Buying a Kindle DX ten months ago and now an iPad (delivered in the first batch on April 3rd), it really struck me recently how messy (or exciting!) everything is getting.  Mash-ups of business models are happening everywhere, and at an accelerating pace.  Here are a dozen big trends that I'm watching for this year, some relevant to Bazaarvoice and others not so much:

1. After Amazon.com launched the Kindle, it quickly became their number-one seller.  The free wifi to download a book from anywhere was just too compelling to pass up, along with the very easy to read screen.  Amazon projected that it would increase compulsive buying of books to the point where the wifi was subsidized by Amazon.com.  And it is working (for now).
2. And while we're talking about compulsive buying, consider Amazon.com Prime for "consolidated" buying vs. other retailers.  Other retailers have tried to emulate Prime and failed to do so.  It is difficult to do – you have to be very quick to ship (i.e., many distribution centers), with the availability (i.e., tons of inventory), to really trigger the compulsive buying effect.  There are profound implications on the long-tail as Amazon.com expands.  And, in their most recent quarterly report, Amazon's same-store U.S. sales were up a staggering 75%.  It seems that both the Kindle and Prime are triggering the compulsive buying effect, coupled with Amazon's long-tail inventory.  Many retailers same-store sales are flat to down as we come out of the Great Recession, and Amazon.com's stellar performance has to be noticed by them.  Our Chief Marketing Officer, Sam, blogged about this in November of 2008 and it is even more true today.
3. Enter the iPad.  The week Apple launched the iPad it sold 450,000 units with 600,000 books (via iBooks) shortly after.  Now that I have had the iPad for awhile, I don't just think of it as competitive with the Kindle or other eReaders or "tablets" – it is also competitive with netbooks (another mash-up), as Steve Jobs eagerly stressed.  Just project out a few years when the iPad has 256gb capacity, instead of the 64gb my model has today, combined with the new iPhone 4.0 OS (coming out at the end of this year) that enables multitasking, a micro-USB port or two, and wireless streaming everywhere allowing for seamless connectivity no matter where you are.  The iPad already has a keyboard docking station, which I also bought, and, of course, bluetooth for connecting to wireless keyboards.  And new TVs and DVDs are coming out with built-in home network and wireless capabilities, allowing you to stream TV to laptops, netbooks, desktops, iPads, iPhones, or whatever you choose to use around the house (or while you are on the road if you have a Slingbox or something similar).  The bottom line is that the genius author, Kevin Kelly, got it right in this Wired magazine article (comparing tablets to a portable window into the world).
4. Will the iPad hurt Kindle sales?  Many Wall Street analysts and journalists think so.  My personal take?  Well, I was skeptical about whether or not I would enjoy reading books on it as much as I do the Kindle.  Initially we were just buying the iPad as a family device for watching movies, playing games, and keeping up with blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.  But now with the Kindle app loaded on my iPad, adjusted to a sepia "paper" color and 60% brightness, I can read for hours just fine.  But to really see how the iPad transforms books, just check out the book it comes pre-loaded with (a Winnie the Pooh children's book, which is, of course, in beautiful color).  No color on the Kindle.  Every try to read a no-color book to a child?  And then check out the app, The Elements, which has gorgeous color, 3D illustrations, and full-on video.  Or look at what Wired magazine may be planning to do with tablets.  I was watching Alice in Wonderland with our daughter recently, and Alice said (shortly before falling down the rabbit hole), "What is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations?".  Just look back in history at the adoption rates once color television came out vs. black-and-white television.  It is just a matter of time before our children are carrying interactive tablets in their backpacks instead of heavy textbooks.  Yes, I think it is going to impact Kindle sales.
5. Ok, let's talk about mobile.  Google's Android (open platform) continues to gain traction vs. Apple's iPhone OS (closed platform).  It wasn't surprising to me when Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's Board of Directors.  I moderated a panel of amazing venture capitalists at NRF and Shop.org's Innovate conference back in March, where my good friend Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital predicted that Android would overtake the iPhone OS over time.  Of course, Android will power tablets too.  We've seen this movie before as Apple stayed closed vs. the PC world being open.  Will the movie be the same this time?
