I have been trying to post on Second Life for the last week but every time I have something written, new information comes out.  As you may have seen, Linden Labs reduced its head count by about 30% last week. This is never a good sign as they either are not making money or are realizing their business plan needs a lot of work.

That is a blog post in itself but this week saw some people I respect for their insight also react negatively. First, Mitch Wagner says “I’m afraid I don’t see much of a future for Second Life” and much more in his post at ComputerWorld. Then, today, I got an email from Erica Driver from Think Balm saying she is moving on.  If you don’t know Erica, she is one very smart analyst who took a chance providing competent business analysis of the happenings of the virtual world.  I still love her “immersive Internet” terminology and generally prefer it to “virtual world”.

I guess this in’t too big of a surprise.  I voiced some of my own concerns back in December about the slow pace of change.  Lately, if you follow any SL blogs , you see a fractured community with vocal leaders trying to pull it in many directions. Some ideas are good (make it easier to use) but then fail in their implementation (have you tried the new viewer?) The idea to support more advance geometry is nice but the actual result is 10% of what is needed and took 10 times too long to do. In the mean time companies like 3DVIA are doing things like this.

So, to me, Linden Labs has hit bottom.  I’m sure management is hoping to refocus and I strongly agree that is what is needed.  However, those of us who have been around massive staff cuts know that it’s hard to get enthusiasm and energy out of the people left behind. For the remaining folks, I hope you are able to do it and I’m really routing for you despite this negative post.

In the mean time, have you seen what the OpenSim folks are doing?  I hate to lose the idea of a virtual economy but it seems clear where the enthusiasm is today.

I’m sitting here waiting for my newspaper to arrive. I’m a bit irritated because it is late but also find this to be an interesting exercise on customer service in the world of social media. Most of us work someplace that provides products or services so making our customers happy is important. Of course, we all know mistakes happen so I hate when people blast a company because of one mistake. This goes double for those that are better known in social media who are maybe abusing their power.

On the other hand, it can be good to point out problems as it can help companies change or at least alert others to the problem.  In our case, we get the paper every Sunday but 2 or 3 weeks ago, it didn’t show. My wife emailed them, they replied back right away and we got our paper in about an hour. In this case, I’m not going to blast the Huntsville Times. It was a small mistake by the carrier and the Huntsville times did the right thing to correct it.

However, today, my paper didn’t show again.  Like last time, my wife sent an email about  9:09am.  We didn’t get an email back this time, so she called at 9:27am where the lady said we would get it in about an hour. It was a little bothersome that it happened twice in a month but still, these things happen.

About 9:43 I sent out this tweet:

http://twitter.com/burhop/statuses/11197076474

I was a bit grouchy (cable was flakey too) and immediately starting thinking of people that whine on twitter. People do this on twitter and Facebook and venting can make people feel better. I think the trick for Social Media managers is knowing when someone is venting and when a real problem is out there and needs a response.

After 10am, my wife’s email was replied to and said we would get the paper this morning. This is later than last time but my wife had also called so I assumed the carrier had already been alerted. For companies getting involved with social media, do you coordinate inputs from all places? I’m guessing the phone person and the email person didn’t know they were both replying. Companies need to go even beyond this… are the complaints being sent out via blogs, Twitter, Facebook being linked up with the complains being emailed or telephoned?

At 11:38 we still had no paper I sent out this tweet:

http://twitter.com/burhop/statuses/11201943053

Should the Huntsville Times have replied to my tweet?  Probably.  I’m clearly becoming irritated and it’s clearly their fault. On the other hand, let’s be fair.  Newspapers are struggling and hiring a fulltime person to man the HSVTimes twitter address 24/7/7 can be costly.

At 12:00, I decided to vent on my blog (Ta da!) .  The phone call saying we would get the paper in an hour and the email saying we would get it this morning were both expired.  I didn’t want to just vent, I wanted to think a bit deeper on the problem and how it relates to similar problems my company and other companies might face.

Clearly, a company saying they will do something to fix a problem and then not actually doing that is going to magnify customer dissatisfaction.  I missed a newspaper today. It’s hardly the end of the world. It would take me 10 minutes to run out to the store and get one.  Rather I sit here going out of my way to blog about it. I find that interesting.

A little after 12:00pm the phone rang. It was the Huntsville Times checking that we got our paper. My wife told them “no, we did not”.  The woman from the Huntsville times said the carriers were running late because of the storm.  That might be but our neighbors got their papers. She also said redelivery was another department.

One of the rules for social media is to quickly admit to mistakes. I think if the Huntsville Times had sent out a tweet or Facebook status saying, “Sorry, we are running late today because of the storm” or “lots of papers washed away. Redeliveries are running slow” I’d probably be more understanding. If the person that called had been aware of the problems in the field, that would have helped too.

So, I’m wondering now, is my problem a fluke or does this happen to a lot of Huntsville Time customers?  Should they (and other companies by extension) be more involved in social media to improve customer service and reduce dissatisfaction?  If so, how do you do this on a small budget? We all know newspapers are struggling now.   How do you coordinate communication with customers that may be talking on many different channels (email, phone, twitter and blogs)?

