Om Malik says that normal people can't care less about technology, much less "this whole 2.0 thing". On the other hand, I keep coming across news headlines (from regular media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times) about non-tech companies who've set up shop in Second Life, or beyond-the-Valley celebrities who've started blogging. Today it was the Crown Princess of Thailand, last month Cardinal Sean O'Malley from Boston. Katie Couric, too, is in on the action. In fact, Sun's Jonathan Schwartz argues that blogs have reached the masses in such a big way that they should be counted among acceptable media for SEC disclosures.
And blogs have arrived in the web hosting industry. BlueHost and DreamHost have long had awesome blogs, but they are exceptions rather than the norm. But now that the Web Hosting Industry Review is launching a blog network, hopefully more folks will join in. I'm very excited to be a part of this project; my WHIR blog will focus on how Web 2.0 technologies affect end users and web hosting providers (though all of my first three posts are sort of off topic, and Jon Price's writeup on Wired's recent data center article is much better than mine). And I'm a little intimidated that 5 REAL experts will be blogging with me.
Once the WHIR leads the web hosting industry into the blogosphere, maybe Second Life will have to be the next stop. Don't avatars need virtual data centers to host their virtual websites in? No? Ok, maybe not. But just as Toyota/Starwood have showcased new cars/hotel brands in the metaverse, FastServers and ThePlanet could unveil new gear to a virtual audience. During my time at EV1Servers, the company organized a number of customer meetups. Visitors would regularly forgo basketball games and steak dinners to linger at the data center, where they snapped endless photos in front of their racks. More often than not, these photo ops resulted in new purchases. Imagine offering the same experience minus the expense and hassle of physical travel. Wouldn't that be way cool??
Thanks. That's refreshing from WHIR's headline news items, which are, hmm, boring and feeling a bit of dejavu everyday.
And I am pretty sure many Second Life avatars would want to have data centers to host game servers so they can have a virtual Third Life :)
Posted by: ScottY | October 03, 2006 at 04:43 AM