6. Mobile is now at a tipping point, with GPS built in, good camera phones, and great web browsers (e.g., Safari and Chrome).  We'll see a lot of mash-ups in this area as mobile is increasingly used by consumers while in stores, which will one-up the mobile use we've seen in social commerce so far.  Interestingly, the VCs on my NRF and Shop.org panel in March thought it would take several years, so our prediction about "the year of mobile" in 2009 may have been a bit early, although I would argue that the iPhone's rapid adoption that year did change the game.  And it certainly hasn't slowed down Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley to produce the most comprehensive report (at 424 pages) I've ever seen on the state of the mobile industry, nor did it prevent NRF and Shop.org from having a Mobile Boot Camp at the March conference.
7. How about blogging?  My guess is that blog-post length has decreased (this post aside!) as Facebook has increased to a longer status format and people have become more and more used to Twitter's 140-character length updates.  Perhaps blog views have also decreased.  This leads to more "lightweight", or surface-level, conversations than the deeper-thinking conversations on blogs.  But we'll survive just fine.  I simply don't buy Nick Carr's arguments but I'll debate that later if you wish.
8. Although this would be the obvious place to discuss this trend, I'll purposely stay away from Facebook Like vs. Google Buzz vs. Google AdSense as my co-founder and our Chief Innovation Officer, Brant, is addressing that in a future post.  But needless to say, social is permeating the Web and that trend is accelerating, so we will continue to innovate quickly in this area.
9. Let's talk about transparency.  At the Liberty Interactive NetLeaders Forum in 2008, I remember Rich Barton, founder of Expedia and Zillow, presenting, "everything that can be reviewed will be reviewed [on the Web]".  He showed us examples of CEOs being reviewed on Glassdoor.com.  My opinion?  This will lead to a company culture revolution, which is part of the reason I feel so compelled to write my forthcoming book, How to Make Your Company Suck Less.  And Chris Fralic of First Round Capital as well as Kamal Kirpalani of Bazaarvoice recently asked me to review them on Unvarnished.  I wrote about transparency awhile back, based on a leadership talk I gave at The Wharton School.  In short, I think this is a very profound trend that will not only cause a renaissance in commerce but also in politics, government, and all types of human activities and relationships.
10. At Bazaarvoice, we're leading a revolution of marketing and merchandising with social commerce and user-generated content – or (my preference) digital word of mouth.  Digital word of mouth is quickly becoming the central point of insight for marketers and merchants.  We are writing the marketing and merchandising textbook of the future in our work with our clients (read my previous thoughts on this, from when we reached out 100-billion-impression milestone in February).  Digital word of mouth is getting mashed-up versus the aging focus group, NetPromoter, customer survey, and other methods that get "close" but aren't nearly as pure as how customers speak to each other with no bias vs. how they communicate while in the context of talking to the company.  Things for you to consider here: a) the market has always been based on conversations (read this chapter that was the namesake of our company), b) reviews are the new advertising as we are already beginning to commonly see, c) consumers write reviews to help each other (i.e., altruism, or with no bias), and d) this trend is why Google and Nielsen partnered with us.
11. Channel marketing is becoming more wired.  We see a major trend in this area with the adoption of our BrandVoice and BrandAnswers solutions.  We are at the beginning of this shift, and it is logical to think that, just as offline to advertising shift has fueled online advertising, we will see a similar accelerating trend as suppliers of retailers become more savvy at online channel marketing in a world where 80% of consumers read reviews while they are shopping (Nielsen's most recent stat).  And, of course, mobile is a major accelerant of this trend.
12. Finally, the digital executive will continue to rise in prominence as companies work hard to make sense of the rapid shift to a more digital, hyper-connected world.  For some early indicators of this, look at Raul Vazquez's promotion from CEO of Walmart.com to EVP and President of Walmart West.  Or Toby Lenk's, the founder of the original eToys, rise to President of Direct at Gap.  (I should mention that both are among the best speakers we have ever had at Shop.org events, where I proudly serve on the Board of Directors.)  These are very exciting times for those who really "get it" in digital.

