Virtual Events And Facebook

May 20, 2010

With 400 million active users worldwide (and counting), Facebook is enormous – in fact, Facebook recently surpassed Google as the #1 web site in the U.S. (as measured by visits).

While recent announcements have stirred up privacy concerns and caused some users to delete their accounts, Facebook continues to generate millions of new sign-ups per day.  All of us know friends, family and colleagues who use the site on a daily (or hourly) basis.

Let’s consider avenues for virtual event planners to tap into the power that Facebook can provide.

Integration 0.1: Share on Facebook

More than half of my Facebook friends (54%) are work-related acquaintances – current colleagues, current business partners, former colleagues and former business partners.  The balance (46%) are friends and family.  I’m by no means the “average” Facebook user.  I believe the typical user tends towards a 65%/35% split between family/friends and work – and, uses Facebook for a family and friend focus rather than work.

That being said, it’s clear to me that Facebook users “friend” their work contacts – and I believe that over time, a growing percentage of your Facebook friends will be work-related contacts, as our personal and work lives blend and mix online.

What does this mean for virtual events?  With a B2B focus (today), this means that a “viable” audience exists (on Facebook) for you to share the virtual events that you’re attending.  Virtual event platforms should make it easy to “share the event” on Facebook, in the same way that users share a web site’s movie review, restaurant listing or product listing.

To make virtual event sharing effective, the “shared items” should include:

  1. A simple and easy to understand title (Facebook grabs the “page title” from the virtual event page you’re sharing)
  2. A suitably sized image (on Facebook, the “sharer” can choose among the images listed on the shared page)
  3. A hyperlink for interested users

If done right, 20 attendees might share your virtual event with their 200 Facebook friends – and you’ve just allowed your audience to promote your event (on your behalf) to 4,000 potential attendees (who otherwise would not have known about your event).

Integration 1.0: Live Stream Box

CBSSports.com used it for live streaming of NCAA March Madness – so did CNN.com for the live stream of President Obama’s inauguration.  As the name implies, Facebook’s Live Stream Box is useful for the “streaming” of “live” events or occasions.  The stream box provides an “Everyone Watching” tab – to submit a comment to that tab, users must authenticate to Facebook.  Even if you don’t have a Facebook account, you’ll still be able to view the running commentary from “Everyone Watching”.

Comments posted to the “Everyone Watching” tab (in the virtual event) also appear on the submitting user’s Facebook Wall.  Thus, participation in a Live Stream Box helps promote the virtual event – users’ comments appear in the News Feed of their Facebook friends, which generates awareness of the virtual event.

Facebook members have the added benefit of a “Friends” tab, which allows users to view their Facebook News Feed, right there from the stream box.  In a virtual event, the Live Stream Box can be placed in the Auditorium (where live sessions are broadcast), the Lounge (where visitors drop by to engage with one another) or Exhibitor Booths (where booth visitors can engage with the Exhibitor – and, one another).

Integration 2.0: Open Graph

“Share on Facebook” goes in one direction (the sharer -> her friends); “Live Stream Box” combines multi-directional interaction with a corresponding one-way share.  Facebook’s Open Graph API, announced in April 2010 at Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference, takes things to the next level.

Now, users can go beyond sharing “the event” and be much more granular in what they “like” (recommend/share) in a virtual event.  I may “like” a session, a virtual booth, a document, or even another user.  And with the Open Graph, I need not share each and every “like”, posting it to my Facebook Wall.  Instead, the “likes” can be aggregated (e.g. by the virtual event platform).

Now, when I login to the virtual event, I may choose to view the activities (and likes) of Facebook friends who opted in to the sharing service.  When I’m making a purchasing decision on a complex product or service, I can poll my Facebook friends to see who’s in the same boat.  If a former colleague attended a virtual trade show in the morning, I may login during the afternoon to view the sessions and exhibitor booths that she “liked”.

Taken at a more granular level, I may choose to see the specific product collateral that she “liked” in the virtual event, or seek out the exhibitor representative that she chatted with and “liked”.  By leaning on those whom I trust, my journey through a virtual trade show just got more productive.

Conclusion

Facebook and its 400+ million users cannot be ignored.  There will be more and more business decisions guided (and made) on Facebook – it can be a great place to “share” your virtual event, both the event as a whole and individual elements within it.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

What Can Be Better: Social Networks, Social Games, Virtual Events

May 4, 2010

Social networks, social games and virtual events are coming together.  Today, INXPO announced the INXPO Social Suite, which brings social networks and social gaming directly into the INXPO virtual events platform.

Over on the InXpo blog (Virtual Insights), I provide details on how we’re making these powerful forces come together.

Here’s a link to the full blog posting: Introducing INXPO Social Suite

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

How To Use Twitter For Virtual Event User Support

March 8, 2010

End user support for virtual events has traditionally been provided via a small number of channels: email and telephone support (which is especially useful for users having issues entering the virtual event) and “in-show support”, which is typically provided in a “help booth” within the virtual event.  With growing use of social media, however, attendees are leveraging their social network tools to request (and receive) user support.

From my observations, Twitter is the most widely used social network for virtual event support requests (today) – however, I wouldn’t be surprised to see increased “calls for help” via Facebook and LinkedIn.  This posting provides tips and best practices on providing virtual event end user support via Twitter.

