Friends Talking Podcast

Because of my work bringing Idea City into Second Life, I’ve been speaking to bloggers, analysts, and journalists about Second Life and the marketing opportunities there. I was very fortunate to be mentioned in an article in USA Today titled, Marketers find a new place to set up shop: Virtual reality..

In celebration, I have put together two interviews I did at the Second Life Community Convention held last August in San Fransisco. I was looking for a good time to release this bonus material and the time is now.

The first interview is with Misty Rhodes, seen to the left. Misty breaks many of the stereotypes people have of participants of Second Life. Oddly, it’s the same stereotype they have of all online gamers: teenage boys who can’t make friends, playing on the computer in their parent’s basement. Misty is about as far from the stereo type as you can get. She talks about why she participates in Second Life. When I saw her at the convention, I knew I had to get an interview with her. Listen and you’ll know why.

In her interview, she says there are 350,000 “residents” in Second Life and how she’ll be surprised if they hit 1 million residents by the end of this year. In mid December, 2006, SL has 1.8 million residents, meaning they may actually hit 2 million by the end of the year!

The second interview is with Reuben Steiger, CEO of Millions of Us, one of the top Second Life development companies around. He spoke to me about how and why Scion entered Second Life. While Scion will have entered Second Life by the time you hear this, in the interview, he’s talking about it happening in the future.

Scion’s particularly intereting because they don’t use much, if any, mass advertising. They prefer to reach their audience using event and community marketing.

Table of Contents
Intro
00:11 Misty Rhodes Interview
06:53 Reuben Steiger Interview
15:22 Outro

Music by Torley Wong. The Promise. Give that man a watermelon!

(16:22 15.7 mb mp3 file.)