blog.msurveys.com

I'm a little late to this, not sure how I missed the initial post back in October, but after writing about Market Truth's presence in Second Life, I found that there's another MR agency in Second Life: Repères, a French agency.

François Abiven, CEO of the company, writes a generally very interesting blog (English version here), where Repères have announced their Second Life presence back in October, and more recently posted an update on the feedback they were getting.

I haven't had a chance to speak to anyone from the company in SL (although I visited their office and signed up to the panel - via web), as there was noone online at the time. Not sure therefore if they're planning on doing any in-world surveys, or stick to web surveys like Market Truths appear to.

More info, including a slurl to teleport you to their offices at http://www.reperes-secondlife.com

Paul Kedrosky's post (see title link) on Flickr's use of image meta-data for "quasi-market-research" makes some interesting reading. He ends with..

"Now, is the implementation perfect? No. I want more raw market data, I want times & dates, and I want live-linkable images that are easily embedded in other sites. But is it a good start, and a sign of disruptive things to come in market research? You bet it is."

Some links to related sites and additional discussion on Techmeme, and a more sceptical post by Matthew Hurst.

From IT Facts:

"Less than one-fifth of people aged 13-17 use e-mail as their primary communication method with friends, compared with nearly 40% of adults aged 25-54. At the same time, more than one-third of online teens rely primarily on instant messaging to communicate with friends while just 11% of adults aged 25-34 favor this method, Parks Associates says."

I'm always surprised that the MR industry hasn't started to make use of IM as a means of survey invites or even delivering surveys themselves via IM, especially when dealing with teenagers and young people. There's been some movement on the mobile/ SMS side of things recently, but not much I'm aware of that relates to IM.

Blyk (in their own words) are "... a pan-European free mobile operator for young people, funded by advertising, [...] launching first in the UK market in mid-2007, with other markets to follow. Blyk is an innovative mobile media channel for advertisers. We offer brands an opportunity for direct engagement with a young audience with real-time feedback."

In a recent blog post, they are laying out their mobile marketing vision (emphasis mine):

"For decades marketeers have been dreaming of a medium that has the distribution effect of broadcast, targeting capabilities of direct marketing and interactivity found with the internet. And now it’s here.

But are you ready, marketeer?

You will get feedback. What’s good and what’s not. You will be told how to develop your offering, products and services. And the feedback comes directly from your customers, real-time. Not from traditional market research.

Are you ready to co-develop your products? Can you change your campaign within two hours, if it doesn’t work? How will you have this dialogue with Blyk users? How will you respond to the feedback?"

This is of course the subject of the various Research 2.0 discussions going on in many places at the moment - and Blyk could be another (powerful, because mobile and aimed at the young) channel for companies getting real-time feedback without the use of traditional surveys and MR agencies. Always assuming that the concept of ad-funded mobile phones/networks actually works, which remains to be seen.

You can read the full Blyk blog post by clicking the above title link.

I had the pleasure of chatting to Pebbles Hannya in Second Life the other day. In RL, she works for Market Truths, a smallish MR agency. They have recently started building a research panel inside Second Life. From a notecard describing the panel:

"Our Research Panel is made up of Second Life residents who have opted in to receiving invitations from us to participate in surveys and other types of research (e.g., interviews or focus groups) in exchange for some L$ and the opportunity to help improve aspects of Second Life that they care about.
Those who join the panel are asked to complete a preference form indicating what topics they are willing to be surveyed or interviewed about, and the maximum frequency with which they want to be invited to participate in research. We select residents from this list from time to time and ask them to participate in research projects on particular topics. We issue invitations by sending out notecards."

More info, including a Slurl/teleport to their SL location is at http://sl.markettruths.com.

This is an interesting start, although according to Pebbles they are so far using "normal" web surveys for data collection, rather than in-world surveying. Maybe this will change in future - I still believe there's incredible potential for survey technology/ data collection in Second Life itself, which will go beyond the usual web surveys - see my previous posts and in-world survey prototype..

But nonetheless, it's great to see the first (to my knowledge at least) market research agency starting work in Second Life!

Technorati Tags: secondlife marketresearch

Reuters' Second Life news center reports that "Reality show Big Brother is getting a little less real with a new Second Life edition, which will pit 15 contestants against each other in an attempt to win their own island."

Their fate will be decided by by other Second Life residents - it'll be interesting to see what they'll use for in-world voting. Maybe create a Big Brother HUD with news, teleports to the BB island, and voting functionality?

A nice piece by Linda Zimmer, arguing that brands in Second Life have yet to take advantage of some of the basic communication tools in that world, namely creating groups:

"Groups are a short-hand to reputation in Second Life, they are the equivalent of the three-second first impression. They are a big part of in-world identity.

More importantly for brands, it is also the “opt-in” mechanism in Second Life. Just like an opt-in email list, people join groups to keep up on what’s going on with like-minded people. They want to know when events are happening and people are gathering. They can instant message an entire group when online and arrange “flash mobs.” They shout out help to group members. Group notices posted by the administrator of the group often wind up in real world email boxes when people are offline. It is a bridge between real world and Second Life."

Full post in the title link.