Jay-Z, Jimmy Kimmel & Second Life. What Was the Point?
Last night a huge crowd gathered on the Pontiac sims of Second Life for what was pitched as a live taping of the Jimmie Kimmel show and the Jay-Z performance.
It was fun as we got to hear the stream of the live audio from the interviews until the lawyers shut that down.
After a sim crash and delays upon delays Jay-Z finally performed. His avatar danced around the stage while we heard the live stream from the performance. Just like any other concert in SL which happen every night.
After two songs it was done. I felt completely underwhelmed so I turned on the TV to see how they used it during the actual airing of the show. That was what I was interested in since I wasn’t sure what they were going to do with it.
I stayed up watching it and besides a little mention of SL at the beginning there was NOTHING.
All hype, zero return. This is not how a company should approach something like Second Life. They didn’t even go for any buzz since the announcement of the event only came out late yesterday afternoon. I know some very talented people who worked on setting this up and they were working hard last night during it as well. I feel bad for them because I don’t understand what they did all the work for during a holiday week. It confuses me.
I’m sure there was a point to this whole evening, but I sure don’t see it yet.
The highlight was the random conversations and the live DJ at the beginning spinning mashups from the UK. Wished he had stayed around longer.
I agree with all of your observations. Because of their execution of the event, I’d imagine that the whole Second Life component was not the focus of Jay-Z being on Kimmel. The material was probably cut after it was recorded because Kimmel apologized for not squeezing in a guest interview as the credits were about to roll.
Kimmel sounded awkward asking his audience about Second Life and he clearly had no interest in explaining it. When he held up pictures of his and Jay-Z’s avatar, the crowd laughed and he commented, “Looks like me after I was beat up.”
I’m thankful to be a podcaster where time limits and ratings are, for the most part, alien.
In any case…
Happy Thanksgiving!!
I too expected to see at least a brief glimpse of our SL ‘avatars’ getting their groove on - and should have known better before emailing my friends and telling them to watch for my avatar’s network television debut. The whole deal feels like it was brought together at the last minute (flash-mobbed), and it showed… it may not be exciting, but nothing beats good planning and properly managing expectations. Note: after having received my notice and RSVPing I tried to teleport onto the island off and on for 2 hours… I should have tried to swim for it I guess…
Amen! This was rediculous. I even asked my wife (a SL pessimist) to watch with me- to finally show her some RL crossovers. Boy did I look like a jackass! After begging her to sit and watch with me I only managed to get an “I Told You So.” Oh and another thing, she loved the new song so much that I now have to buy her the entire JZ album. It went from a fun and FREE 30 minute conversion of my wife to a SL fan to me shelling out $ for another CD. Something went horribly wrong. Zoinks!
[…] I was recently critical of a network’s event in Second Life. I also didn’t like how another brand approached Podcasting. […]
Shame it wasn’t so great, glad you liked Andy Asylum though, he’s a mate and has a nice club at Parkade where I also *cough* DJ *cough* Veiled plug? Moi? Well I am a fellow podcaster…;-)
Good to meet you at PCC - hope to meet you sometime soon and chat more