Here's a sign that your week is going to be a strange one. You send a note
around your office saying, "on the virtual Mark Warner -- tie or no tie?" So, we
introduced the governor into Second Life,
an online virtual space, on Thursday. In the immediate, one neat part was seeing
the wide range of coverage the launch got. Some of the folks in our office were
most pleased to see it covered by CNN's Situation
Room, Washington Post's the
Fix and Washington
Sketch, and The
Hotline. (The title of this post comes from the Hotline: "This new
venture might be mockable, but it's path-breakingly mockable.") Others
were more thrilled to make Boing Boing (pre-event post here
and post-event post here)
and the G4
gaming network. It was ignored by most of the big political blogs, which we
expected, and it was an education to see how it rippled through the rest of
the online world. The quasi-official New World Notes blog has the deepest background
and reporting, here
and here
and an interview with me here.
It was also mentioned or covered by Instapundit,
Ottowa
Citizen, Ted Leonsis,
Red
Herring, 3pointD,
Federal Computer Weekly,
Rikomatic
(who has video),
1UP.com, and Gamepolitics.com
here and here. There's also photos of the Gov's
avatar and him typing
away at a computer and more coverage on the Forward Together PAC blog here,
here,
and here.
Everyone from our experienced political staff to cantankerous Washington reporters
had a lot of fun customizing their avatars and flying around the Second Life
space. For one blip in time, we brought a little bit of joy to the lives of
some hard-working folks. Good enough.
I want to talk seriously about why we brought Gov. Warner to Second Life and
what we think it means. But it was a long week and right now I'm going to sign
off now and do some real-world lazing about.