For the long-term potential of the Web, I recommend you check out Kevin Kelly's speech at TED in Dec 2007 or his similarly brilliant article in Wired magazine.  And if you have time to get really far out in thinking about technology's impact on the world, just read chapter 1 (trust me, it's enough) of Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (thanks to my good friend, Ethan Holland at American Eagle, for suggesting it to me).

We had the pleasure of hosting Kelly Mooney, President of Resource Interactive and my peer on the Shop.org Board of Directors, as one of our keynote speakers at our Social Commerce Summit last week (note: the event was amazing, see the recap post from Sam Decker, our CMO).  Kelly was great, as always.  Her interview of Ze Frank, one of our Advisory Board members, was fantastically thought-provoking and entertaining.  Hey keynote presentation on The Open Brand, her new book (see my interview of Kelly), was also top-notch.  What I remembered most from her presentation was the "Yes We Can" shared community video produced by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.  Kelly blogs about it here (her blog is one of the few that I personally follow).  The video is an awesome expression of community participation and user-generated content (note: mouse over the mosiac as it plays).

Whether or not you support Obama, his innovative use of the online channel will be emulated for future democratic elections.  And as politics gets more "open", that will benefit us all.  Just like customer-generated reviews benefits all with better products and services (at our Summit, I learned that Wal-Mart drops any product nationwide after it gets a certain number of negative reviews online), so will politics as candidates engage in openness.

Millennials will demand this as they have grown up online, marinating in "community".  I found Wired's Founding Editor's letter to his children (Millennials themselves) in this month's issue especially uplifting given the gravity of change we need (when speaking of the global warming issue alone).  Here's the best excerpt:

Strauss and Howe's [of Generations] description of Millennials inspired us: "This generation will show more teamlike spirit and more like-mindedness in action than most Americans then alive will recall ever having seen in young people… Millennials will carry out whatever crisis mission they are assigned — as long as they can connect it with their own secular blueprint for progress. If crisis brings war, soldiers will obey orders without complaint. If it involves environmental danger or natural resource depletion, young scientists will make historic breakthroughs. If the crisis is mostly economic, the youthful labor force will be a mighty engine of renewed American prosperity. Whatever their elder-bestowed mission, these rising youths will not disappoint. Assuming the crisis turns out well, Millennials will be forever honored as a generation of civic achievers."

What's heartening to me, Orson and Zoe, is that even though you and your peers have grown up watching your parents become self-absorbed, hypocritical, and now plain crotchety and rancorous (not Jane and me, of course), and even if you stand in the rubble of the social institutions toppled by the Digital Revolution, your response is not the me-me-me of your parents' generation but us-us-us. Whether you're addressing climate change or serving in Iraq, you are simultaneously more traditionalist and future-forward, more practical and idealistic, than your parents.

The challenge is obvious, the dangers present, the need great. But be optimistic. I would say that, wouldn't I, since we were often accused during my time at Wired of being overly optimistic. But optimism is not false hope, it's a strategy for living. If you are optimistic about the future, you will step up and take responsibility and attempt to make it better for yourselves and your own children.

Now Chris and Wired strike again with a preview of his new book, "Free", which is due in 2009.  The cover article of this month's Wired is "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business".  If you want to read now what everyone will be talking about next year, read this article now.  It isn't worth me summarizing here – trust me, it's worth your 15 minutes to read the entire article by clicking the link above.

