The Destination guide has these nifty little ad widgets where you can copy and paste HTML into a blog post, which I used for my last post. Although I’m not using the affiliate advertising with the widget, you can use that with those ad widgets.
I’d like to see this sort of thing extended, say for example for pretty much everything. Events with ad widgets like that would stand out more, instead of just having text you could copy and paste the code and have a more visually rich advert for your event, store, sale, hunt yadda yadda yadda.
A little bit if guidance from Linden Lab here, would help us all advertise Second Life more efficiently. I could play around with the ad widget HTML to try and create ad widgets for events, but that would be a bit rude as Linden Lab aren’t giving us permission to do that.
Jazz & Art Festival
Come visit one of Second Life’s biggest jazz and art festivals, held across five sims from Oct. 15 to Nov. 13. For a schedule of events, visit http://jazzandart.slmame.com.
Visit in Second Life
Then we come to the forums, I’d like to post ad widgets like that in the events forum, however I can’t. I understand why, security concerns being a massive reason, but it’s a shame that you can enter the code and preview it only to see warning messages about invalid HTML.
The thing about these destination guide ad widgets is that you don’t just have to copy and paste what’s there in the destination guide, Linden Lab allow you to change the text and then create the ad widget, so if you’re not happy with the original text, you can create your own, you can also change the colours to a degree, plus the size of the widget, it’s a very useful tool that with some tweaking here and there could be used beyond the destination guide.
InterACT LEA Art Show
Virtual art can invite, or even insist, that you interact with it. The artists in this exhibition cleverly and creatively make art out of interactions between data, objects, actions, and people within and beyond the virtual world in a stunning array of installations and experiences that stretch the possibilities of virtual art. More at http://pdx.be/2f63.
Visit in Second Life
Another nice feature would be if you could get a BBCode for these widgets, Flickr has options for both HTML and BBCode, which means you could post the Ad widgets on Second Life related forums that use BBCode. I know I know, Linden Lab have enough on their plate rolling out new features and fixing code, however I do think there’s some merit in helping people create adverts with more visual richness.
100 Word Stories
Visit the home of prominent SL resident Crap Mariner, where you can tune into the 100 Word Stories Podcast and hear some entertaining tales. There are usually live readings over voice every Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. (Pacific). Play the media stream for the latest weekly challenge podcast episode. More info at: http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com.
Visit in Second Life
The Ad widgets I’m using as examples aren’t related to me in any way, shape or form, these are destination guide featured events that caught my eye, the destination guide is a useful resource but I do think we can go further with tools like this.
If you want to get featured in the desitnation guide you need to submit an entry, my chief Elf usually does this, although we’re both bemused as to why the featured event links back to this website as she didn’t submit with that information and I didn’t submit anything at all! Not that I’m complaining, which might be a first!