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Twitter: 2009’s Second Life?

Intelligence

Twitter: 2009’s Second Life?

Mar 11, 2009By Michael Stoner

It seems so 2007, doesn’t it? But I well recall the frenzy and hype about Second Life in late 2006 and early 2007. I sat through a couple of really excruciating conference presentations with consultants insisting that the folks in the room-advancement officers, admissions officers, and others-had to have a presence in Second Life or students would shun them and alumni would stop giving.

I exaggerate. But only a little.

I confess that I was a skeptic about Second Life from the start. You can get a clue about my attitude toward it in the title of the first of several blog posts I wrote: Second Thoughts on Second Life. I got tired of having clients who had trouble managing their website asking me about how to build a campus in Second Life. To me, its a no-brainer. You dont put on a shiny new roof if your foundation wont support the extra weight and collapse the first time you get a heavy snowfall. [Here in Vermont, this is a real concern.]

I’m thinking about Second Life this morning because I read a thought-provoking blog post by Greg Verdino entitled Twitter is this year’s Second Life. Though I hadn’t made the connection with Second Life, I’ve been wondering about the longevity and utility of Twitter and Greg’s post has me thinking even harder.

Do you Twitter? And if you do, why? I’ve been pretty active on Twitter for about a month and a half [you can follow me @mstonerblog]. I’m enjoying the experience personally and I’m learning a lot, but I have to say that, for me, the jury is still out about how useful Twitter is or can be for mStoner’s clients.

I’ll write more about that in the future. Now, back to Twitter and Second Life.

Here’s another thought to add to the ten similarities that Greg identifies in this post. I’m seriously concerned about the apparent lack of a business model for Twitter, which—as far as I can tell, is one of the factors that sank Second Life. Despite all the desperate and fawning PR Twitter is getting, how will it fare in the econopocolypse?

I also worry about what the utility curve for Twitter will look like vis-a-vis the adoption curve in a year or so: will we find reasons for normal people to use Twitter? To Twitter fans, I’m sorry to say that most people have a limited appetite for trivia. Despite its allure, Twitter can get boring, fast, and it’s a huge time sink if you’re following people who tweet a lot. The jury’s still out.

But then again, one of the huge differences between Twitter and Second Life is that Twitter takes little time to learn to use. I confess that I just didn’t have the patience to spend much time in Second Life. It reminded me of what I heard from people who used the first generation of alumni community software: it was hard to learn, slow, buggy. And you spent a lot of effort … for not much return. 

And I certainly agree with Verdino’s conclusion. It’s not about the tool, it’s about the strategy:

If your social media consultant is telling you that you absolutely must have a Twitter strategy, you need to have security escort them out of your building. Immediately. You don’t need a Twitter strategy. You didn’t need a Second Life strategy. In fact, there is no such thing as a Twitter or Second Life strategy. Both of these things—along with the dozens of other emergent media options marketers can choose from—are at best tactics. At worst, they’re just enabling technology platforms. They might have a place in your marketing strategy, but none of these things are the strategy in and of themselves.

And, for us, it’s about making sure that a tactic doesn’t cause our clients to lose focus on the really important tactics that yield bottom-line results.


  • Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?