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More on Politics in Second Life: Edward's campaign
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 Steve O'Hear reports in his ZDNet Blog that although it may not be official - yet - John Edwards is the first presidential candidate to set-up "shop" in Linden Labs' virtual world, Second Life.
Thank to a grass-roots effort headed and managed by Jerimee Richir, whose avatar is called Jose Rote, there is already an in-world campaign for Edwards. Now, we say grass-roots because although this is partially sponsored by Edwards' virtual headquarters, most of it (the campaign) is reportedly volunteer in nature.
When asked by O'Hear about his relationship with the official Edwards campaign, Rote had this to say:
... think of this as a scouting mission... it is unofficial in that the campaign is not spending money, and I am not paid, however the campaign is aware that we are organizing in Second Life, and cooperating as much as they can. I keep them updated on what I have learned, and they let me know things that will be helpful.
Given the relatively small user-base of SL compared to other online communities, Rote had this to say when questioned about the effectiveness of campaigning for Edwards in Second Life:
While SL users do not have the same numbers as, say, MySpace, they have communication skills, and a desire to communicate, that, I humbly say, exceeds that of MySpace users. For example, and this is just a guess, but I bet that half of Second Life users regularly contribute to multiple blogs. So it is a smaller community, but I would argue it is a more influential community.
So SL campaigns generate more buzz, not because, "the media is stupid" but because Second Life users do more talking.
Will virtual world support eventually translate into real-world votes? That is still uncertain, but given the amount of buzz that this (relatively) small community of avatars, land-barons, and virtual-world business-folk is generating, we think it's safe to say that campaigning in SL will at the very least, help further Edward's campaign efforts.
Via ZDNet Blogs
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