I have discussed Second Life previously. It’s the imersive 3D world by Linden Labs. It’s the type of online application that doesn’t really sit anywhere that can be categorised. With Second Life, I find you tend to visit, gain interest then leave, maybe you come back from time to time, maybe you don’t. Second Life does tend to have a high attrition rate (up to 85%).
Back in the early days of the Internet, companies and government agencies connected up and started to use email as a means of communication beyond the usual LAN restricted email within the office. This was novel it was new. It was seen as the new method of business communication. It also became the new method of social communication. Over time the bean counters and bureaucrats looked at this communications tool and saw that it was in fact taking up too much of the younger staff product work time. So email was restricted to senior and key personnel and the walls around the corporate communications structure where re-enforced rebuild. The same thing happened with the Web. It’s was given open rein, until it was perceived to be consuming corporate productivity, and so it was restricted to a few key personnel.
It was a little amazing last night (WST-AU) Twitter had been a little flaky, but at least it was operational. Then “it” started, someone was talking about alternatives to Twitter. Slowly but surely people went and checked out Jaiku, signed up, collected their friends, of course this meant more of their friends signed up as well. The wave of Jaiku signup spam started to lap my email inbox. Within 12 hours my lonely old Jaiku account had gone from 5 odd contacts on Jaiku to a modest 40 odd. It was just amazing to see the power of the peer group. People not wanting to be left out, not wanting to be out of the loop, just in case people did migrate to Jaiku. Often the Jaiku sign up was followed by the statement:
Gary Barber
I’m an independent User Experience Consultant.
I design interfaces, build information architectures, HTML prototypes, run workshops on UX design, do user research and conduct usability & accessibility testing and audits.
I can work within your existing team or as an external consultant on a contract or adhoc basis.
You can contact me via my company, radharc or just email me.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
