I’m fascinated by the new virtual worlds that have popped up over the past year. Second Life is obviously the most popular one right now with an estimated 1.9MM “residents” as of this blog post. But there are many more out there, each with different features and selling points. I’m personally wondering how much of a commitment people can make to multiple virtual worlds and if there will come a time when you can take your avatar and use it cross-worlds.

I did come across this site that lists an unreal amount of virtual worlds, most of which I had never heard of. Here are a few I found interesting:

- MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach - You guessed it, a virtual world based on MTV’s popular show Laguna Beach (interestingly if you check out this link you’ll see that MTV has created what is being termed a “broadband” website)

- Kaneva - Atlanta-based company started by a local Atlanta tech legend, Chris Klaus

- Virtual Magic Kingdom - for the kids

- Teen Second Life - right, I wonder which world the teens will choose if given the option to hang with adults in Second Life or run around with a bunch of other teens in Teen Second Life

I posted recently about Mark Cuban’s take on GooTube (Google’s acquisition of YouTube) in which he suggests that the legal fees required to fight the copyright infringements caused by users uploading unlicensed video would ultimately be its demise. Cuban also made the point that YouTube doesn’t really have anything to keep it ahead of the competition other than the most eyeballs at the moment, which was the point I was agreeing with. And I still agree with that although there’s a chance the eyeballs alone will be enough. MySpace certainly hopes so anyway.

However, it seems that the recent partnership between CBS and YouTube might pave the way for a very prosperous and litigation-less future for YouTube. As part of the deal, YouTube created a CBS channel on their site to allow CBS to post as much video as they want. In return, CBS is allowed to monitor the YouTube site for any copyright infringements of their content and they are then allowed to either have the content removed or share in the revenue generated from the ads.

The results have already been impressive. In just a few months, over 35,000 users have subscribed to the CBS feed and almost 30 million people have viewed content on the CBS channel. And the programs that CBS is posting videos of are seeing a bump in their TV ratings.

So while I never doubted that Google would figure out how to make YouTube a revenue-generating machine, I am certainly surprised that they have so quickly figured a way to create a win-win situation for everyone involved.

It amazes me that in a world where everyone is on the go all the time, technology continues to make it so simple to stay connected and even meet new people and find new businesses or restaurants along the way. CNN reported on some services that are paving the way for the ability to connect individuals via their GPS enabled mobile phones.

One use of this technology includes allowing dating services to send text messages to subscribers informing them of potential matches in the area. While this might be convenient if you’re looking to meet someone, I’m not so sure I would want potential matches to know I’m out and about and close by – what if I’m having a bad hair day? All joking aside, that aspect makes me somewhat uncomfortable. However, I don’t have to subscribe to the service if I’m not interested.

Another GPS enabled service mentioned in the article, which does appeal to me, is called Socialight. Though it’s still under development, they’ve certainly been in the spotlight. When I first heard about the site, I was a little uneasy about my cell phone allowing others to figure out where I am, but after watching their feature on The Discovery Channel I was sold. I’ve lived in Atlanta for a year and a half, and still look for new places to try out every weekend. With Socialight, I could login to my account, allow it to find my location, and it would present user-tagged locations nearby my current position. And if I happen to find a restaurant worth sharing, who am I to keep it to myself? I can create a sticky note, along with a picture, describing the menu and service.

Word of mouth has proven a valuable tool for up and coming businesses and restaurants; we’ve all taken suggestions from friends, family, and co-workers when looking for anything. This being the case, I wonder if services such as Socialight will be used by companies in the future as a semi-viral method of introducing themselves to potential customers, along with YouTube, MySpace, and other user generated sites.

Wenda Harris Millard, chief sales officer at Yahoo, isn’t quite getting the whole user-generated content thing. And that’s not good for Yahoo as she’s pretty important over there.

Millard, in a recent story by Advertising Age, defines the success of YouTube as “a lot of page views. What was their revenue this year?” Well, bah humbug. As I read that quote I’m reminded of my junior high days when two kids would be in an insult fight (yes, we had insult fights) and finally when the “loser” couldn’t think of a good comeback he’d say, “Well, I’m rubber and you’re glue and anything you say bounces off me and sticks to you.”

The fact is, YouTube hasn’t been around for two years yet (started in February 2005) and it took Yahoo two years to make a profit. And sometimes to be a leader you have to break new ground, profits be damned, in order to cause enough disruption in an industry to set yourself apart. Yahoo used to know that, but now that MySpace and YouTube are getting all the attention and they aren’t the media darlings anymore (Google took that from them years ago), they have to get defensive because they have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

My favorite part of the article is when she’s asked about viral campaigns and social marketing and she isn’t very impressed with them saying, “I have a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old, and they don’t want to be [MySpace] friends with the Burger King king“. Gosh, I wish I had known that the Millard kids represent the pulse of America’s youth. We could have saved all that time on surveys and research and just given them a call. I guess the 134,000 people that ARE friends with the Burger King king on MySpace are insignificant.

If you wanted to fly from Atlanta to Ohio for the holidays - and who wouldn’t want to enjoy December in Cleveland - you would probably find yourself using a site such as Expedia or an airline’s own site to find prices and book your flight. Most travelers have come to know that prices for flights change regularly and that certain rules like a weekend stay or 14 days advance notice can be followed to get good deals. Though not entirely consumer friendly, we understand that airlines have to fill up their planes and yield management is critical to their business model as fragile as it is. The one thing we count on as consumers is that two people searching the same site at the same time will get the same price.

