Category Archives: Social Networks

Who needs a real world anyway?

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Glenn’s reporting on the new banking licenses offered for the virtual world.    Although there are obvious potential abuses, on balance I think these virtual world development are fantastic.

Back when I was running more website advertisements from Europe, Paypal was a godsend in terms of making it very easy to collect money from European partner.   It was somewhat expensive – often running 5% or more in total fees, but well worth it in that I did not have to wait for checks in the mail and then wait for them to clear (international checks can take 10+ biz days to clear) .

I’m not clear on all the details but it looks to me like virtual banking is going to empower a LOT of places to compete with PayPal’s quality but expensive services, run their own interest rates, CDs, etc.  Once a virtual bank establishes credibility it should be able to very cheaply and effectively offer better rates than conventional banks with their high costs.     More risk?   Probably some, but with greater risk comes greater reward so … you should sometimes choose to roll the dice on these things.

Social Networks / Social Complainers

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Social networks work because social networking is the new way to interact with folks. And naturally the rise of social networks is leading onliners to complain about … social networks and how people are misunderstanding their significance:

The New York Times‘ Richard Siklos complains that it’s hard to “say no” in the online world, and you’ll aquire more “friends” than you know what to do with if you start hanging out in virtual worlds and social networks.

Brian Solis is concerned that PR people are just not getting Social Networks, especially the large agencies who Solis suggests are abusing Social Network marketing, saying those big agencies:  “… screw the pooch in the public spotlight with highly visible and discussed attempts to fool, capitalize on, or manipulate the market…”

Brian’s also concerned that people are not getting what he meant in his long piece cited above.

My take is that social networking has reached that uncomfortable level of prominence where crass, objectionable commercialism is both undesirable and inevitable.   At the last WebmasterWorld Pubcon people were strategizing about how to manipulate social networks to promote commercial sites and clients and I expect this to become more pervasive very fast.  I think  Solis would say that quality PR can be done without compromising the integrity of the social network experience and maybe that’s true but as with all things commercial we’ll see more obnoxious and manipulative stuff than quality promotion.   And hey, that’s OK because this … is …. America and we like our commercialism crash, superficial, and obnoxious, right?