UgoTrade

Please see Soyapi Mumba’s, (Liloge, MW), post on Twitter and its possibilities in Africa where the use of mobile phones is much higher than that of computers. Mumba also links to some interesting new uses for Twitter that extend the genre of “what I am doing now” in interesting ways. For example, “The train system in San Fransisco (BART) uses Twitter to announce changes in schedules; conference participants use it to post notes of the sessions at the conference and there are updates from news companies like BBC via Twitter.” Also see the Kivathon on Twitter

I have been going through my notes from the VW ’07 conference. And, I hope to have a post bringing it all together ready by late tomorrow. It was hard to Twitter thoughts while at VW ’07 because the lap top loaded crowd clogged the local wireless network. But, perhaps, I’ll Twitter some of my thoughts along the way as I write them up. I am going to put the twitter sidebar up that I found through Word Press Guy. And, I will be posting the rest of my interview with Philip Rosedale too.

Questions about avatar identities were a major theme at Virtual World’s 2007. And, one thing that became clear was that these questions are best answered by organizations and individuals who have actually spent time in virtual worlds. The relationship between avatars and marketing is on the mind of the Fortune 500 crowd as virtual worlds increasingly meet the mass market, now through mobile technologies too.

Venture Beat notes how Gemini Mobile, a San Mateo company, says that hundreds of thousands of Japanese are subscribers to S!Town now. But, S! Town is a 3D graphical community to chat and shop in with a customizable avatar rather than a full on user generated virtual world/economy like Second Life. And, the question is, as virtual worlds, increasingly go mobile and the access issues to pcs begin to improve in developing countries: Will the unique characteristics of an open, community driven virtual world like Second Life, or those of a locked down minimally customizable chat room/entertainment venue/shopping mall be the way people come to experience virtual worlds in developing countries?

Three outstanding elements are often pointed out to define Second Life

1) based on community, i.e. more about community than technology

2) user created

3) a market place with a vibrant ecosystem.

Will these three elements mark the experience of Virtual Worlds that is brought to developing countries? Or, will the potential of the digital nature of an avatar simply be exploited rather than explored? We will soon meet avatar clerks who adopt the old salesman trick of adjusting behavior to make themselves more appealing to the avatar shoppers. And, Web 3.0 technologies will be used to draw conclusions from online data gathered as the digital nature of avatars allows the tracking of their every move.

So, how is mobile access to the most open and visionary of virtual worlds, Second Life, coming along? Adam Reuters reports, “Software firm Comverse Technology has created an application that runs Second Life on Java-enabled mobile phones, along with other software that allows integrated SMS and instant messaging and the streaming of mobile video directly in-world

Master Penguin notes in Second Life Insider: “While the solution requires a PC running a specialized server, this is a huge step towards a fully integrated and portable Metaverse. The cell phone based client not only provides most of the functionality of the standard client, it also allows SMS messaging, instant messaging, and even mobile video streaming into Second Life.”

*The terrible picture is actually an image of Second Life on my Cell Phone (from Master Penguin)

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Tags: Second Life | Twitter | Kiva Talkathon | Web 3.0 | Africa | Virtual Worlds 2007 | mobile technology | cell phones and virtual worlds | avatar based marketing | metaverse | mobile video streaming | Comverse | Gemini | S! Town | virtual economies |