Second Life Trading Predictions
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 12/28/2007 - 14:02Okay, all of you Second Life traders out there, who wants to make any predictions about trading in Second Life for 2008? I have two types of predictions. First, big picture predictions, how many exchanges will there be in Second Life at the end of 2008? Will any major corporations step into the fray? How many IPOs will there be? How many companies will fail? Will brokerage emerge? Trading in futures, options, commodities, indices, other types of securities? What else is likely to emerge? Add your comments below, or send me an email with your predictions.
Then, for the more serious Second Life trader, I’m putting up a list of current companies on the SlCapex, ACE, and VSTEX exchanges. These are the exchanges that have good data feeds to run analysis on. I’m posting the support level, resistance level, as well as the bid, ask and last as of creating my spreadsheet. There are two columns at the end of it. One is to predict the share price at the end of 2008 and the other is to put in the predicted average monthly dividend. It is a comma delimited file that can easily be loaded into Excel or other spreadsheets. Down the file, add your projections in the final two columns and email your predictions to me at aldon dot hynes at orient dash lodge dot com.
Second Life Brokerage
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/27/2007 - 20:26Yesterday, L&L Bank and Trust issued this statement about what they have been up to. Of interest to many is the addition of brokerage to their services. What will this really look like? Xavier Mohr addresses the idea here. Will this be the first brokerage, or a sixth exchange, Xavier asks. Is this a good or bad thing?
Exploring Blogger Bias
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/27/2007 - 17:24Yesterday on a mailing list I’m a member of, someone pointed to Kaye D. Sweetser’s article, Blog bias: Reports, inferences, and judgments of credentialed bloggers at the 2004 nominating conventions. Since I was one of those credentialed bloggers, I was particularly interested what the article had to say. I contacted Kaye and got the longer version of her article.
In her research, she had people code each sentence in the blogs written as part of the convention coverage into three basic types; reports, inferences and judgments. Each of these were further broken down into whether the reports were attributed or not, whether the inferences were labeled or not, and whether the judgments were favorable or unfavorable, and whether they were attributed or not. She did further analysis on the role of gender in the coverage as well as the differences between the Democrats and the Republicans.
The results were about as I would have expected. Traditional media has a higher percentage of ‘reports’, approximately twice the percentage that bloggers use. Given that many traditional journalists are called ‘reporters’ and that ‘traditional media coverage holds objective reporting sacrosanct’, this isn’t surprising. Yet even for the bloggers at the conventions, the most common form of sentence was the report.
I went to the convention with no pretense of being a reporter. I wore my bias on my sleeve and in the form of buttons and stickers on my shirt. Since that experience, I have blogged many events. I have not shied away from expressing my biases and try to be as up front as I can be about what underlies these biases.
In light of this, I wonder how I compared with the other bloggers who were credentialed in 2004. Did I use more reporting or judgments than other bloggers at the time? How has my writing changed over the years? How has the writing of other bloggers changed? What will the blogging at the 2008 conventions be like? Beyond the political realm, how does this apply to other bloggers?
The academic would say that this report, and these questions illustrate the need for further research. I agree. It also provides material for those hoping to blog the 2008 conventions should think about as they prepare to cover them.
Smiles in Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 12/26/2007 - 19:54“You don’t realize that avatars don’t usually smile until someone offers you one.” That is what Joni Rich said to me as she explained the “Colgate Smile” campaign in Second Life. It presents a much different view of the campaign than was described in this Massively entry. Perhaps, that is because Joni and her company is approaching things from a different perspective reflecting changes going on in marketing as well as one of the key components of what makes Second Life more than just a more immersive website.
