Reuters Comes to Second Life
Venerable wire service Reuters (my alma mater in the news business) has opened a bureau in the virtual world of Second Life, built out by virtual world services firm The Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog). There’s a very nice tower on the Reuters sim, where correspondent Adam Reuters (aka Reuters’ Adam Pasick) will hold regular “office hours,” and you can pick up a free heads-up display or virtual wall-mounted unit that feeds running headlines from both SL and RL that can be clicked through to a Web page for the full stories. This is a very impressive effort on Reuters’ part, with Adam being named SL Bureau Chief. The news agency has also launched a Web page devoted to SL, where his stories can be read and subscribed to.
Another nice aspect of the project is that readers can record their interest in a story via the HUD, which will also alert them when discussions on stories of interest are being held and offer them a teleport to the Reuters site if they want to take part.
Reuters’ press release bills the project as “the world’s first virtual news bureau in Second Life,” which of course must be qualified by the fact that there are any number of native publications already coming out of SL. But it is the first time a major news organization has taken an ongoing interest in the world, and is very significant for that fact. Adam is already posting excellent stories on SL, so I’ll be interested to see how the project progresses and whether Reuters is committed to virtual news for the long haul. For now, things look good.
Feeds
Hahah! I’m loving this already… His interview with teh ginko guy was most amusing.
Breaking News: Congressman buys Girl Bits!…
3pointD reports that Reuters has come to Second Life, and it seems they plan to stick around. One of their first stories covers the US Congress recent probe into virtual economies(I’m sure that’s not all they’re launching *nudge wink*…
As a news junkie, it’s not surprising that I got totally into this project. I am a huge fan of the reuters HUD and the live feeds into SL. I hope that residents take to the social networking features built in as well. It was a ton of fun being on Reuters island this morning as avatars popped in and the discussion became lively. I like that Reuters is not just extending themselves into a new world, but also trying to enable greater discourse around the news.
More information is always a good thing, so it’s great to see Reuters join James Au, Mark Wallace, the in-world publications like Metaverse Messenger and SL Business, the army of bloggers, and now C-Net and Wired who are getting more involved. (to name just a few)
This is genious! This is exactly how I want my metaverse to be! Everything about this is wonderful! The HUDs and live feeds and the opening for discussion! Great!
I’m wondering if this could be done in other virtual worlds as well? Would this be attractive in WoW, for example? Would it ruin the gaming experience or actually enhance the enjoyment and immersion? Hmm…
The Slurl script on jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu causes a slow timeout, which is causing your page to be gray and not fully loaded for 30+ seconds in Safari and Firefox. I’m just saying…
Audi lance une nouvelle pub, dans Second Life…
C’est dans les bureaux virtuels de RiversRunRed que la récente publicité vidéo de la Audi A6 fut lancé. Les photos sont une gracieuseté de Louise Jorden (aka Jordie Few dans SL). À noter aussi qu’après C/…