Capulet Communications

I recently read three cutting critiques of marketing and advertising in Second Life. The first is by Rebecca Lieb (found via Adam):

Inhabitants of virtual worlds don't have real-world needs. To get very far in Second Life, you do need money (in the form of Linden dollars) to buy goods, services, and property. No small quantity of the virtual currency is spent on goods and services related to virtual sex. Way-far-out-there virtual sex, and no small number of sex businesses (one of which recently changed hands for $50,000) often seem like the primary purpose of Second Life. As ClickZ columnist Ian Schafer told the "Los Angeles Times," "One of the most frequently purchased items in Second Life is genitalia."

Ms. Lieb refers to an LA Times article, discussing some of the abandoned marketing projects littering the virtual world:

But the sites of many of the companies remaining in Second Life are empty. During a recent in-world visit, Best Buy Co.'s Geek Squad Island was devoid of visitors and the virtual staff that was supposed to be online.

The schedule of events on Sun Microsystems Inc.'s site was blank, and the green landscape of Dell Island was deserted. Signs posted on the window of the empty American Apparel store said it had closed up shop.

Ever since I started working in technology, I've watched companies make the same communications error again and again. When talking about their products, they start by talking about "how it works" or "what it does".

Here's a secret: hardly anybody cares how it works. They may say they do, but what they really mean is this:

How will it make my life better (where 'better' means 'more fun' or 'more productive' or 'longer' and so forth)?

I Built It and Here's What It Does

I first observed this phenomenon when I worked as a technical writer, writing and editing software manuals. I'd often review support documentation for a product that was written by the software engineers who built it.

Inevitably, the docs would itemize the product's functionality, often by describing each interface element: "The Save button enables you to save your work" and so forth.

It's an understandable mistake among developers. They built it, and they're describing how it works from their perspective.

The right way to write docs (and any product collateral) is to focus on tasks, not functionality. If the user will be saving files, then provide a topic called "How to Save Files" or "Saving a File". 

But before you get into the nitty-gritty details, you need to answer that all important question: how will this make my life better? 

Via Chris Pirillo, I learned about Pitchwire. From their pitch to Chris:

PitchWire is an online community for influencers (journalists, bloggers and analysts) and publicists that promotes responsible pitching and transparency. The results are more successful “hits” and a better relationship between influencers and publicists.

Leveraging PitchWire’s patent-pending technology, you can create a personalized PitchWire page, your first line of communication (or defense in some cases) with the PR community. You can also find sources and content for an upcoming story and manage your pitches, sources and contacts in a CRM-like database (think of it as a MySpace.com, eHarmony.com and Salesforce.com all rolled into one).

Off the top of my head, this sounds a bit like The WeblogWire, which appears to have gone the way of all times.

Well, I'm (ahem) both an influencer and a publicist. Why don't I try out both sides of the service and pitch myself?

A part of what we do at Capulet is create, manage and advise on online communities. I wouldn't necessarily call it a core service, but it's inevitably an important chunk of any social media project.

So, we do a fair bit of reading and blog monitoring on the subject.  Here are three articles which recently crossed over our transom:

• Social Signal writes about how to rage-proof your online community. I don't necessarily agree with all their points--there's no real way to avoid invective, and I think any social group needs a bit--but their advice is very sound. 
• Over at Common Craft, Lee's created a huge master list of what your community can look like beyond a simple discussion forum. It'll make a very useful checklist when deciding what should and shouldn't go in a given project.
• Nancy is sociliting feedback for an update to her excellent article about faciliting online communities. 

Gosh, we've been bad bloggers. Sorry about that, it's been a busy time around Capulet. I've got a couple of blog posts in the hopper, though, so don't give up on us.

In the meantime, please consider signing this petition (and Digging the related blurb) being run by our of clients, DeSmogBlog:

Yesterday we reported that News Corp. CEO and Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch announced that his company would join the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The first thing Murdoch and News Corp. can do to show that they are truly committed to fighting global warming is ending its reporting of misinformation about the science behind global warming on the Fox News Channel.

And the best thing you can do to help make this happen is by signing DeSmogBlog's online petition and then send it to all of your friends and have them sign it as well. Ask them to forward it on to their friends.

I actually thought it was quite a remarkable announcement by Murdoch, given the politics of Fox's viewership. The inertia behind the climate change skeptics seems to be melting away like so much, well, ice.