Create/Establish a Twitter Account

Users can’t find you on Twitter if you’re not there, which means that if you don’t already have a presence on Twitter, you’ll need to create one.  I recommend a Twitter ID that incorporates your company name – or, the product, platform or service that you provide (if that’s different from your company name).  In addition, be transparent about the contributors (employees) who tweet on behalf of your company and brand.

Create A Real-Time Dashboard (of  tweets)

Configure your Twitter client (e.g. TweetDeck, Seesmic, etc.) with the relevant search terms and hash tags related to your virtual event.  At minimum, you’ll want to monitor the following:

  1. @Replies sent to your Twitter account (in TweetDeck, the column is labeled “Mentions”)
  2. A search on the hash tag for your virtual event
  3. A search on your company name – or, the name of your platform, product or service
  4. A search on the virtual event’s name or title

If it helps you stay more focused, delete columns that are unrelated to the virtual event – the result will be a single app that consolidates all “chatter” related to your event.  I recommend that you monitor for new tweets every 15 minutes while the event is live.

Allocate Proper Staffing & Get Started Early

In the same manner that you allocate support staff to booths, email inboxes and telephones, be sure to allocate staff to “Twitter support”.  You want to get up and running early – I recommend monitoring Twitter at least one full hour before the official opening of your virtual event.  Virtual event producers typically allow exhibitors into the environment prior to attendees – so during the “early period”, be on the look-out for tweets from exhibitors who may need assistance finding their way into their virtual booths.

Have at least one person who is “primary” for Twitter support throughout the event day.  And, know that Twitter users expect quick turnaround to their tweets.  Trend setters such as @comcastcares have provided highly responsive and immediate customer care on Twitter, which has raised the bar for everyone else.  Users on Twitter have come to expect similar care and responsiveness.

If you do not respond within 15-20 minutes of users’ original tweet, they may issue a subsequent tweet, letting the “world” (e.g. their followers + users who are following the event’s hash tag) know that they’ve received no response from the event provider.  So be sure to provide prompt service – if your customer care is prompt and effective, you’ll be rewarded.  Users are just as quick to say “thanks” (on Twitter) and acknowledge the great service you provide.

Following Up With A User

I prefer to handle support issues via 1-on-1 care.  Before you contact the user, review their Twitter profile – as background to your upcoming dialog, it’s good to know the user’s company, title and number of Twitter followers.  I like to know if the user has an audience of 100 on Twitter – or, an audience of 100,000.  In addition, read the user’s last 10-15 tweets, to get to know his/her interests, hot buttons, etc.

Now you’re ready to make contact.  I prefer to connect directly – a direct message on Twitter (if the user is following you), a direct email (if you have his/her email address) or a private chat within the virtual event (if the user is logged in at the time).  If none of these channels are available to you, send the user a public message on Twitter and provide your direct contact info (e.g. your email address).

It’s important to personalize your brand, letting users know that there are “real people” behind your corporate Twitter account – and, providing them with a direct means for getting in touch.

1-on-1 Triage

To prepare you for a “triage session” with your end user, I like the have the following information available via URLs that I can provide to the user:

  1. Technical requirements for accessing/attending the virtual event
  2. Automated system check that allows a user to test their system
  3. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) related to the virtual event
  4. A “contact us” page related to end user support (e.g. providing an email address, phone number, etc.)

In addition, be sure to have higher level “support experts” available in case you need to delegate a sophisticated system issue.  The experts should be available within the virtual event – or, be available “on call” to jump in as needed.

Post-Resolution

Once you’ve resolved a user’s issue, follow them on Twitter – this allows them to send you direct messages.  And, it allows you to be quickly apprised of any subsequent issues they may come across.  Later on in the day, check if the user is logged in to the virtual event – if so, send a private chat request and politely ask how the event is going.  It’s always good for users to know that you’re actively supporting the event and genuinely interested in their satisfaction.

On Twitter, respond to each and every end user “tweet” – mention that the issue is resolved and invite the user to contact you back as needed.  Be careful, however, not to include the event’s hash tag on all of these follow-up tweets.  As the virtual event platform, you do not want to have a significant presence in the hash tag’s tweetstream.  Rather, only include the hash tag if your tweet relates to system-wide updates (applicable to all or most users).

The occasional update (with the hash tag) shows users that you’re listening – and replying to every single tweet shows your followers that you are responsive to each issue that arises.

The Entire Team Contributes

If your virtual event support staff is comprised of active Twitter users, encourage them to tweet about the event – have them highlight interesting sessions, pass along comments from enthusiastic attendees or simply state that they’re having a great time.  This helps promote the event itself – and, highlights the depth of the team behind the event support.  Take it a step further and create a Twitter List of your staff – allowing interested users to follow your employees tweets via a list.

Conclusion

The world is going social, which means that user support and customer service need to be “socially listening” (and responding).  Get ahead of the curve – be sure to support your next virtual event on Twitter.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Evolving The Virtual Event Group Chat

February 26, 2010

Excerpt of LinkedIn Discussion ("Virtual Events Forum")

For me, the best content in LinkedIn is found in Discussion threads in LinkedIn Groups to which I belong.  Why is the content so good?

  1. It has a precise focus that’s aligned with the charter or focus area of the group
  2. It’s based around timely topics (i.e. what group members are currently interested in discussing)
  3. It’s interactive with a loopback mechanism – there’s a dialog that unfolds – someone making a wild claim will be called on it and will need to return to the discussion to justify the claim (or, lose credibility by remaining silent)
  4. It’s the best form of “user generated content” – from subject matter experts and hands-on practitioners

As such, some content in LinkedIn Discussions can prove to be more useful and valuable than comparable content in related industry publications and web sites.  The LinkedIn Discussion thread is a great example of the “wisdom of the crowds” surpassing the knowledge of a handful of individuals.

