Steve Rubel, a marketing guru who's rarely met a new paradigm he didn't immediately pitch to clients, is tempering his support for Linden Lab's virtual world. The Benchmark-backed venture has depended on the evangelism of wide-eyed enthusiasts such as Rubel — who have in turn befuddled clueless suits at companies such as IBM and HR Block. Hence the absurdity of enterprise software marketed to the adolescent pranksters and Nazi fetishists who roam the 3D environment. Now one of Second Life's most gushing proponents concedes that access to the online world requires too much computing power for the general public. In the words of Winston Churchill, this is not the end of Second Life, nor even the beginning of the end; but it is the end of the beginning. The key passage,
from Rubel's post, on the folly of crowds, after the jump.
There is definitely a problem in this Web 2.0, enthusiastically charged time we live in. Scott Donaton at AdAge calls it GMOOT - short for "get me one of those." That's the cry that marketers often hear from their executives. They get wind that their competitors have viral videos so then they want one too. It's the opposite of the Wisdom of Crowds.
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