I wish I had answers. All I know is that it is 1:00pm now and I still don’t have a paper and I have no idea why.

Update: My wife called back at 2:30.  The Huntsville Times was now closed and we were told to call back tomorrow.

Update: My wife sent an email to the publisher after it was clear we wouldn’t get a paper today. She got a reply Sunday evening saying they will credit us for four weeks delivery and are looking into the problem and will get back to her. She thought that seemed fair.

Update: Monday morning.  My son was heading to school and found a Sunday paper.  Right after that, my wife got a call from the Huntsville Times. The gentleman had personally delivered the paper earlier that morning.  They also followed up on twitter.

http://twitter.com/HsvTimes/statuses/11250843335

I replied back with this:

http://twitter.com/burhop/statuses/11252697730

It appears we have generated more attention that we really deserve but it is nice to see how hard the Huntsville Times is trying.

Here are some predictions for 2010.  Check my last blog and my 2009 predictions for some background information.

I don’t see the end of this social media explosion coming anytime soon. Maybe there will be a slowdown in a few apps like MySpace and maybe twitter but at the same time, I think it will grow into new areas. A question I like to ask myself is what social things do people like to do when they are together? What do they do with family or friends or work associates? For example, they might get together with family to talk. They might go shopping together. They might play a game. If you go way back, they meet up to go kill a mastodon or tiger. That brings me to my first thought:

Social gaming will be the new trend

I think the booms in social media will be in the technologies that brings any of these “real life” experiences and feelings to geographically dispersed groups of people. Want to get together with other hunters to kill mastodons? How about WoW? More of a gatherer than a hunter, try Farm Town and put your farm right next to your old college roommate’s field. I’m surprised there is no game based on politics. Social media apps bring us together but its some of the social gaming activities that will give us something to do.

Realtime and social search

The thing I like about twitter is that many of the folks I follow only tweet the good links. Its like a search engine anticipating my needs. So, its no wonder the search engines are starting to tap into the social media trend giving both more real time results and indexing what is being placed on social networks.

As a result, start expecting anyone that is interested in a high search engine ranking to start investing more time in social media. I’m hoping this will mean that companies will start putting out more interesting and useful content that are likely to get retweeted and reposted but I expect spammers to be trying to game this system as well

Tablet computing Specializes

My iPhone and my attempt to touch the screen of a Kindle when I first saw one (it didn’t work) have me thinking that touch screen tablets might finally become main stream. However, we have had a lot of false starts on this in the past. So, I’m saying its just more meager growth even with Apple hitting the domain. Still, the Netbooks, kindles, the new Nook and even the Google OS suggest we’ll have a lot more variety of device types next year but still a lot without touch screens.

Cloud computing

This is such a huge area when everyone drawing different lines around it that one could probably justify any prediction about it. I love Google and having all my data “in the cloud” but there are some practical things that I think will bog it down.

First, data protection and data security are a big issue. No one wants to lose their data from a server crash or fire or whatever. Secondly, so many companies are seriously concerned about data security that letting it outside the firewall is going to be a hard sell.

Secondly, network speed and latency makes pushing large amounts of data around painful. So, many of today’s applications need to be re-engineered to make better use of show data high latency cloud technologies. That will take time too.

While the family is shopping or going to the movies, I told my son I was going to hang out at the bookstore and post my predictions for 2010. He thought it was pretty funny that anyone would care what I thought and started calling me “ Nostradamus”. Nothing like family to keep you grounded.

Still, there is some value in making predictions even if you are wrong or no one sees them. For example, I see a lot of overly optimistic posts on things like Google Wave, virtual worlds, social media and so on where people correctly identify the potentials but don’t foresee all the pitfalls. If these people would revisit their statements a year later, they would be much more accurate in the future.

The same goes for many people who often dismiss new technologies as a fad, or as no business value. You don’t get a lot people making predictions about failures but I’d like to see more of this. I’d love to be able to identify the useful curmudgeons from the ones that just hate change.

You can see my predictions for 2009 here and I’ll soon be posting my 2010 predictions.

There was an interesting post on Massively called  “Is Linden Lab wasting its time on the existing Second Life population? Then John Carter pointed me to some of @DaleInnis ’s posts related to Linden Labs “futzing around with the world”  that also got me thinking (good stuff, follow some of her links)

This is an old problem that many companies have. How do you keep current customers happy when expanding out to reach even more people? You have enthusiasts that help build and market your product that you don’t want to alienate. At the same time you see the competition in your rear view mirror and your product has not caught on like it might.

For Second Life, I’m right in the middle. I’ve been a part of different communities for years. I love art and music and creativity that is so easily expressed there. I love the coming together of minds and discussions on philosophy and psychology (I can talk all day about augmentalist and immersionists). I spend money. The fact you can run a business there and make money is a very powerful feature.