Virtual Event Group Chat

While allowing for the fact that a portion of virtual event group chat is logistics-related (e.g. “I don’t hear the audio on the Live Webcast”), chat content related to the event’s theme (topic) comprises some of the most useful and compelling content in the entire event.  Why is that?  It’s for all the same reasons I list (above) for the LinkedIn discussion.

The challenge in leveraging an event’s group chat, however, is this:

If I’m not actively monitoring the group chat, how do I participate?

In my mind, the virtual event group chat needs to evolve to better serve attendees.

Group Chat Threading

Attendees may visit a group chat area (e.g. Networking Lounge), with an interest to discuss numerous topics (see example with LinkedIn Discussion topics, above).  In an unstructured group chat, the introductory chat message (to start the discussion) is likely to be “interrupted” with other, unrelated messages.  The result is some “scattering” of the chat content, with the possibility that a meaningful discussion (on the original topic) never happens.

Today’s “Wild, Wild West” of group chat needs to become threaded – the group chat’s user interface needs to allow participants to denote which message(s) they are commenting on – with the resulting “chat window” nesting (or otherwise grouping) messages within the same thread.  Additionally, the chat system should auto-populate information on which user one is responding to.  This way, participants no longer need to preface their comment with the name of the person they’re responding to.

A wealth of additional features become possible once this sort of threading feature is enabled.

Embraces and extends chat topics

I submit a chat message, asking if folks are interested in “Topic X”.  If no one answers me back within the next 10 minutes, that chat topic is dead.  Threaded chat, however, allows attendees to bring topics back from the dead.  If a visitor enters three hours later and decides to reply to my original message, that section of “threaded chat” can be moved to the “current timeline” in the group chat area – much in the same way a comment on a friend’s Facebook posting moves the original posting “up” in your News Feed.

Real-Time Search!

If I’m not able to dedicate the time to visit and monitor a group chat area, the next best thing would be a virtual event search function that provides real-time (or near-real-time) indexing of the group chat content.  Imagine the following capabilities:

  1. Exhibitor: perform searches on my company name – allows me to determine whether I need to enter the group chat to repsond
  2. Attendee: perform searches on topics that interest me – and be able to see the entire discussion thread on that topic
  3. Attendee: search on other attendees in my Buddy List – show me chat comments posted by my buddies
  4. Attendee: search discussion threads for comments posted subsequent to my own comments

Content Re-Use

For a B2B publisher – and, for some corporations – the content of selected discussion threads could be re-used and posted on the web as original (or, semi-original) content.  B2B sites often publish “how to guides” and best practices articles – discussion thread content (with the “right” mix of contributors) can be re-published on the web – or, used as the basis for a more in-depth article.

Conclusion

With group chat being one of the most valuable components of a virtual event, its features should evolve to better leverage the “wisdom of the crowds”.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

2010 Trend Watch: Virtual Events

February 25, 2010

Source: flickr (User: b.frahm)

For the virtual events industry, the premier face-to-face event of the year is Virtual Edge Summit, the “summit on virtual events, marketing & communities”.  Virtual Edge 2010 concluded earlier this week – the face-to-face event floored in Santa Clara, CA, while several vendors provided virtual components, allowing remote (virtual) attendees to participate in the experience.  The event saw record crowds from attendees, exhibitors and presenters.

From my observations at this year’s event, the following are a set of emerging trends in the industry.

Beyond Novelty Phase

Judging by the turn-out alone, the virtual event industry has officially “graduated” beyond the novelty phase.  Awareness of virtual events has broadened – now, when I meet someone at a social gathering and describe what I do for a living, the blank stare of years past has become a “oh yes, I’ve attended one of those”.

The increase of awareness (and, perceived importance) could be seen in the amount of coverage that Virtual Edge 2010 received – an increase in the number of publications (on-site), bloggers (both on-site and virtually) and analysts (both on-site and virtually).  Lastly, the volume of tweets (via hash tag: #ve10) was 5-10 times greater than last year – with more tweets per person and many more people tweeting.

With that being said, there are enormous untapped and unexplored markets, which will provide the industry much of its growth in 2010 and beyond.

More Players Emerge

I noticed a near doubling in the number of exhibitors this year, which means that new/emerging vendors significantly developed (or expanded) their virtual event capabilities – or, from a marketing standpoint, they determined it was the right time to get their products and services in front of this audience.

Last year, the exhibitors were fairly homogeneous – they provide apples-to-apples solutions and directly compete with one another.  This year, the breadth of solutions offerings (from the exhibitors) has expanded – some exhibitors do not necessarily compete directly with one another.

In some cases, a client may use one vendor for a particular type of virtual event and a different vendor in another type of event.  The result?  More “burden” on the attendees (buyers) to understand the solutions offered and determine which solution best fits their needs.  This affords some  industry players (agencies, consultants) a great opportunity to help clients and prospects navigate the waters.

Early Adopters Become Industry Thought Leaders

Practitioners (especially some of the early adopters in our industry) are quickly becoming the thought leaders and “go to source” for ideas, expertise and wisdom.  Many of these thought-leading practitioners were on stage this week – they were very generous with their sharing of experiences.  And, more than ever, they know precisely what they want from their vendors (which is a great thing for those in the vendor space).

