Social Software

Witnessing the Birth of An Entertainment Form

Dec 6th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Alternate Reality, Brands, Creativity, Cross Media, Distribution, Divergence, Events, Featured Articles, Games, Innovation, Interactive TV, On-demand, Production, Second Life, Social Software, TV, Transformation, Virtual Reality, Virtual Worlds, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

The Relentless March of Channels and Formats into Second Life

Rather than just referring to the many standard press articles about the growing number of companies or formats that are setting up in Second Life (the media’s favourite MUVE at the moment) I have been ‘living it’ so to speak. My inworld blog JustVirtual provides an [...]

Popularity: 40% [?]



Personalized Home Entertainment and Human Behaviour

Nov 29th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Cross Media, Devices, Distribution, Divergence, Events, Innovation, Interactive TV, Media Personalizing, Metadata, On-demand, Personalization, Revolution, Social Issues & Privacy, Social Software, TV

I did a short presentation at the Australian Communications Media Authority ICE conference last week. It was at the end of a plethora of panel presentations about regulation, media literacy, digital privacy and converged business models. There was also a range of keynotes that were pretty generic, about attitude to change eg: Steve Vamos (Microsoft [...]

Popularity: 22% [?]



Cross-Media - What Audiences Want

Nov 13th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Advertising, Alternate Reality, Brands, Cross Media, Distribution, Featured Articles, Innovation, Interactive TV, Mobile, Mobile TV, On-demand, Production, Social Software, Story Telling, TV, Web 2.0

Just spotted my old collegues Matt Locke and Frank Boyd launching another series of 360 lab initiatives at the BBC. Not much has changed since the labs of 2000 and earlier, when EXACTLY to the day, six years ago I was presenting slides including those on this post to wannabee cross-media BBC producers. Incidentally I [...]

Popularity: 33% [?]



Making money from social networks pt. 1

Oct 15th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Cross Media, Distribution, Events, Media Personalizing, Personalization, Profiling, Social Issues & Privacy, Social Software, Targeting, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

Got a constipated blog draft situation - lots of half finished posts in the saved area. So to catch up I take a mouthful of wordpress ‘fibre’ and put these out slightly half baked, drafts to mentally move on. Oh the compromised nature of blogging! Its a shame because this particular one is the big [...]

Popularity: 14% [?]



TV property branded Virtual Worlds - the beginning

Sep 26th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Advertising, Brands, Cross Media, Distribution, Divergence, Events, Games, Media Personalizing, Personalization, Portals, Revolution, Social Software, TV, Transformation, Virtual Reality, Virtual Worlds, Web 3.0

I was on a Portable Content Symposium panel last night “Content with your content? How the convergence of media is changing everything we know”. A fellow panelist Ean Thorley (Exec prod at MTV Australia) briefly referred to a new MTV virtual space Laguna Beach - when we started talking about the impact web 3.0 on [...]

Popularity: 23% [?]



Virtual Worlds, Web 3.0 and Portable Profiles

Aug 27th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Cross Media, Distribution, Featured Articles, Games, Innovation, Media Personalizing, Metadata, Personalization, Portals, Profiling, Revolution, Second Life, Social Software, Targeting, Virtual Reality, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

I have posted prolifically about MUVE’S (Multi User Virtual Environments) in the past, concentrating mainly on the ever customisable Second Life. It is interesting to watch the buzz spreading and consider if virtual worlds are really web 3.0, I think so. A quick look at the evolution of the intraweb from the mid 90’s. From [...]

Popularity: 18% [?]



Watch YouTube, Google Video and iTunes on your TV

Aug 26th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Devices, Distribution, Media Personalizing, On-demand, Portals, Social Software, TV, Web 2.0

Now I generally dont blog about devices because as we know ‘it’ is about experience design, stories, easy to use tools and elegant product design - and no, I am not on commission but this product for me is media distribution come full circle. I have personally been through the cycle of

Web TV (the boxes [...]

Popularity: 9% [?]



Putting the Space in Virtual - Second Life

Jul 22nd, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Alternate Reality, Creativity, Events, Games, Media Personalizing, Personalization, Production, Second Life, Social Software, Story Telling, Virtual Reality

A quote to start off yet another Virtual World post…
“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion” Democritus (Greek philosopher, 460-370bc)

We live in a world where you don’t need to eat or drink, you cannot die or harm yourself, you can breathe underwater and you can fly? Add to this our [...]

Popularity: 21% [?]



Social Synch TV. The Cross-Media Trigger

Jun 18th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Creativity, Cross Media, Distribution, Interactive TV, Interactivity, Media Personalizing, Metadata, Mobile, Personalization, Search, Social Software, TV, Web 2.0

What goes around comes around. Google picks up where many have failed in synchronising TV and web 2.0 - “Google developing social and interactive television applications for ‘mass personalization” is the ZDNET header.
About six years ago, just at the dawning of interactive TV in the UK a few companies were trotting their cross-media wares to [...]

Popularity: 27% [?]



Second Life - The Creative Tool for the Masses

Jun 13th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Alternate Reality, Creativity, Games, Innovation, Media Personalizing, On-demand, Personalization, Production, Revolution, Second Life, Social Software, Story Telling, Transformation, Virtual Reality

Give people very simple and highly social tools for producing and creatively sharing content and truly inventive things will happen. In a growing ‘easy to publish’ movement the current user generated, digital personalized content explosion will continue indefinitely - the creative big bang. A digital stills or video camera and a computer in the right [...]

Popularity: 27% [?]



Immersion - Ambient TV, Addictive MMORPG…

Jun 2nd, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Alternate Reality, Creativity, Cross Media, Games, Innovation, Interactive TV, Media Personalizing, Mobile, On-demand, Personalization, Production, Second Life, Social Software, Story Telling, TV, Transformation

…and the never changing human.
Senor Hontar: “We must work in the world. The world is thus.”
Father Altamirano: “No Senor Hontar…thus have we made the world. Thus have I made it”
Final lines of the film ‘The Mission’
There have been several events this week that have focused my attention on the nature of immersion. Within AFTRS and [...]

Popularity: 100% [?]



Alternate Reality Games in Virtual Spaces

May 27th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Alternate Reality, Creativity, Cross Media, Distribution, Featured Articles, Games, Media Personalizing, Personalization, Production, Second Life, Social Software, Story Telling, Transformation, Virtual Reality, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

Ok the title sounds a little ’space cadet’ and paradoxical but bear with me on this one because the implications go way beyond the focus of this post which is a quick orientation and guide to non-scripted but organised ’social play’ inside a virtual world and a great way to plan a Real World Alternate [...]

Popularity: 20% [?]



The Personalization of Second Life

May 20th, 2006 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Alternate Reality, Games, Innovation, Media Personalizing, Personalization, Portals, Revolution, Second Life, Social Issues & Privacy, Social Software, Story Telling, Transformation, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

What is driving the current shared, participatory virtual spaces? Giving audiences seemingly unlimited personalization and social structure, means big business, if it can be contained within a walled garden where everything you do is chargeable. A phenomenal strategy driving all web 2.0 services at the moment. Second life now with 200 000 plus subscribers and [...]

Popularity: 9% [?]