Faster Than the Speed of sLight
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
As shop owners will admit, success is born from a drive to create and release new products. Even the best stores will continue to tick over as their releases diminish, but eventually new stock is the only thing that keeps people returning and shopping. A virtual ‘target’ is placed on creations and the need to; constantly release products, speak to the group, offer support, advertise and market your brand can be just as harsh as any RL target driven work.
As bloggers will also agree, the need to write new articles, feature new designers and highlight the happenings in this world comes with its own stress and strain. Resident Choice blogger Prad Prathivi quickly became a victim of resident attention, forcing him to take a step back and focus on what he wanted to do, and blogging at this time wasn’t it. I’m sure many of us will remember Prads writing abilities and sarcasm, but eventually people move on and find new sites to focus their attention on.
With literally thousands of blogs all fighting for the attention of the reader, you must quickly grab a reader and stick to them like glue. Hoping they subscribe to your RSS feed, or at the very least come back and visit your site. The best (and arguably only) way to do this is provide them with the information they want to read. Updates, new articles, vast areas of coverage and insightful information are required to stand out from your other ‘competitors’. However of course insightful and researched information is something that does indeed take time, and time is something many of us has in short supply thanks to RL societies draining us too.
Second Life is a fast paced world, in fact sometimes far too fast paced. If you can’t keep up with the flow then you’re quickly trodden on, walked over and all too soon forgotten. What can we do to stop this? Can we infact stop this or are we happy with our treatment of others and their treatment of us?
I think SL is growing too fast for its own good. Not so much in population, but in content, even though the resident count is at a large also. What I feel we need is more collaboration between people. So far its been all about individuals trying to come up and stand out among the rest. This "Its all mine. I can do it alone. My ideas, products, or services are better." attitude makes it rather difficult for the virtual society to survive because there is too much competition - and yes that is possible to have. People then start to treat each other unfair and some behave like savages among the other. There has to be a more efficient way to make success and still be able to get along.