In the early days, the practitioner would ask the vendor, “show me what you have” or “show me what you can do’.  Today, the tables have been turned.  Practitioners (clients) are now telling the vendors, “let me tell you what I need” or “make this experiential vision come to life for me”. This is an important aspect of the industry’s evolution – vendors crafting innovation via direct input from practitioners (as opposed to creating “innovation in a vacuum”).

3D Immersiveness

Interest in 3D immersiveness is picking up.  In fact, at Virtual Edge this year, roughly 20% of the session content involved 3D / immersiveness and a formal “Business 3Di” track was created.  The 3Di track featured practitioners, along with vendors such as Linden Lab, Teleplace, Altadyn, Digitell and web.alive (Avaya).  Like last year, Digitell provided a simulcast of the event proceedings into their 3D immersive platform (VirtualU).

Those are the “pure play” immersive environments.  In addition, virtual event platforms are coming on board as well.  In my 2010 predictions on virtual events, I wrote, “(virtual event) platforms take first step towards immersiveness”.  This prediction has come true.

It’s interesting, however – some vendors have a clear vision of what immersiveness enables for exhibitors and attendees of virtual events, while others appear to be adding immersiveness for the sake of adding it (i.e. lacking a clear and compelling use case).  It’s in the best interest of virtual event vendors to explore and enable immersiveness via specific client use cases – this way, the capabilities are added to meet a client need – and, serve as a reference (to the rest of the industry) on the true value delivered via immersiveness.

Social Media Integration

2009 was a monumental year in the evolution of both social media and virtual events.  In 2010, there continues to be a lot of talk about both topics – including discussion around how they integrate with one another.  Social media (and related social networks) were central to the discussion in many workshops and breakout sessions.

And of course, social networking was flourishing in and around the event, with a high volume of tweets, a fair number of Facebook status updates and (I’m sure) lots of LinkedIn connections made.  While I am not aware of any groundbreaking announcements from Virtual Edge on social media integration, I’d expect that platforms enable more and more social networking as 2010 unfolds.  I expect to see the platforms themselves becomes more social (natively) and increase the depth of their integration with third party social networks.  Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are commonly mentioned – but expect to see industry-specific, niche networks and communities integrated as well.

Industry Ecosystem Begins to Take Shape

Virtual event platform vendors have established a number of strategic partnerships to extend account/client reach and grow/scale business opportunities.  Most of those partners were present at Virtual Edge – and a number of partners had prominent speaking roles in the sessions.  By this time next year, even more partners will enter the space and appear at the event.

Additionally, smaller businesses (and individuals as well) are seeking to leverage opportunities within virtual events to bring in new business – or sign on for consulting roles.  The list includes video production companies, design agencies, digital signage providers, freelance producers/writers/story-tellers, streaming providers and emerging social network / community sites.  As these “players” look to get a small piece of the industry pie, they serve to grow the overall ecosystem of this industry.

Finally, hands-on practitioners are finding a fluid and welcoming job market, despite the less inviting macro job environment.  Virtual events are still new enough that production staff, developers and strategic consultants have highly specialized knowledge and skills – as such, they’re able to quickly transition from their existing (or past) role to a new vendor, service provider or practitioner (client side).  Most of the vendors in the space are aggressively hiring, which means that savvy job seekers leveraged the conference to generate meaningful employment leads.

Conclusion

It’s an exciting time in our industry – I’m looking forward to seeing how things shape up for Virtual Edge 2011.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

How 3D Virtual Worlds Can Be More Like Twitter And Facebook

February 8, 2010

3D Virtual Worlds Diagram

Facebook and Twitter have taught us that people of all ages love to utilize the web for self-expression, connecting and staying in touch.  3D virtual worlds have similar characteristics: the ability for self-expression via customized avatars and the creation of your own ‘island’; the ability to connect with friends (or meet people you’d never get a chance to meet in the real world); and the ability to be part of a vibrant community.

In addition, 3D virtual worlds offer a fully immersive environment, that allows you to escape from the real world – and, experience virtual representations of real-world locations. For virtual worlds experiencing declining usage, however, “community” becomes a challenge to maintain (i.e. imagine using Facebook when none of your friends or family are using it).

Mark Kingdon (in-world: “M Linden“), the CEO of Linden Lab, laid out his vision of Second Life’s evolution, tying it in with the recent acquisition of Avatars United.

M. Linden on Community:

“When we talk to the users who sign up but then decide not to stay, they say they left, in part, because they had a hard time finding people to hang out with. Either their friends weren’t there, or they have a hard time meeting new ones inworld, or sometimes both.  We need to fix this.”

M. Linden on Social Sharing:

“Another part of the “social glue” of any community is the concept of sharing.  Inworld, it’s easy to share and we’ll make it even easier.  But sharing between Second Life and the larger social Web is not as easy.  As an avid photographer (well, aspiring to be avid), I’d love to be able to easily share my snapshots from Second Life with my friends on other Web services, and be able to watch a feed of the people I’m interested in.”

Reaction

Kingdon’s blog posting generated a wealth of comments from the Second Life community – I’d characterize the comments as mixed to fairly positive.  My own reaction to the blog posting was very positive – my use of Second Life (and other virtual worlds) would increase based on my knowledge of in-world events/happenings attended by members of my social graph.

Here are my thoughts on how to increase community engagement and social sharing in a 3D virtual world.

