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Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Joel Greenberg on the "value of measuring engagement"
Joel Greenberg over at the Electric Sheep Company blog has a great post on the value of measuring engagement, and how virtual worlds are uniquely placed in this respect. Follow the title link to read the entire piece - it's worth it -, but here's a few quick highlights:
"Does any competitor have a realistic shot at competing against Nielsen? They might if they measure engagement; and virtual worlds potentially have something over the real world: more data. Potentially, marketing in virtual worlds could lead the way in measuring engagement that could leak out into the larger marketing world.
There’s emotional engagement, like marketing that elicits strong feelings. There’s social engagement, like spreading word of mouth, participating in a group like Harley HOGs, etc. There’s physical engagement, like playing with or using a product.
[...] Usage. Word of mouth. Virtual Worlds can track both. In other words, measuring engagement is possible.
"Does any competitor have a realistic shot at competing against Nielsen? They might if they measure engagement; and virtual worlds potentially have something over the real world: more data. Potentially, marketing in virtual worlds could lead the way in measuring engagement that could leak out into the larger marketing world.
There’s emotional engagement, like marketing that elicits strong feelings. There’s social engagement, like spreading word of mouth, participating in a group like Harley HOGs, etc. There’s physical engagement, like playing with or using a product.
[...] Usage. Word of mouth. Virtual Worlds can track both. In other words, measuring engagement is possible.
[...] Here some ideas for what engagement metrics we could measure:
- how may times the item has been given to others, a form of “word of mouth”. This kind of tracking makes even more sense for collectibles/tradeables.
- how long it’s been used, or when it was stopped being used.
- how many times it was used.
- what functions are being used and how often.
- the number of other avatars that have seen the object (impressions).
- how long it’s been used, or when it was stopped being used.
- how many times it was used.
- what functions are being used and how often.
- the number of other avatars that have seen the object (impressions).
[...] It’s this idea of collecting data on engagement that’s so exciting; it could potentially be the catalyst to change RL marketing."
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Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Second Life survey bot with IronPython and libsecondlife
I recently experimented a little with libsecondlife (the open-source, reverse-engineered Second Life library) together with IronPython, a .NET Python implementation. It worked almost straight out of the box, even on Mac OSX on my MacBook Pro (via Mono).
Using the same survey backend code I used for my experiments with inanimate survey objects inside Second Life and the semi-human modified Second Life viewer, this let me quickly write a Python-powered bot that logs into Second Life, and then responds to avatars chatting to it. Unlike the Second Life client modification I created earlier, this is purely a bot, so there is no human intervention at all.
If you watch the video below, you'll see me come up to the bot girl, and say hello. She responds to me, and tells me she'd just love it if she could ask me some survey questions. As instructed, I reply with the word "survey", and she starts asking the survey questions (after doing a backflip out of sheer happiness that I will take part in her survey!). The survey technology here is identical to the previous examples, linking to GMI's Net-MR survey back-end. At the end of survey she blows me a kiss and pays me a Linden dollar (a bit stingy, I agree, but the kiss makes up for it).
Nothing too earth-shattering here, reusing much of my previous prototypes, but I think quite a nice example of the kind of thing we can do in Second Life to provide engaging and fun survey experiences. Also note some of the typing animation that makes the bot seem that little more real. I came away thinking I've made someone happy (even though I could see Belle's debug stream on my other screen) :-)
Using the same survey backend code I used for my experiments with inanimate survey objects inside Second Life and the semi-human modified Second Life viewer, this let me quickly write a Python-powered bot that logs into Second Life, and then responds to avatars chatting to it. Unlike the Second Life client modification I created earlier, this is purely a bot, so there is no human intervention at all.
If you watch the video below, you'll see me come up to the bot girl, and say hello. She responds to me, and tells me she'd just love it if she could ask me some survey questions. As instructed, I reply with the word "survey", and she starts asking the survey questions (after doing a backflip out of sheer happiness that I will take part in her survey!). The survey technology here is identical to the previous examples, linking to GMI's Net-MR survey back-end. At the end of survey she blows me a kiss and pays me a Linden dollar (a bit stingy, I agree, but the kiss makes up for it).
Nothing too earth-shattering here, reusing much of my previous prototypes, but I think quite a nice example of the kind of thing we can do in Second Life to provide engaging and fun survey experiences. Also note some of the typing animation that makes the bot seem that little more real. I came away thinking I've made someone happy (even though I could see Belle's debug stream on my other screen) :-)
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