media starts its marketing

So I got my Virgin Media customer pack today. They must be sending it to everyone who has ever touched Virgin (I had a Virgin mobile number once, plus I was on Telewest at one time). Clearly they are going for the whole "we'll simplify TV, broadband, phone and mobile for you" pitch. There is also a response mechanic: If you got to Knowfirst.co.uk you'll obviously have read their printed

What is Joost capable of?

In a great article about Joost, The Guardian’s Owen Gibson looks at the main points behind the services. Jost will “split” the signal so it cannot be pirated, and there will be no user content until copyright issues are sorted out. Joost also lets you construct your own channels and will pull together all the available car content and “schedule” it into a bespoke channel for you. You can chat

Time magazine downsizes to meet online challenge

Time magazine is among the latest large media owner to realise that the Internet is not a place where you spend a lot of money. In fact, it’s so efficient at disintermediating the income streams of traditional media companies who mainly play in print, that they are having to cut staff and put what resources they have left online. This something UK Press Gazette failed to realise and paid the

Advertising to shun user-generated video

The FT reports that social media sites with video, like YouTube and MySpace, will not earn as much in advertising as professional video sites. According to Screen Digest, the media analysis company, ad revenues on UGC sites will grow from $200m last year to $875m by 2010. But this will account for just 15 per cent of the total online video advertising budget. Arash Amel, Screen Digest’s senior analyst, says

MySpace to challenge iTunes

Mashable is reporting that MySpace will soon be selling music downloads from the 3 million unsigned bands that have set-up shop on the hugely popular social network – a move that further enhances the disruptive nature of MySpace on the music industry. Curiously, MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe is quoted as telling Reuters: “Everyone we’ve spoken to definitely wants an alternative to iTunes and the iPod. MySpace could be that alternative.â€?