Facebook and Twitter

Direct Integration with Twitter, Facebook

With Avatars United, according to Kingdon, “you’ll start to build an activity feed (similar to Facebook or Twitter) that keeps you in closer touch with the people you’re connected to in Second Life.” While I see value in a single feed that aggregates content from multiple social networks, I see equal (if not more) value in direct integration of Twitter, Facebook, etc., into the virtual world.

The Twitter API and Facebook Connect make doing so fairly straightforward.  A B2B company with an island in Second Life may want to integrate a Twitter stream that displays tweets related to the company.  Similarly, the company could prompt visitors to tweet about their visit and have that message be distributed to all of the visitor’s followers on Twitter.

By enabling this, the owner of the island generates “free” promotion to the social web – and, the underlying platform gains wider reach as well.  A relevant analogy is Ustream’s Social Stream, which allows viewers to “chat with your friends over Twitter” while they’re viewing a live video.

On the Facebook front, imagine if the virtual world platform enabled Facebook Connect, thus allowing residents to sign in to Facebook and find a list of their Facebook friends who are also residents.  Then, imagine showing users a real-time list of their Facebook friends who are in-world right now, with “links” to teleport to the friends’ locations.

Borrowing from another popular service (Foursquare or Gowalla), the virtual world platform could enable residents to “check in” at different locations (islands).  Broadcasting their whereabouts to their social graph may result in more “planned encounters” within the virtual world.  If my friends just checked in to “virtual island”, I may choose to teleport and join them there if I happen to be free.

“I Like It!”

Virtual worlds could create a stronger “shared experience” by allowing visitors to leave a trail of breadcrumbs reflecting their visited locations.  If I “friend” someone in-world – or, if an in-world resident is a Facebook friend of mine, then I might want to follow the path they took during their last session.  Additionally, the platform could support location endorsements, in the same way Facebook allows me to “like” a friend’s wall posting.

As I enter a location in the virtual world, I can see whether members of my social graph previously visited – and, what their comments were.  Alternatively, I could see a list of all past visitors – with a link to view their in-world avatar and profile.  If a past visitor panned a location, but I enjoyed it, allow me to send an offline message to that user, who can read my message the next time she logs in.  This allows me to connect with other users even when they’re not online (a form of virtual world email).

Source: flickr (User: Indiewench)

Virtual World Closed-Circuit TV

Business owners leverage closed-circuit TV technology to perform surveillance of their store front or office.  Wouldn’t a similar service be useful for virtual world residents, especially those who “own” an island?  While we tend to be online during our waking hours, it may not be practical to be in-world all the time.  How about a virtual world thin client – it provides a read-only “view” of a given location, similar to closed-circuit TV.

Since it doesn’t allow you to navigate, teleport, interact with others, etc. – the client is entirely lightweight and can sit in a corner of your desktop with only a portion of the CPU/RAM consumed by the full-blown client.  So if you’re interested in a given location, the closed-circuit TV can alert you to visitors – and with one click, the thin client can launch the full client and teleport you to the location.

Services (like this one) that can instantaneously connect users are a win-win – they generate more logins to the platform and enable more connections, upon which a stronger sense of community develops.  Alternatively, the virtual world platform can provide even more lightweight notification mechanisms: it can generate an email, Twitter direct message or Facebook email whenever a user enters a designated space.  The notification could contain a link that teleports the recipient into that space to connect with the current visitor(s).

Embed Web Content In-World

As Twitter and Facebook have demonstrated, users of social services are inclined to share interesting content, often in the form of web links.  Within a virtual world, “sharing” often results in the launching of a web browser to render the shared page.  Why not provide sharing capabilities that render the shared content on an in-world wall or projection screen?  This keeps users engaged, while retaining their attention in-world.  Building upon this, I may want to look up Facebook friends and be taken to all locations in which they shared content in-world (as I have an interest in what my friends are reading and sharing).

On Demand TV (for Virtual Worlds)

Facebook has a great utility that allows me to record a video on my laptop’s webcam, upload it to Facebook and share it on Facebook.  Virtual world platforms should enable users to press a “record” button and have their current session saved for later playback.  Perhaps I’m attending an in-world concert or watching a keynote presentation – capturing a recording of the session allows me to share it with members of my social graph who weren’t able to attend.  Treet TV provides similar services (with professional quality) – this capability empowers end users to create on-demand programming with the click of a mouse.

Conclusion

3D virtual worlds have a lot to offer already – by adopting useful social sharing services, they can tap into the phenomenon (social media) that’s the force behind many of today’s most popular web sites.

Related Links

  1. Wagner James Au in New World Notes, “How To Make Second Life Truly Mass Market, Part 1: Deep Integration With Facebook“

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

How Virtual Events Can Adopt Location Based Services

January 28, 2010

These days, it seems the social web is like real estate – it’s all about location, location, location.  Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt are gaining popularity as location based, mobile social services.  Yelp has rolled out Yelp Check-ins, which mirror a popular activity on the aforementioned services.  Twitter added location awareness to its API in 2009.  Facebook, some speculate, may enter the fray with their own location based services.

So how would it be possible to enable Location Based Services in a virtual event?  Well, consider that location tracking is inherent to the virtual event platform – in other words, it has a built-in GPS for all users!  I wrote previously about gaming in virtual events – that gaming can generate  retention, engagement, enjoyment and loyalty.  Location Based Services, in the form of competition and gaming, can achieve all of these benefits.  Let’s take a look at how.

