Eric Eggertson has an interesting post about the recent decision by Second Life gated community Dreamland to ban PR and marketing professionals who have allegedly made public statements claiming to be the "first" at something in SL that longer-term SL residents believe to be untrue.

Says Eric: 

"This is an interesting case of having to defend your reputation in a semi-official way, as opposed to keeping an eye out for rumours, and trying to combat them with information.

… it will be interesting to see if this goes in a positive direction – encouraging discussion of expectations and rules of behaviour – or if it’s the virtual equivalent of the blacklists, where corporations are assumed guilty until they appear before a committee."

Getting to know the expectations and norms is important in any environment, and seemingly more so in Second Life where perhaps currently the sensitivities between pioneers and early residents, and the more-recently joined, are somewhat delicate.

By the way, if you’ve got the time and the money, a conference that’s sure to be fantastic and may touch on some of these issues is State of Play IV: Building the Global Metaverse taking place in Singapore in January. The program promises to cover taxation of virtual property, global virtual world journalism, legal regulatory issues affecting virtual worlds, intercultural communication, and virtual worlds as global learning environments. 

And speaking of interpersonal conflict, for anyone wanting to make nice with my avatar Ceara Moore, please note that calling her a "bitch" when she doesn’t immediately offer you friendship — maybe because she’s never met you before, your profile says nothing about you, and you haven’t even made the effort to engage in small talk — doesn’t cut it. And simply propositioning Ceara on the street with a "wanna f***?" doesn’t cut it either.

Those approaches never worked on me in real life and they’re sure as heck not going to work on my avatar in SL. Just goes to show that there’s more overlap between RL and SL than some may realize.

Tags: secondlife, avatar, cearamoore

And sometimes the way to foster that "you’re special" feeling is by taking it slow, or what Evelyn Rodriguez calls slow marketing:

"Not that it’s necessarily opposed to buzz marketing, but slow marketing is a focus on human, one-on-one connections sans stress… rather than a focus on the mass, aggregate, broadcast-blast level.

Slow marketing is intricately tied to slow conversations, naked conversations."

Sometimes slow is better (right?).

(Picture from Photo Monkey)

Especially with children and teens, there’s ongoing concern that an over-reliance on online interaction will make individuals socially inept. Except in select cases, and where additional underlying factors also play a role, I don’t believe this is a prevalent problem.

However, there’s no question that right now technology doesn’t serve as a completely satisfying replacement for face-to-face interaction. And where people continue to feel a void, they’ll choose to either supplement their online activities with live ones, or take a break entirely.

The continued success of social networking sites, therefore, will likely lie in their ability to combine the online and offline worlds.

William gave examples of how serial dramas are able to significantly raise awareness about family planning options, HIV prevention, arranged marriages (in reality abductions and violations of young girls) and exploitative child labor and child slavery. He also showed where this awareness resulted in changed behavior. For example, he told one moving story where the family of a 14-year old abducted girl was reluctant to let their other daughter attend school for fear that she too would be attacked on the way to class. However, after hearing a serial radio drama discussing "arranged marriages," they and the other villagers decided that they would band together to prevent further abductions. 

Esta explained that the success of serial dramas, one of several types of entertainment-education vehicles (others include telenovelas, series, sit coms and docu dramas), lies in the identification of the audience with the characters, and in helping audience members believe that if a character can improve his or her life, perhaps they can too. Esta also provided an overview of the steps involved in using serial dramas to bring about change: Audience, analysis, access, articulation, artistry, auxiliaries, advocacy, advertising, assessment, and adjustment.

Katie Paine, who writes KDPaine’s PR Measurement Blog and will be presenting at the conference this afternoon, also enjoyed the session.

Admittedly I’ve been writing quite a bit about legal-related issues lately. Not because they’re always the most scintillating, but because they’re darn important. (Maybe we could even talk about some of them them during one of the monthly Communicator Meetups Kami Huyse is organizing in Second Life — and if Kami promises to be as entertaining as last time, it’d definitely be fun.)

It’s my view that we as communications professionals need to know, at a minimum, the very basics in order to help prevent our clients from hanging themselves. Lawyers should obviously be consulted as needed — although unfortunately, as Tom Biro points out, even they don’t always seem to get it right.

