Photo by Vladislav Klapin on Unsplash
One of the great things about hosting a blog on WordPress is the detailed statistics on user visits that you get. Here are the Top Ten countries that visit the Sansar Newsblog:
I get a lot of German traffic through Echt Virtuell and SLinfo.de, and Swedish traffic through Apmel’s blog.
I have been bugging Linden Lab for months about taking a page from the High Fidelity playbook, and launching their own TV show, and it would appear that they have listened! I had blogged back on Nov. 26th that LL needs to step up their PR game:
The key here, and the area in which Linden Lab needs to step up their game, is PROMOTION. I’m still not convinced that Linden Lab is doing everything that they could be to promote Sansar, especially compared to all the press that competitors like High Fidelity, VRChat, and especially AltspaceVR get. Obviously, Linden Lab is hoping that its users will be its best ambassadors, but they can’t (and shouldn’t) rely just on that good-will.
High Fidelity has launched a few self-promotional livestream broadcast shows, like the JimJamz Show and LIVE in High Fidelity with Michelle Osorio. Yes, I know, they’re cheesy, but the fact is, High Fidelity is not waiting for users to do them, they are going out and doing it themselves! Linden Lab needs to think about launching a program or two of their own…
Well, it turns out that Linden Lab had actually tested a pilot, half-hour episode of a new show called Sansar Top 5, back on Dec. 21st, starring Sam and Boden Linden of Linden Lab! I think that this is a wonderful idea, and I applaud Linden Lab for taking this step!
Boden is a well-known member of Linden Lab’s Product team, and Sam is Sam Distaso, Linden Lab’s new Virtual Worlds Business Development Manager. Boden says of the newly launched show:
For now it will be once-a-month event where we are checking out the top five experiences and elements in VR [we] can’t get enough of.
Unfortunately, I missed that first episode, and there is no public video of it available. But you can watch (or even better, join us in-world!) as Sam and Boden head out to explore this month’s picks for the Sansar Top 5:
Episode 2 of Sansar Top 5 takes place tomorrow, Thursday, Jan. 4th, at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time/Sansar Time. I assume we are all meeting up at the first location, Skye Naturae Virtualis. I also assume that Linden Lab will provide a URL for the livestream if you’d rather watch than participate, which I will update this blogpost with, as soon as I have it to share with you.
I would encourage you to join us!
UPDATE Jan. 4th: Here is the YouTube livestream (thank you, Maddy!):
I was reading the news today when I came across this item: Weight Watchers has hired DJ Khaled as their new “social media ambassador”, a term I had never heard before. (Then again, I’ve never heard of DJ Khaled before, either.) Here’s a screen capture from a CBS News report which shows the massive size of his social media audience:
(A personal note: I have actually been on the Weight Watchers program in the past, and I actually did reach my goal weight twenty years ago! However, like many people who diet, I did gain back all the weight I lost over the following decade, and then some. I am curious about their new Freestyle program, and I may rejoin. As a Weight Watchers Lifetime Member, I can skip a weekly meeting without paying a fee, which is a plus!)
All of this got me thinking: maybe what Linden Lab needs to do is hire a social media ambassador for Sansar. Someone with a large and faithful following on the various social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. It’s an idea worth considering, although I’m quite sure that finding such an ambassador would be a somewhat difficult task.
Ebbe Altberg and his team need to ask themselves: who is Sansar’s target audience? (I’m sure they’ve already answered that question. If they haven’t, then they should.) Who would be someone who is well-known enough in virtual worlds to have at least some name recognition, that they would want to tie to their brand? Or would it be better to pick someone who is already famous in another area, for example, an entertainer? (I mean, DJ Khaled is no nutrition or weight loss expert, he’s a DJ!)
If I were asked to put a name forward, I would say Linden Lab should hire Strawberry Singh as their social media ambassador. She’s a well-known and popular Second Life blogger who has a presence in Sansar already, with her and Drax’s Atlas Hopping series. Just an idea. (She might well turn it down, wanting to keep her independence from LL.)
They could ask me, I may have the right level of enthusiasm, but I’m afraid I have no social media presence at all. Right now I have a grand total of 290 Facebook friends, 88 Instagram followers, and 126 Twitter followers! And I got fed up, and I landed up uninstalling Snapchat from my iPhone…
Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg (centre, under the painting) spent well over an hour in a wide-ranging discussion with a group of Sansarians at GranddadGotMojo’s new art gallery in My Hometown 1968. (Yes, I think we can add “Sansarian” to the Oxford dictionary!) I personally really appreciated that Ebbe took the time to meet with all of us and field all of our questions.