Source: flickr (User: dvxfilmerdoug)

It Starts With The Buddy List

Users first need to build their social graph.  This can be accomplished with a virtual event platform’s “buddy list” feature – all users in your buddy list would receive status notifications from the location system.  The notifications would be sent to users within the virtual event (if you’re logged in).  Once you log out, you can opt to receive status notifications via email.  This way, even if you’re no longer in the event, you can receive updates (via email) on what your buddies are up to.

Build A Reward System

Next, a reward system serves as an incentive for users to participate.  The concept is similar to the becoming “mayor” of a location on Foursquare.  In a virtual event, perhaps you allow privileged users (who have achieved a certain status) to obtain a badge – whereby the badge can superimposed on their avatar image – or, listed on their profile page.  In addition to the badge system, a master leaderboard (and perhaps segmented leaderboards) should be utilized, allowing users to track their performance relative to other users.

The Virtual Trade Show

First, the notion of a social graph in a virtual trade show may be an upfront challenge.  At most trade shows, you may know a handful of colleagues or associates who are also attending – but for the most part, everyone else is a stranger (to start).  Thus, a system may need to be in place first to encourage users to add other users to their buddy list.

Assuming you can achieve decent-sized buddy lists, then the “check-in” becomes quite relevant in a virtual trade show.  Each visit that I make to an event area can be tracked (by the platform) as a check-in – allowing my buddies to know what areas I visited – and, where I am right now.  Secondly, I might leave a review or comment about a particular area – perhaps I enjoyed the content in an exhibitor’s booth – or, I didn’t find a Webcast to be all that useful.  When my buddies enter those same areas, they can then view the comments I left them from my prior check-ins.  Thus, when a buddy enters the same exhibitor booth, she knows that I visited earlier and enjoyed the content there.

Exhibitors could then sponsor areas of the event (besides their own booth) – the Lounge, Auditorium, Resource Center, etc.  Then, attendees can vie to become the “mayor” of a given area.  At the end of the live event, perhaps the mayor of the Lounge receives a prize that’s awarded by the Lounge’s sponsor – and to receive the prize, agrees to have a short conversation with that sponsor.  Already, you can begin to see how this location “app” can generate additional activity and engagement.

Source: flickr (User: Live Solutions)

The Virtual Sales Conference

In a virtual sales conference (and related corporate events), attendees naturally have a large list of potential buddies – the trick is to incent the attendees to populate that list within the virtual event.  Alternatively, management may choose to pre-select the buddy lists by organizing the sales force into teams – whereby your buddy list is pre-seeded with your fellow team members.  The location app is all about checking in (with each other) and sharing information towards gaining points for your team.  In this manner, the location app helps encourage learning and collaboration, making the virtual sales conference more effective.

Social Networks

For certain types of events (e.g. virtual trade shows), integrating the location system with users’ social networks can be powerful.  For instance, a check-in to the keynote presentation can auto-generate a tweet out to the attendee’s Twitter followers – providing a registration link to the event.  Similarly, a check-in at an exhibitor’s booth may prompt the user whether she wants to post an update to her Facebook wall.  In summary, the location service should facilitate sharing not just within the virtual event, but to external social networks as well.

Prevent Gaming (of the System)

The virtual events platform will need to carefully build the measurement and scoring methodologies to ensure that the “game is not gamed”.  In the real world, there is overhead involved in becoming the mayor of a watering hole – in the virtual world, clicking 50 times to enter an exhibitor’s booth is quite easy.  The scoring system ought to consider rate limits, as well as threshold values around selected activities.  Additionally, becoming “mayor” should factor in actions that are not as “game-able” as mouse clicks or visits.

Conclusion

There’s  probably a lot of work to enable the underlying platform to accomplish this – however, such a system can go a long way to achieving retention, engagement, enjoyment and loyalty.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

2009 Year In Review: Virtual Events

December 24, 2009

2009 was a landmark year for the virtual events industry – early adopters expanded their virtual event initiatives and leveraged the technology in innovative ways.  Many industries (and associated corporations) entered the mix, producing their first ever virtual event in 2009.  Despite the economy (or perhaps aided by the downturn), virtual event platform providers enjoyed healthy growth in client demand, event volume and revenue.  The platform market expanded beyond the U.S., with the emergence of new platforms in Europe and New Zealand.  We even had the industry’s first ever face-to-face event, the Virtual Edge Summit (U.S. – Santa Clara, CA).

To get a better sense of how 2009 unfolded, I reviewed the past 12 months of postings on this blog and sought to categorize the trends and patterns.

Source: flickr (User: Linzi's Cakes)

Assorted Shapes and Sizes

In the early days, the industry was all about virtual tradeshows.  During 2007-2008, new event types were spawned – and in 2009, we saw many more instances of non-tradeshow events: virtual job fairs, virtual sales meetings, virtual partner summits.  In addition, we saw innovative concepts applied in hybrid events – where event planners staged concurrent physical and virtual events.  I wrote about learnings and observations from Cisco Live and Networkers Virtual, in which virtual and physical blended together.  In 2010, I expect to see many more hybrid events, with event planners leveraging creative ways to tie virtual together with physical.  In fact, I believe 2010 will be The Year of The Hybrid Event.

In addition to the assorted event types – we’re starting to see the use of virtual event technology to support ongoing business communities.  The community concept makes a lot of sense in conjunction with physical or virtual events – instead of “going dark” between live event dates, event planners can leverage the “platform” to keep the community interaction and dialog going – where the events serve as “momentum points” to drive continued activity within the online business community.  I brainstormed about tactics that could be applied to sustain virtual business community loyalty.

