The AOL Pointe Launch in SecondLife

Late post: Flickr was undergoing maintenance last night.

In a fun and interesting twist last night, Nobody Fugazi (me) got an invitation to a group by someone named 'RunningMan AOL'.

AOL? I've been living under a rock for the past week as I've been dealing with real world issues related to Life, Drupal, and Everything - and had completely missed things written by friend Tateru Nino and other writers at SecondLife Insider.

Research time!

AOL Gets It, by Akela Talamasca gave a nice introduction to the AOL SecondLife inititiative - though I was concerned that it was a bit too positive (I always worry about such things, as well as the opposite). Tateru wrote that AOL Pointe is now open to the public.

And now to be invited to an AOL Pointe soiree. It would seem that it was time to catch up with the metaverse which continues to spin even as our attention operates at tangents. I quickly accepted the invitation, instant messaging RunningMan AOL about the time - and it would seem I was an hour late. Teleporting as fast as avatarishly possible, I made it to the landing point where I was greeted by someone I fear that I still haven't seen - they never rezzed - who pointed me to a teleport to the AOL Club.

The place was packed; it was a who's who of SecondLife - names mentioned so many times in SecondLife that it would seem ludicrous to go through them here again. The place was definitely hopping, the dancing was a tornado with an... AOL RunningMan at the center. Very cool avatar - relatively simple to make and yet quite effective as a 3 dimensional walking and talking (and dancing) representative of AOL. I think of everything, that is the thing which will stand out most in my mind. Excellent branding, and a very likeable fellow - engaging, interesting and interested. Good Public Relations.

And fun. Did I mention fun? Yes, fun. I'm not much of a 'dance and hang out chatting' person, so I decided to take the opportunity to check out the rest of the sim. Go have fun. Play. Besides, all the cool people were there and I don't expect I'm that cool. That everyone was having a good time was obvious - when people stay somewhere in SecondLife, they are either having a good time or camping for Lindens. Since no one was camping (gee, I would hope not!) it stands to reason that AOL got the chemistry right for an engaging, fun and interesting event. This penguin had too many tastes of flexiprim skirt as they whipped around the place. For the record, everyone was wearing underwear - thank you! Penguins don't hang out with humans that much to appreciate underskirt anatomy...

I wandered back to the entrance and checked out the store. Skateboards. Hmm. I've never skateboarded in my life, so this was a middleaged guys chance to attempt something cool at a keyboard. As it is - I didn't suck. I made 3 Lindens jumping around and scooting on the skateboard - very engaging, fun, and somewhat addictive - sticky. And sticky? The sticky wall, good for all sorts of limb contortions. It seems that a lot of thought and imagination went into the AOL presence in SecondLife. The AOL Pointe team deserves credit - but not too much quite yet. It's stamina that makes or breaks a presence in SecondLife, as in real life, but it seems possible that they've built up enough momentum to make it less work to stay on top of things.

I had a great time with the folks there, and exploring AOL's sim. You can even leave blog messages to the AOL Pointe page... and participate in a bit of 'blog graffiti'.

How do you find AOL Pointe in SecondLife? Search. Really. :-)

Overall, I think that people will appreciate the AOL Pointe simulator at least once, and if the AOL Pointe team can build on the momentum and stay on top of things - this promises to be an interesting sim within the metaverse.

Here's some more photos: