Today was a weird / exciting day for virtual worlds. This morning, a virtual-world startup called Vivaty launched a room-building product that lets you chat with your friends on AIM or Facebook. Mid-day, IBM and Second life announced a partnership that allows people to roam between the two “worlds”. Now Google enters the picture with Lively. In my humble opinion, this is huge.

Now I’m not a fan, or user, of virtual worlds. I did try Second Life for a few minutes but quickly gave up because the engine is bad, and quite honestly I’m not a big fan of spending hours living the life of a fictional character. There’s people partying on there all day, I’m sure, but if I want to do some of that, I’ll definitely do it with no keyboards attached.

On Lively

But Lively is interesting. One, it is from Google, which has enough online properties to really explore this market. Think about Blogger and Orkut. Now think about the possibilities of allowing people to have rooms where they can engage with their friends in a totally new (and apparently exciting) way. It is quite obvious this is big for them. Maybe it won’t mean a thing for early adopters and tech pundits, but the average young blogger will be all over this.

Moreover, this is a whole new vertical to explore in new, creative, advertising ways. Everyone knows Google loves that - it’s their business. Just imagine all the plans for in-game advertising being tested with the thousands of rooms about to be created by people with blogs about music, fashion, cinema. It’s potentially a big, big market.

I guess we’ll see how this turns out. Me, I’m impressed that Google stepped out of the box and delivered a product that people weren’t expecting. This may not be a good thing for some people, but I actually think it is a refreshing initiative. If you’re looking to read more about Lively, check out the coverage on Techcrunch and Techmeme.

Update: I totally forgot to mention one tiny detail that I’m not that happy about. Windows only? Come on now, Google. I do expect more of you guys.

One of the tough challenges of running a blog (or rather, something I keep stumbling on) is how to talk about different subjects without bewildering part of the audience. There’s been countless occasions where I wanted to post something that would be either too technical amidst the other content, or just plain weird. So here’s the solution to that problem:

Webreakstuff Labs! is our blog for development, experimental and… well, everything else, really. If you’re a fan of them bits and bytes, you should go ahead and subscribe, because there’s going to be a lot of that on there - and (yay!) from all our team and not just me. There’s already a few posts on there, and there’s quite a few others lined up.

Hit the labs!

Guys, look. There’s something important I have to tell you, and I’m not sure you’ll take this lightly: in the end, the internet wins. I know you didn’t really like Napster making your music available for free all those years ago (even though your fans were still buying albums), and you decided to bring it down. Now, years later, your antics are back? Come on, get with the program!

You guys should need no explanation as to how these things work. Here’s the cold hard truth: people will get things for free if they want to. I bet there’s millions of illegal copies of your tracks (even new ones) out there already. Your new album (which I’m actually looking forward to) may even be leaked before release date - it’s been happening to other people (have you heard?). But look: it’s not all that bad.

I know you guys don’t need to know this stuff, or shouldn’t have to: you’re the band! You guys do the rocking, right? Well, wrong. Your management and PR is doing you a disservice by avoiding that people talk about your new album. Actually forcing people to bring down their reviews of your music is not just dumb - it’s also, well, insane. It’s really going back to Napster days when everyone’s opinion of you changed just a little bit. And I could swear I read you were changing.

There’s a few bands who apparently have kept up with the news between rehearsals. Guys like Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) - that guy is crazy, he even gives stuff away, right? - or Radiohead - holy crap, I get to choose how much I pay? I pitty you fools! - , actually understand that things have changed! You shouldn’t really try to stop the flow of information - you should just turn your own hose on, full steam. To try and remedy your situation, I included a few articles (by bloggers, no less!) I think you should read about this new “crazy talk” going on out there.

I still hope you’re well, and that your new album is at least better than the last. And do know that all this post was written down with hands in the rock position to keep the feeling going.

Some reading material

Radiohead announces In Rainbows. Crazy talk.
Radiohead fans to pick album cost. LULZ
NIN - Ghosts on The Piratebay. Posted by that weird kid Reznor.
Again, this Nine Inch Nails guy talking crazy. To the NY Times. Nuts!

Okay, some (more) serious footnotes and a conclusion

The internet changed the game. People actually use it to read the news (O’RLY? Yeah. Really.), buy and download music, and - believe it or not -, reading reviews of albums on the web really does still make people go out and BUY CDS. Please let people talk about your music. Like any good PR person or manager would/should tell you: them internet eyeballs, they’re loads, and they come in tubes! Don’t cheat, play the game. And good luck with the new album - I even read, before you guys censored the reviews - that it wasn’t that bad.

In our line of work - designing and building web applications - we don’t deal with consumer experiences as much as I’d like to, but we often take inspiration from the retail world. I have just finished reading a couple of articles about Zappos that I wanted to share with you guys.

The first article from Harvard Business Publishing, talks about how Zappos bribes potential employees into quitting in order to gauge their interest and commitment to the company’s values. Here’s a piece from the article:

This is a company that’s bursting with personality (…) So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period.

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit! Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for.

The second bit of inspiration I want to leave you with is this presentation from Underground 4 in Los Angeles by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. It talks about how Zappos became a 1 billion dollar business by caring about their customer experience:

What to take away

WOWing someone is a powerful thing. When you care deeply enough about someone - a customer, partner or employee - you are more likely to engage them in a way that makes them reciprocate the good will. Naturally, I’m stating the obvious when I say you should aim to please your customers, but when was the last time you heard people recommending a brand because they were just so nice to you?

What can we, as designers, developers and entrepreneurs, do for our audience that we haven’t yet? How can we WOW them? There’s a few lessons to take away from the Zappos story. I know I have, and I hope you do too.