Social Media and Twitter

With all due respect to Facebook and other services, I believe 2009 was The Year of Twitter.  There are many ways in which Twitter can be leveraged for virtual events – here are a few ideas that I blogged about:

  1. Leverage Twitter for Virtual Tradeshow Outreach
  2. How to Promote Your Virtual Event on Twitter
  3. Leverage Twitter Lists for your Physical or Virtual Event

Virtual event platforms have integrated with Twitter and other social networks – in 2010, I see the breadth and depth of integration expanding.  The expansion will be fueled both by interest (from the virtual event platforms and from clients) as well as richer interfaces (APIs) from the social network sites.  For instance, LinkedIn recently announced an open API for their platform.

In parallel to virtual events, 2009 was a watershed year for social gaming (e.g. Zynga, Playdom and other sites).  In 2010, we’ll see virtual event platforms leverage gaming for a mix of fun and business use.  I wrote about the reasons that virtual events should incorporate gaming.  Lastly, I believe the tried and true webinar needs to become more social – webinars need to encourage and support more participation from the audience.

The market extends beyond the U.S.

In 2009, virtual events platform vendors emerged globally – in order of appearance in this blog:

  1. ExpoNZ – New Zealand
  2. IMASTE – Spain
  3. Ubivent – Germany

I expect to see a few more virtual event platforms emerge in Europe in 2010 – Asia Pac is sure to see local entrants as well.

Virtual Event Best Practices

I wrote a lot about virtual event best practices in the past 12 months. Here’s a selection of the more popular postings:

  1. Virtual Event Best Practices
  2. How to Market your Virtual Event
  3. Best Practices for Virtual Tradeshow Exhibitors
  4. Lead Follow-Up for Virtual Events
  5. Assemble the Right Team for your Virtual Event
  6. Increase Your Virtual Event ROI
  7. Think Outside the Inbox for Virtual Event Promotion
  8. How to Run a Virtual Event Command Center

Happy Holidays to all.  2009 was a great year for virtual events.  And I have news for you – 2010 will be even better!

2 Comments | Virtual Tradeshows (VTS) | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Dennis Shiao

Ubivent Enters The Virtual Events Platform Market

December 2, 2009

Based in Mannheim, Germany, ubivent has entered the virtual events platform market with a recently launched platform.  According to Michael Geisser, Managing Director Market Development, the ubivent co-founders “met at university, working together in an IT research program and pursuing our PhD”.  The co-founders then spent several years working at multinational corporations, where they held numerous roles in IT and IT management.

In fact, Geisser and co-founder Thomas Butter (Managing Director Research and Development) were recently with SAP, where they worked on some of SAP’s first virtual events.  Ubivent is off to a fast start – they received 12 months of funding from EXIST, “a program of the European Union and the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology” designed to support innovation.  In addition, in late November, ubivent was selected as the most promising young company in Mannheim.

Target market

Ubivent’s initial target market is to serve large and distributed corporations – large companies have already adopted the basic technologies required for virtual events (including sufficient bandwidth capacity) and distributed companies can immediately leverage the convenience and cost savings of virtual collaboration (versus in-person).

“However, this does not mean that we do not offer our services for small, non-IT organizations”, noted Geisser. “We’ve also done projects with local authorities. Obviously, the entire project size has been not that extensive as for a global event with multiple thousands of participants.”

Since the European market for virtual events has not developed as quickly as the U.S. market, Geisser sees plenty of opportunity in Europe.  Geisser sees opportunity in all sorts of event types, but notes that “the type of the event is not as important as the content and the participants. We see the advantages of virtual events especially for knowledge-intense content (e.g. software, finance, etc.) with globally distributed participants”.

In comparing the U.S. and European markets, Geisser believes that while “US based customers put more emphasis on the look and feel, the European customers are very keen on getting a technically scalable and secure platform. Fortunately we’re combining both.”

Technology platform

Ubivent is a member of Microsoft BizSpark, a program that provides “software, support and visibility” to software start-ups.  While most virtual event platforms are built on top of Adobe Flash, ubivent’s platform is based on JavaFX, a platform for building rich internet applications that runs on top of JRE (Java Runtime Environment).

According to Geisser, the use of JavaFX serves as a competitive advantage for ubivent over competing Flash-based platforms – “JavaFX is one key advantage of our platform. This opens the door for completely new functionalities which are not possible with other technologies (e.g. Flash)”.

Ubivent developed an accessibility framework to assist visually impaired people in using their virtual events platform via a screen reader.  The source code for the accessibility framework has been published as open source.  The framework is built on top of JavaFX, which means that other platforms seeking to incorporate it would need to run JavaFX as well.

Virtual events vs. immersive virtual worlds

Geisser has taken a look at 3D immersive virtual worlds, such as Second Life and Twinity.  He believes, however, that the immersive virtual world is currently more suited to B2C or C2C use cases, whereas his B2B market is more focused on quick and convenient access to selected content.  Notes Geisser, “In a B2B context, the desire for avatars and the ability to walk through a virtual world is less distinct. Here, the focus is more the ability to quickly access information and other participants. The need to ‘walk’ through the virtual world to access this information or participant is considered adverse with regard to this goal.”

In closing

It will be interesting to watch the European market for virtual events in 2010.  Ubivent and IMASTE are two of the leading European-based providers – while they may encounter each other in common client accounts, I’m sure the providers from the U.S. market will be looking towards Europe (and Asia) as well.