Free is a very powerful word-of-mouth driver, and Bazaarvoice has certainly placed a lot of "bets" in this area.  Currently, the following Bazaarvoice solutions are free (to at least one stakeholder):

• ShoutIt!: Share your review on Facebook, digg, and Del.icio.us – free to clients and users; creates a form of advertising without the taint of being advertising
• SyndicateVoice: free for shopping comparison portal partners, free for new clients for a period of time; creates a form of advertising without the taint of being advertising
• BrandVoice: free high-converting user-generated content for clients from the customers of their manufacturing partners; leverages the power of channel marketing, which has existed since the dawn of vendors selling through the retail channel
• Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, Stories: free for users; gives them the context they need to make a purchase decision as well as connect with other customers; consumers used to pay for this type of content from people like "Consumer Reports", or by physically driving to a store to speak to an in-store sales person who may or may not have the information and context that they need

I look forward to seeing how Chris's new book shapes up, and I have no doubt that it will be impactful.  As he so eloquently describes in this article, free already surrounds us due to near free transistors and bandwidth.  As more businesses transform to be information-based, this trend will radically accelerate.

How are you using the power of free in your business?

But recently Second Life is taking a beating.  Check out these recent articles in Time and Wired.  Even though many corporations have rushed in to grab their own virtual real estate, it turns out that not that many people are there to shop.  They are primarily there to gamble and have sex, and this shouldn't be surprising.  Many of the first businesses on the Internet were about gambling and sex.  It's the early-adopter syndrome in a medium that let's you hide your real identity and pretend to be someone else.

To be clear, I am bullish on the 3D-Web long-term.  There is no doubt that as virtual reality becomes more real and accessible to the masses, as opposed to the clunky and odd experience of Second Life today, virtual shopping will take off.  When Internet Explorer and Firefox embed 3D-Web browsers into their 2D-browsers, that may mark the tipping point.  I am also confident that this is going to take many years – at least as counted in "Internet time".  In other words, I'm talking about 3-5 years.

The 3D-Web will provide a more tactile experience than today's Web, and online shopping will blossom.  Our company has shown the potential of a more tactile experience – customer reviews allow peers to "touch and feel" a product sold online, and sales significantly increase with a corresponding reduction in returns (as customers expectations are set by each other, the element of negative surprise is reduced).  Feel free to ask us about our over 20 case studies to learn more.

Until then, I'll be watching Second Life to see how it evolves.  But I don't expect much in the near-term, to be frank.  Once a medium is hyped to the extreme and then has a counterbalancing crash in popularity, it takes years to recover.  I'm not sure that Second Life will get a second life – the word of mouth is already too negative and the community is tainted.  But there will be many 3D-Web efforts to follow…

Update 9/8:
TechCrunch reports that ICANN's CEO, Paul Twomey, keynotes at a conference with the message that virtual worlds are the future of global commerce.  William Gibson, one of my favorite authors and the inventor of the word and concept of "cyberspace", would be proud.

First, on page 6 there is a full-page ad from The Home Depot, one of our clients.  It is titled "What do you call a year in which you sell 63 million Earth-friendly products? A healthy start".  This ad has a corresponding Web presence, but it is a little hard to find and it isn't mentioned in the ad.  Unfortunately, you can't yet shop for these "Earth-friendly products" online and searching for "Earth friendly" on their Web site doesn't return any results.

Second, on page 14 there is an article about Wal-Mart putting out an RFP to install solar panels at stores and distribution centers in five states.  It could generate as much as 150 megawatts of power, which would dwarf the largest corporate solar power project in the U.S. (the 1.6 megawatt project by Google).  I have been chronicling Wal-Mart's move to organics in previous posts (see my August, 2006 post).  As the largest company in the world, their scale is amazing.  And when their CEO, Lee Scott, announced a year ago that he wants to eventually convert Wal-Mart's operations to 100% renewable energy, it attracted a great deal of attention (and set the marker for others to eventually follow the leader).

Third, on page 15 there is an ad from BASF titled "Home, sweet hybrid home", which talks about their "Near-Zero Energy Home" initiative in Paterson, New Jersey.  You can learn more here (click on the house).