So here’s another development on the legal front, one that perhaps isn’t usually anticipated when an individual or a company starts blogging: blog contents being examined as part of of the jury selection process in order to reduce the potentially adverse affects on a trial and to avoid rogue jurors. Especially for PR professionals active in corporate affairs, reputation management, crisis communication etc., this is something to keep in mind.

The proliferation of blogs and other similar tools raises another interesting question. To what degree would commenting on a blog be regarded as impermissible contact between counsel and opposing party, or between counsel and juror? Certainly lawyers know that they cannot reveal certain information about an active case (and there are rules governing what can be said about past cases as well), but what would prevent a juror from finding an attorney’s blog and leaving comments there? My guess is that jury instructions don’t yet universally address that.

And to what degree would someone’s online statements or prior interaction between an attorney and a potential juror impact the voire dire process, such as dismissing an individual via peremptory challenge or for cause? This isn’t mere conjecture. Take a look at this recent online exchange: Although it’s unlikely that these two individuals will meet in a court of law, Richmond, Virginia prosecutor Tom McKenna has stated that he’d "definitely be striking him [Chicago-based  Mark Draughn] off any of my jury panels."

Things to think about.

(Photo from tizzie)

With so much focus on industry-specific (e.g., the nearly 700 PR-related blogs) and subject-matter-specific blogs (e.g., the 3700+ technology-related blogs), it’s easy to overlook the less flashy, locally-focused sites.

But it’s these sites that we’ll see proliferate in the long run, probably much more so than others. Why? Because local residents will be invested in them and regard them as the true voice of their respective communities.

According to Lisa Williams, who runs H2otown, a community site for Watertown, MA, there are already probably more than 700 placeblogs or "site[s] dedicated to a particular geographical community — a county, town, city, or neighborhood." And to track these placeblogs, Lisa has created Placeblogger.com, which she talked about at today’s J-Lab Citizens Media Summit II.      

PR and marketing professionals will also increasingly take note of these local blogs, seeing opportunities to engage one-on-one with members of the community on matters specifically important to them.   

(Flickr image of Placeblogger.com from Lisa Williams)

"Blogs are like virtual pubs."

It doesn’t matter whether you’re in consumer products PR, high-tech marketing, politics, or something else, it’s always about connecting with your audience.

Blogs are like virtual pubs… gotta love it.

Case in point is an ABA eReport article that discusses a New York State proposal that would designate legal blogs as advertising, thus subjecting them to state scrutiny and regulation:

"The storm was set off by a proposal that ‘computer-accessed communications’ such as blogs be included in New York’s definition of legal advertising, and therefore require state scrutiny. The proposal, by a committee created by the state’s Administrative Board of Courts, also suggests the state code of professional responsibility extend court jurisdiction to out-of-state legal advertising that appears in New York….

And if blog posts must be approved, what’s the point? ‘This seems to be another in a series of recent regulatory efforts by state bar regulators that seem woefully out of touch with the Internet era,’ wrote Dennis Kennedy, a St. Louis lawyer who posts at Between Lawyers." [Read Kennedy's post If Lawyers Can Advertise in New York, They Can Advertise Anywhere...But They Probably Can't.]

Equally bothersome, however, is when individuals expose themselves to legal liability by doing something that appears to be intentionally stupid. I’m referring to examples provided in the USA Today article Courts are asked to crack down on bloggers, websites (via Chris Heuer), such as posting false STD information about someone on Don’tDateHimGirl.com or setting up a fake MySpace.com page that contains obscene content. Not very smart — and that’s an understatement.

Yeah, there are only so many hours in the day… or, as I’ve been guilty of doing, only so many hours of sleep you can sanely forfeit.

Still, I’ve found that my involvement with Second Life so far has been very beneficial.

And now there’s another Second Life-based event that I’m looking forward to, Harvard Law School’s CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion, which is about "the creation and delivery of persuasive argument in the new integrated media space constituted by the Internet and other new technologies. Our premise is that ‘First World’ and corporate domination of entertainment media, laws, and news can be balanced by the voices of individuals, groups and universities who use new media intelligently."

The course is open to Harvard Law students and Harvard Extension School students, but also to anyone with an Internet connection. Check out the course details for at-large participants. 

Alright, I’m on board.