Related links

  1. Follow ubivent on Twitter
  2. Ubivent’s Facebook page
  3. Ubivent-developed accessibility framework, fxaccessible
  4. Ubivent’s executive management team
  5. Audio interview – ubivent speaks about their JavaFX-based virtual events platform

5 Comments | Virtual Tradeshows (VTS) | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Dennis Shiao

To Promote Your Physical Or Virtual Event, Think Outside The Inbox

November 21, 2009

Source: flickr (User: Mzelle Biscotte)

For many, email is a constant stream, an endless loop – we receive too much of it, both “important” emails addressed directly to us and marketing emails that are sent as a result of opting in (or not) to past content, webinars, white papers and marketing lists.  Outbound, push-based email promotions face the following challenges:

  1. Imperfect delivery rates (mail server outages, spam filters, etc.)
  2. Decreasing open rates
  3. Perception of spam – if recipients don’t remember opting in to your list (even though they did), they’ll ignore your email – or, opt out from your list
  4. List fatigue due to overuse of marketing lists
  5. Decreasing click-thru rates (CTR) – once you’ve made it past delivery and open, recipients are clicking less on your embedded offers

Adding to this mix is the fact that many users now interact with brands (and by extension, promotional offers from brands) via their social networks, instead of email.  A user is more inclined to respond to an @reply or direct message (on Twitter) compared to a conventional email blast from a marketer.

Given all this, it surprises me that email is still a primary vehicle for promoting physical and virtual events.  Event marketers have much to gain by thinking outside the inbox.

Social media and social sharing

Your first step outside the inbox should be in the direction of social networks.  Build a presence in social communities and you’ll find that you naturally generate interest and awareness to your event.  Previously, I wrote about leveraging Twitter to promote your virtual event.  As Ian McGonnigal (GPJ) astutely pointed out, those same tactics apply quite well to physical events as well.

In addition to Twitter, consider the following:

Create a LinkedIn Event entry for your event

  1. Create a LinkedIn Event for your event – a LinkedIn Event page allows you to post relevant information about your event on LinkedIn (e.g. date, event content, etc.) – LinkedIn members can then indicate whether they’ll be attending, not attending or “interested”.  This can be quite useful, as folks often attend events based on knowing whom else will be attending.  By creating a LinkedIn Event, you’ll receive the benefit of having LinkedIn auto-recommend your event to other members, assuming their profile is a “match” with the profile of your event.  Members may also utilize search and find your event.  More info can be found on the LinkedIn blog page announcing the Event feature.
  2. Post videos to YouTube – it’s the #2 search engine after all (behind parent Google), so having event videos posted on the site will generate traffic from the millions of folks who visit YouTube.com each day.  Record videos of your host, keynote speaker, group publisher, etc. talking about your upcoming event – if your keynote speaker has a prominent name, your videos will attract interest from users who search on that name.  When you have a critical mass of videos, create a YouTube channel.  About.com has a neat guide on how to do just that.
  3. Create a Facebook Fan page for your event – with a fan page, you’ll generate interest for your upcoming event – and, you’ll build an ongoing community that you’ll be able to continuously leverage!  The All Facebook blog has a nice guide on how to build a Facebook fan page.
  4. Leverage blogs – author a blog posting on your corporate blog – or, if you don’t have one, ask a relevant industry blog site whether you can author a guest posting.  Alternatively, leave a comment on postings from relevant industry blogs with a pointer (link) to your event.  The key here is not to over-promote your event – your first goal is to provide useful and relevant content/commentary with your event being a secondary (and subtle) mention.

SEO and in-bound links

If you pay attention to search engine optimization (SEO), your event page(s) will receive “organic” traffic – that is, traffic that finds you, rather than you finding the traffic (i.e. the “pull” from users searching, rather than the “push” from your email promotions).  Think about the search keywords that you’d want to associate with your event [e.g. when users are performing searches] and make sure the content on your event page is rich in those keywords.

To increase the page rank of your event page, increase the number of inbound links that point to your page.  A few simple ideas:

  1. For all of your social media efforts (listed above), make sure they provide links to your event page – shazam, you’ve just created a number of inbound links
  2. For event staff (especially those with large followings on Twitter), ask them to temporarily point the “web site” URL in their Twitter profile to the event page
  3. Ask partners, associates, even clients to post a URL from their web site(s) to your event page
  4. Add a “Share on Facebook” capability on your event page – this may result in page rank benefit as search engines begin to index Facebook wall posts – until then, what this really does is generate awareness and outreach of your event to users’ Facebook friends.  If a potential attendee visits your event page and shares the page with her 100 Facebook friends, then you’ve just received 100 free advertising impressions

Advertise

Some affordable options to consider:

  1. Facebook advertising – purchase targeted ads on Facebook.  For a physical event, you can target by geography (e.g. starting with users who are geographically close to your event site).  For a virtual event, geography is less important, so you may want to target based on attributes in the users’ Facebook profiles.  You can pay per view (of the ad) or per click (on the ad), so the terms are flexible.  eHow has a good overview on Facebook advertising.
  2. Content syndication – purchase web syndication with online publishers in your industry – get your event listed in their directories, content sites, etc.  They may charge you per click or per lead (completed registration).  Not only can this generate registrants for your event, but it also improves your page rank by generating more inbound links to your event page.

Hopefully I’ve covered a few “outside the inbox” options for you to consider – certainly continue to promote your event via email – however, use some of these options to lighten the load a bit on your email marketing lists.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

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