Fourth, on page 20-21 Honda has an ad titled "The most fuel-efficient auto company in America".  I have seen this ad several times before and like their term "Environmentology".  They have a Web presence to continue this ad, but it is hidden in very small font.  Here it is.  Why bury this in such small font?

Finally, on page 45 Hitachi has an ad titled "Coal's Comeback: The True Story of Clean Power in Council Bluffs".  This ad is geared towards the Web and plays a documentary film series.  They even have a smart strategy to get bloggers to write about this and give them code to insert a videoplayer into their post.

There are very few ads in the rest of the magazine and no more about green products.  This issue's ads, more than any other I remember, are focused on "green".  And remember this is BusinessWeek, not some magazine like GOOD. 

Maybe this is all selective perception on my part.  Or maybe ad agencies and their clients are quickly awakening to the word-of-mouth potential of green.  What do you think?

Update 1/15:
I spoke with our client at The Home Depot and here is what he had to say about the ad mentioned above (and the green trend):

"It is definitely a big push for the company as we see it as a win-win opportunity.  I think we all agree that the less impact we can have on the environment, no matter how small, is always a good idea.  Highlighting the products that are making a concerted effort to do this is the right thing to do.  From a business standpoint, consumers are much more aware of environmental issues today than they were 10 years ago.  This heightened awareness translates into stronger sales opportunities for environmentally-conscious products.  People are willing to spend $5 on a light bulb that will save them money in the long run!"

"I think if consumers are presented with similar products and one is more "eco-friendly" than another they will choose the eco-friendly product.  The Home Depot has recognized this and will start to merchandise more with this in mind.  Wal-Mart's light-bulb campaign is a great example of this!"

Update 1/16:
According to today's Iconoculture Iconowatch online newsletter, green is the big trend at the Detroit Auto Show. Glad we are going to have real options soon without sacrificing the space, power, and handling we have become used to. For more on this, check out my previous post on the Tesla and EV1.

Update 1/27:
Business 2.0's cover-story for their current issue is "Go Green, Get Rich", and The Economist's is "The greening of America".  This is why I am a technology optimist.  I believe that the problem is too large for entrepreneurs to not rally to the cause and earn the billions, perhaps even trillions (if you consider that the remaining oil may be worth $100 trillion by some calculations), to solve these problems and feel good about it in the process! 

There has been a ton of buzz (mainly positive) about the online 3D world, Second Life.  My two favorite magazines, BusinessWeek and Wired, write about Second Life in nearly every issue.  Wired called it the "coolest destination on the Web" and they loved it so much they set up shop there.  IBM recently built a Circuit City store in Second Life, and Dell recently opened up shop there as well.  I have my own views on why Second Life is getting so much buzz.  First, the promise of the Internet and virtual reality has been science fiction worthy for a long time.  The groundbreaking book, Neuromancer by William Gibson, invented the term "cyberspace".  The insane cult-classic movie, Brazil by Terry Giliam, showed a warped glimpse into the world of virtual reality.  Neal Stephenson's book, Snow Crash, made the virtual reality Web more tangible and exciting by painting a vision of the "Metaverse", which caught on as a new term to describe many massively multiplayer online RPGs (role-playing games, like World of Warcraft), and was adopted by Second Life to describe their virtual world.  Second, the promise of the Web on viable telecommuting and having a successful business that doesn't need to be located in a specific geography (like Silicon Valley) is a very real desire for many.  And third, it is just plain cool to imagine a world that you can live in without the rules of gravity (in Second Life, you can fly), where you can be anyone (in Second Life, many choose avatars that are quite interesting to say the least), and build anything (in Second Life, all it takes are a few pixels).