What if this was not true? Even worse, what if the Byzantine world of airline pricing models was made even more obtuse and applied to everyday items on the web? Would we, or perhaps more importantly should we, deal with such an annoyance? Increasingly shopping websites have started implementing complex pricing models based on more dimensions than you can shake an Excel pivot table at. What if a customer geolocated as being in Georgia was given a higher price for a sweet tea maker during the dog days of August than a customer in Ohio would on the same website? Would either customer feel comfortable knowing that vagaries such as location, the existence or lack of website cookies, and whether your internet connection is broadband or dialup would affect the price they are shown for a particular item?

As retailers search for the next step of sophistication for their ecommerce sites, many are setting their sites on sophisticated, real time pricing models to extract additional revenue from their customers. While I am not one to bemoan the use of mathematical models to increase revenue, I would caution these retailers about the fundamental value of fairness and predictability when it comes to pricing. In my travels overseas I have become accustomed to haggling in markets to get the best price for an item, while in the USA however I am used to seeing a price marked on an item and paying it. The excitement of haggling in an outdoor shopping bazaar in Mumbai (It will always be Bombay to me) is not the experience most shoppers would want on mainstream ecommerce sites. Worse yet the new technologies being implemented attempt to be transparent to the shopper, so not only are you presented with a different price than someone else for the same item, you are also prevented from asking for a lower price.

The hunt for increased profit margins is understandable in ecommerce as profit margins for online vendors can be elusive in the land of free shipping promotions and rising keyword prices. This situation needs to be addressed by right sizing ad spending and increasing operational efficiencies. It should not be addressed by the growing opaqueness of pricing models. Consumers want and deserve a reasonable clarity in the prices they are shown on any one particular site. If the current trend towards mathematical pricing obfuscation continues then shoppers will only become less loyal to the sites they purchase from, ultimately causing an increase in costly lead generation efforts to combat customer churn. Ecommerce retailers in for the long haul should focus on merchandising, operational efficiencies and customer retention efforts rather than discrete math. As Einstein said “Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Last week, I spent hours freeing my dining room from its 1964 wallpaper captor. It was Me V. Wallpaper. My fingers sore and callused, I was at war! My husband begged me to hire contractors for the job. I wouldn’t hear of it. I come from a generation who believes that if you work really hard, make sacrifices, and have a good strategy for success, there will be a big payoff in the end.

It’s typical for people in my generation to feel the way I do. Our families sold us on the American Dream, often by their actions. I know mine did. Growing up, I took pride in my immigrant grandfather, forced into self-employment in the 6th grade, who worked night and day to grow a successful New York City window washing company. I watched my cousin start her own clothing line… my uncle start his own magazine…my brother start his own programming business…my mother’s first husband grow his own movie production corporation… and my mother become a CEO. Their dreams were all very different. But hard work, sacrifice, and strategy were always the key to their success. My family came to American to live the American Dream. And as I watched, they lived that dream – again and again.

But Generation Y is getting a slightly different message from their families – particularly the youngest members of this user segment, now in their teens. They are more separated from the blood, sweat, and tears of their forefathers. Life has been easier for them. Technology made this possible. The expectation of inheritances made this possible. Helicopter parenting made this possible. Gen Y parents are telling their children that they can do and have and be anything they want, just like my parents did. But they are leaving out the part about the hard work, sacrifice, and strategy. The American Dream is vastly different for Gen Y.

Online, Gen Y often gets confused when their parents’ advice doesn’t work. Gen Y is asking, Why? Why do I have to figure out how this shopping cart icon works – why can’t I just check out? Why do I have to learn to play this video game – why can’t I just play? Why do I have to search this website – why can’t I just find what I’m looking for instantly? Why are they making me try?

As interface designers, it’s not our job to teach Gen Y about hard work, sacrifice and strategy – tempting as it may be. Instead, it’s our job to meet their expectations by designing interfaces that get them what and where they want fast. It’s our job to prevent Gen Y from realizing the flaws in their parents’ message – to continue to shelter them from the harsh realities of real life and to grant them what they believe they have been entitled to all along. After all, the Internet is one of the few places where their parents’ message can actually work. With a well designed interface, you can be, have, and do anything you want – almost instantly.

Tracy Morgan’s character on NBC’s 30 Rock mistakenly refers to the Internet as “the Interweb” in last week’s episode. It’s an age-old joke when someone wants to act like they’ve never used the Internet, and if you know the character he plays, he probably hasn’t.
And that reminded me of a Larry King interview with Roseanne Barr I saw a few weeks ago. First of all, the fact that he’s interviewing Roseanne suggests he’s stuck somewhere in the early 1990’s. But during the interview he admits that he’s never used the Internet, asking if it is a viable political medium because “there’s 80 billion things on it.” When Barr suggested that it might be the only viable political medium left, King says that “I’ve never done it, never gone searching.”

I half expected him to say, “I guess I’ll have to look at that Interweb thing some day”. You have to see it to believe it.

In the December issue of GQ there is a nice article that chronicles YouTube’s history. In the article, Mark Cuban’s quote, “YouTube is like the bar that lets in underage kids. They’re packed until they get busted”, gives his viewpoint into the future of YouTube. He strongly believes that YouTube will be sued for copywrite infringements until they are finally exhausted into oblivion. And he also suggests that their main asset isn’t innovative technology or effective branding; it’s simply traffic.

And you know what, I think he has it right. What does YouTube really bring to the table? It’s eyeballs, plain and simple. It’s the snowball effect - it started off small and now that its been rolling down the hill long enough, its picking up everyone and everything in its path. Where do you go to upload a video? Well you go to YouTube of course.

It’s the same reason that Yahoo got crushed by Google. Yahoo used to be the place you went to search for things online. It seemed unfathomable that another player could come and so quickly unseat them. But Google, with their better technology and single-minded purpose, took over the game. Ironically, now they own YouTube. Maybe they can give YouTube that competitive advantage that they are currently lacking, because in the end eyeballs alone won’t be enough.