They’re a funny lot the media. And in 2007, it’s been a see-saw of differing views and opinions about Second Life.
It wasn’t until brands started to enter Second Life in reasonable numbers (early 2007) that the media took notice. And at first, as this was completely new to most media outlets, the stories were pretty positive.
One such story was carried by Business Week in May. ‘My Virtual Life. A journey into a place in cyberspace where thousands of people have imaginary lives. Some even make a good living. Big advertisers are taking notice’ was the headline. And from here, many other media titles jumped on board (a trend we saw later in the year).
The tide turned as we moved into August and September with the media then deciding it was time to stand out from the crowd and go negative. Wired Magazine was one of the first to adopt the new positioning with ‘How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life’. And from here of course, the rest of the media followed the story.
It’s was interesting at this point to realise just how many stories are recycled around the internet by websites and blogs. The Madison Avenue story generates 845 EXACT matches when you Google the headline. News travels. And it appears that bad news travels faster than good news as the My Virtual Life story only produces 126 exact matches.
The LA Times (referenced on Techcrunch) also carried a much copied article which came under criticism for it’s inaccuracy.
So why did this happen in 2007?
Firstly, Second Life became very hot early in the year. So media titles needed to keep up with the trends and push out the news flow.
Secondly, the media needs differentiation sometimes – a new slant on an existing topic. Hence the turnaround.
Thirdly, and probably most accurate in terms of explaining the media attention and virtual worlds is the Gartner Hype Curve.
Developed by Gartner in 2005, the hype curve or cycle was created to explain and categorise the impact of new technologies. There are five key parts of the curve:
- Technology trigger
- Peak of inflated expectations
- Trough of Disillusionment
- Slope of Enlightenment
- Plateau of Productivity
And referring back to the media love/hate relationship with Second Life, the different aspects of the curve fit neatly from a timing perspective into the media attention as shown in the chart.
The key question is ‘Are we really on the Slope of Enlightenment’? I think we are.
Read:
No 1. If you build it, they might not come
No 2. It takes more than a press release