I have my own experience with "virtual worlds".  In 1990, I created Renegade Outpost, which grew into the most popular multiplayer role-playing game on the Internet by 1992.  I only had 5,000 players worldwide (as compared to World of Warcraft's 7.5 million today).  But, in comparison, Renegade Outpost was a text-based game which only supported 256 concurrent players and you could only access it via TELNET (there wasn't a whole lot of HTML in those days).  In any case, it was completely immersive.  Players could create their own worlds once they became immortals, and many people would play over 160 hours per month.  The ability to communicate with anyone in the game (players were connecting from Germany, Singapore, and many other places around the globe), go on quests together, and create your own world for other players to explore was a powerful draw.

So, from my own experience, Second Life makes a lot of sense.  And I am very bullish on the need for an immersive, 3D Internet experience, whether or not Second Life will be the forum to survive is the key question.  But, for now, it is a very exciting place, and I think we can all learn from it.

Giff Constable may be the best person to explain how businesses can tap the potential of Second Life, and he was gracious enough to be my interviewee today.  I first met Giff at Resource Interactive's iCitizen conference, where he and I were both speakers.  He is the VP of Business Development at The Electric Sheep Company, which builds a precense in Second Life for businesses.  Giff has 12 years of experience in Internet and software businesses, and a Princeton University degree.  In Second Life, Giff is known as Forseti Svarog (he told us why at the iCitizen conference, but I can't remember).

So begins our interview… (all images below are samples of Second Life portfolio work from Giff's company, click on them to get a full-size view).

1.  Giff, would you please provide an overview of your work in layman’s terms to our readers as they may not be familiar with Second Life?

The Electric Sheep Company is a 40-person company focusing entirely on virtual worlds, including Second Life.  If you want analogies to existing businesses, we can be thought of as a mix of movie production house meets Web development company meets strategic consultancy meets software company.  We really do blend everything from strategic advice to user experience design to virtual architecture and application development.  The cross-functional nature of our business makes for some interesting challenges and a really interesting team.

The second part of that question of course is what is Second Life itself, but that is not a simple thing to answer in two sentences and layman’s terms.  It is an online, immersive 3D space where people interact as customizable avatars, participate in an economy with an annual GDP run-rate of over US$100 million, and where all of the content seen and used in the world is built by its participants, whether individuals or corporations.  Say that ten times fast?  It is important to note that Second Life is closer to the Internet than a game, although like the Internet games are built on top of it.

2. What companies do you think are doing the best job of marketing themselves in Second Life?

I’m not sure anyone has totally reached their potential yet, but then I am not surprised given that for many Second Life is still viewed as experimental.  There are quite a few companies now, however, who have dipped their toe in the water, enjoyed the experience, and are now increasing their focus and effort in this space.  Reuters is one of best examples of a success both inside and outside of Second Life.  They received a huge amount of PR outside of Second Life, but they also received a great deal of respect in world.  I’ll touch a bit more on this [below].

3. I’m sure you read the article about crayon in Adrants (where Urizenus Skylar, who writes for The Second Life Herald, calls some marketers entering in Second Life a “bunch of desperate clueless &$%^*$&%#”).  We have seen this before with members of Facebook and MySpace vigorously defending their turf from marketers.  How do you navigate this new medium for your clients so they aren’t viewed as desperate or clueless? 

Well, I should first say that Uri loves to stir the pot – the SL Herald is a tabloid after all — but blunders do happen.  Effective navigation requires knowledge of water depths and shoal locations, and in this case, an awareness of history.  Virtual worlders are not sitting around waiting for a brand to come complete their life (probably less in the Second than in the First), and arguably brands need to enter a virtual world with a little humility.  You need to know what has come before, what has and has not worked, and you also need to have a sense of the community.  We try to steer our clients in the right direction, although they don’t always listen to us and sometimes singe a few hairs, but even that is an important lesson.  Frankly, mistakes will be made in this new medium and that is okay.  It is very early days here, and everyone needs to remember that.   It is better to be innovating and helping to define the conversation rather that show up at the party 2 hours after everyone has gone to bed.