At the same time, in real life, I’m one of those techies or corporate guys that often gets a bad rap in SL. I see so much potential for many of the Second Life technologies to do much more than they do today. It could reach many more people and businesses than it does in its current incarnation. For businesses and education, I see a lot of money that can be saved for people, schools and companies (and money that can be made by virtual world companies). And I’m tired of what sometimes seems to be the continuous focus on the wrong problems, coming at least in part, from the SL community itself. It makes real progress sooooo slow.

So, for now, I’ll just keep using Second Life for fun. Someday I’ll start pushing for it to be used to solve real world problems but at this pace, it is years away.

P.S. Yes, I know there are many examples of virtual worlds  being used in business and there is a lot of enthusiasm for education and training. IMHO, the vector is just not the steep. I also know there are many other Virtual Worlds – I hope the competition triggers a change.

Google just came out with Sidewiki.  You can read more about on Jason Falls blog.

I’ve registred me as the owner of virtualvector.com with Google. Now I’m creating this blog post to see how it works.

Do you have Sidewiki setup? If so, feel free to try it out on this page. Its just an experiment.

I was watching the latest talk on Balmer and the example he made of the guy with the Apple iPhone. For Balmer, he is at war with Apple. What they do is bad and what we do is good. I know people that won’t talk to me because that dialog might give me some credibility. It’s a view that works for a lot of people.

For me, I’ve always had a problem demonizing competitors. Now that does not mean I don’t like competition. I love it! I think it is what makes great products. However, for me it’s more like football. I’m a Florida Gator and I love when we outsmart, outwork, or generally crush the competition.

At the same time, many of the fans of these other teams are my friends. I even have kids attending other SEC schools.  I love to watch a talented player on the other team, and have no problem acknowledging when they do something I think is pretty smart. It makes it better when we beat them

When it comes to Social Media, I’ve kept to this “Football” analogy. If a competitor has a conference coming up, I’ll retweet it just because I know some of their customers are following me and its useful for them. If one of their employees says something smart in a blog, I’ll repost it. Why? Because, I want to cater to the smart customers. Because, I think the real competition is on the field with the technology not in some poll that can be greatly determined by what happens off the field.

So how do you view your competitors? Does social media change things?

The thing many people hate about twitter is the noise.  If you are just there to socialize, it may not be a big deal but twitter can be pretty useful for more serious things too.  If you want to get information about cars or software or politics its there but likely burried in a bunch of useless information.

One way to filter out the “junk” is to use one of the twitter seach tools.  Tweetdeck has one built in.  You can go to search.twitter.com for others. Its useful in the way a search engine is useful but it doesn’t always help for getting the whole conversation in real time.

Another options is to try to follow tags. I was at a conference lately where we used #PLMCONX for our tweets. This helps but I had trouble remembering to use the tag. And then there were gray areas… do I tweet that I’m getting lunch at the confererence or stick to the topic?

The traditional way is to follow the person in twitter. If they don’t talk about what you like, don’t follow them.  I’ve got a good list of CAD, industrial design, car, virtual world, sports, Huntsville, and social media experts that I follow.  You see the problem here, right?  When I reply back to one of the people in these groups, all I do is increase the noise for the rest.

So, for the people that follow me, I’m sorry I’m inserting all that noise into your twitter stream. Now, to go tell everyone I’m getting some coffee.

From plmconx

I was off to my company’s conference last week.  I’ve been doing these things for many years, usually as a participant but more recently as someone that is actually working there.  My job this time was to make a couple presentations, help out on some hands-on presentations, talk with customers and squeeze in some social media (blogs, twitter, facebook) where I can.

A lot of people are still thinking social media is either:

A.      The job of marketing

B.      A waste of time or yet another task that gets in the way of your real job.

However, if you think about it, a conference is really not that different from social media.  Marketing definitely wants to use it to sell a product but attendees have other goals.  They want to connect with others like themselves, talk with folks making the presentations or manning the booths that they might not otherwise get to talk to, and find about things you just can’t learn about on the telephone or on the web.

There is also a big social aspect to most conferences. You might get together for drinks or play some golf or get together for dinner.  These might be pure fun but I’m sure most of us have good examples of some key contact we made or some important bit of information we picked up.

As you or your company thinks about social media, think of it as a conference. No one wants to go to a conference with just marketing folks.  It’s a great place to listen in and participate in the conversations your customers are having and the companies that send people to a conference are going to have a knowledge advantage over their competitors that stay home.

Society’s feeling about engineers and scientists is as cyclical as a sine wave. Sometimes our abiity to recite PI to 30 digits is respected, sometimes the government tries to shut us up (Indina PI Bill).

In 2009, the engineer is in voque again.  I mean, is there a better show on TV right now than “Big Bang Theory”?  And what is the best movie?  Star Trek of course (I hope the pendulum doesn’t start swinging back later this year when people figure out we also created Skynet).

You see others tapping into this too. Texas Instruments has some nice videos reminding us to “Thank an Engineer”. Here is one on life without an MP3 player:

And I do the the “V-Dub in the House” comercials from Volkswagen:

I’ll even give a shout out to one of my company’s competitors:

Funny stuff.