Facebook

In 2007, Facebook sent a couple of strategists to Linden Lab to ask us about virtual currency. Of course they would ask us — at the time, we were the world’s leading experts in managing a virtual economy, heading towards a billion…

Six months ago, I said that Trump would win the election in part because the rise of new media destroyed the historic function of the media as our Fourth Estate. I was upset that product managers at our most important Internet companies seem to refuse…

At Second Life, we occasionally debated the merits of virtual reality vs augmented reality. In caricature:

Virtual reality was the core dream of SL, same as the core proposition of Snow Crash, the Holodeck, the Matrix — the idea that a computer simulated world could have all of the…

Slate published an article titled “Why Second Life Failed” that also, like this…

Facebook may be overplaying its hand, but do we really understand the game they are playing?

This week Facebook released a barrage of announcements that reveal a stunning level of ambition. You have to ask, are they really the next Google, but with evil?

I can’t speak to the question of evil, but I do have a mental benchmark for the next…

What is going on with Facebook’s constant gyrations about privacy policy? Does anyone really care?

A little while ago I suggested that online privacy concerns are best addressed by free market solutions, not governmental regulation. I’ve discussed the topic with quite a few…

The acquisition of SuperRewards by Adknowledge is a notable milestone in the evolution of virtual currency business models. This is the first time an independent virtual currency platform has been acquired by a company outside of the virtual goods category, and so the first time that…

Has the Internet ushered in a revolution in advertising, or is web advertising destined to fail?

I couldn’t begin to have an opinion without some basic context about advertising, so I gave myself a crash course. Here’s the 3 most important things I…