4. What is your most exciting marketing success to date in Second Life?

To elaborate on Reuters for a bit more:  Reuters decided that their audience was going to be the Second Life residents, and they did a number of smart things to gain the respect of everyone.  They proved their intention to stick around (rather than be a PR stunt) by dedicating a journalist to the Second Life / virtual world beat.  They created a website to go alongside their virtual world presence.  We created an island for them, which they keep somewhat active with interesting events, speakers, and Adam Reuters’ office hours.  More importantly, we created some wall-mounted and heads-up displays which brought in their live news feeds.  This allowed people to take Reuters out into Second Life with them, rather than having to work really hard to constantly bring people back.  From the beginning, it was clear to people that this was a project with substance not hype, and the audience reacted very positively.

5. eMarketer predicts that advertising on social networking sites will grow from $280 million this year to $1.8 billion by 2010.  What do you think about their prediction, and how do you think it applies to marketing in Second Life?

I think that number is almost meaningless because social networking is starting to touch everything we do online, so the definition becomes increasingly blurred.  On e-commerce sites, social networking will become an important component of establishing reputation/trust around a product, especially once you can overlay collaborative filtering and reviewing technologies with social network information.   I think that the web and a Second Life-like technology will become increasingly interconnected and complementary.  We will use both, depending on whether we want a 2D or 3D experience for a particular purpose (they have different strengths and weaknesses), and depending on whether we want a live social interaction.  There is no question that people feel more “together” in a 3D immersive environment.

6. What would you recommend to Bazaarvoice clients like Sears, PETCO, or HP that may want to dip their toe in Second Life and start planting a marketing seed?

This may sound self-serving, but you really do want to talk to a longtime Second Life consulting group like Electric Sheep or one of our competitors.  The bar is being raised as to what it takes to capture attention, and you do not want to do a cookie cutter project. Even if you have fabulous creative ideas already, chances are they are going to have to be adjusted somewhere to deal with technology limitations or community relations, and you want a guide to help you.  But in terms of basic rules, many are not that far from marketing basics.  Here are a few of my common ones:

• stay honest with yourself about your brand and how it is perceived
• stay authentic and honest with consumers
• decide whether your product really translates into a virtual world or whether you need to focus on brand
• don’t think you can control everything about your brand in a virtual world (or put another way: do not be afraid of your consumer)
• create an opt-in experience and let people take your brand with them somehow
• keep your standards high – you are representing your brand and company
• like a blog, keep things fresh, new and interesting if you want people to come back again and again
• be prepared for technology bumps, because this space is new and evolving extremely rapidly, and rapid evolution in software means bugs

7. Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

When people come into Second Life, they ask two basic questions: what do I do? who do I meet? (the order depends on the person).  When planning your virtual world offering, try to answer one or both of these questions.

For further reading, I highly recommend Giff's blog.  First, he responds to Second Life skeptics.  And, second, Giff does a great job of highlighting 2006 milestones for Second Life.  You may also be interested in my March, 2005 blog post, in which I discuss closing the tactile gap between offline and online shopping (I didn't know about Second Life when I wrote it).

And for more Second Life images, see Giff's personal collection or this BusinessWeek slide show (which includes many images from Second Life's predecessors).  Or check out the Second Life media page, where you can view user-generated movies made within the virtual world.

Chris Anderson's book, "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More", is finally out.  Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired (my favorite magazine), maintains a popular blog about the journey of researching the book.  The article cited above is based on it, and it's brilliant.  As I like to think about emerging trends in a historical context, here is my favorite excerpt:

• "Before you shed too many tears for the declining hit, remember that the era of the blockbuster was an anomaly. Before the Industrial Revolution, culture was mostly local – niches were geographic. The economy was agrarian, which distributed populations as broadly as the land. Distance divided people, giving rise to such diversity as regional accents and folk music, and the lack of rapid transportation and communications limited the mixing of cultures and the propagation of ideas and trends."

When I came up with our company name, Bazaarvoice, I was inspired by The Cluetrain Manifesto and thinking about how word of mouth has always been the most powerful form of marketing.  Human nature hasn't changed; it isn't like we all woke up last year thinking, "We need to communicate with each other more".  What has changed is the ease of communicating in a globally-connected sense.  This has profound implications for word of mouth and is driving an explosion in consumer-generated content.  As Anderson writes, "the Internet's peer-to-peer architecture is optimized for a symmetrical traffic load, with as many senders as receivers and data transmissions spread out over geography and time".  For all of the wonder of the Internet, it may be the most wondrous medium of all due to its power to connect people like we used to be connected locally (before the advent of the one-way, controlled broadcast medium).

I would recommend that you read Anderson's article (I can't recommend his book yet as I haven't read it) and think about how it will change your business.  Here is how I think "the long tail" changes the world of retail and eCommerce:

• More personalized products
• NikeID is just the beginning
• Community-driven commerce is a window to the future
• More niche eCommerce opportunities with established and start-up businesses capitalizing on them
• Stay tuned for The Home Depot, Gap, and many other giants launching more direct-channel-only brands
• Talk about a niche – check out Black Socks, which offers sockscriptions and won the Customer Experience Council's prestigious Copernican award last year
• The "green" or "eco-friendly" niche is going to be huge and almost all large retailers will capitalize on this, especially after An Inconvenient Truth comes out, which is sure to be remembered as the most impactful documentary to date 
• Faster product cycle times due to better and more accessible information from customers about what they like and don't like about the product
• Product reviews will play a big role here; we are already seeing our clients make some pretty profound merchandising decisions based on our word of mouth analytics
• Better customer service
• Store reviews and customer reviews will also play a big role here
• With more choice, tighter community, and a greater demand for niches, personalized service will become an even more important differentiator
• Better multichannel integration
• Buy online and pick up in store initiatives are just the beginning; REI is a good example (30% of all online purchases are picked up in their stores)
• Retailers will have to leverage their use of channels to provide a better overall customer experience or risk losing them to niche businesses
• Customer-centric, multichannel database and analytics opportunities will be a huge area of opportunity and frustration; RFID will only make this more complex
• More private-label brands
• JCPenney's ana line is a good recent example but there are many, many others
• This bullet may be redundant with the second bullet as the reason these private labels are being launched is a combination of profit margin motives as well as focusing on attractive niches for revenue growth and differentiation
• An entire discipline will evolve on creating products that drive word of mouth
• I enjoyed Bryan Eisenberg's article on ClickZ this week and think that he and Roy Williams are on the right track here; Bryan cites three triggers – architectural, kinetic, and generous – and provides examples from our client's product reviews of these triggers driving five-star product satisfaction and word of mouth
• This will lead to much tighter communication between retailers and their suppliers with product reviews being one of the most important sources of data for these conversations (obviously returns and sales being the two longest-adopted sources)
• Members of the rapidly growing Word of Mouth Marketing Association will play a big role in this evolution

What am I missing from this list?  And how do you think it will change your business?

Two other important notes that are relevant to this post:

1. In this same issue of Wired, I was happy to see "The Power of Peer Production" named as one of the six trends driving the global economy, by Chris Anderson no less.
2. Speaking of hits, Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg's new book, "Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?", is out and has already been named to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestsellers list.  Here is the praise I wrote for the book when Bryan was nice enough to give me a preview copy:

   "The Web is a democratizing force as the world's largest global brain.  It educates everyone on the pros and cons of every product, service, and even person.  An educated person doesn't react well to the traditional art of manipulation that some marketers attempt to employ in their campaigns.  As a matter of fact, it makes them angry and defensive … like a cat backed into a corner.  No one understands this new world of marketing better than the Eisenbergs.  Waiting For Your Cat to Bark? is the marketing manifesto of our generation.  Read it, weep, and then go do something about it."