Building Parks, Not Ads
A funny thing happened on the way to the Centric ad network in Second Life—we discovered how truly hideous advertising can be.
We started out like a lot of people. Buy some spaces and get ready to put up billboards. But billboards in Second Life spin, fly, and sometimes even shout at you. And they cluster in huge numbers. They’re ugly and invasive, and they ruin the SL experience.
So we decided to do something about it. We’re buying ad spaces, putting them together, and building parks for everyone to enjoy. We’ve already built three, Eson(164, 222), Ilgop (132, 16) and Eson (120, 48).
At the same time, we’ve opened our office at Maui (208, 36). Again, we’re integrating with the environment, rather than living apart on our own private island. Feel free to drop by the office, use our park finder, or learn a little more about Centric. We’re working on some very interesting things for our clients in Second Life, and we look forward to sharing them with you.
October 25th, 2006 at 9:36 am
Takumi Commons has been doing that for quite some time - buying small spaces and planting trees. So it’s good you’re doing it, and it’s certainly great for SL (there’s a spot in Muralis you may want to buy, 16m squared) but in a world of prim limitations, sometimes less is more. Buying up those pieces of land may also limit people on that sim as well.
October 30th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Yes, we’re aware of Takumi, The Arbor Project, and other groups with similar goals. We don’t want to compete with these organizations. In fact, we’d like to work with them! And, knowing prim limits ourselves, we have no problem in leaving land in its natural state to better serve the community, or selling land to nearby landowners who need to develop their own space. We’ve already done so, in fact.
November 10th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Reminds me of this: how to turn a parking space into a park.
November 23rd, 2006 at 12:09 am
Takumi (A member of the Arbor Project with myself and founder, Xerses Goff) does great work. I ran across some of your spots in Eson (funnily enough where I started my part of the Project!) and was *very* happy to see an RL company like yourselves coming into SL with a sense of social/”environmental” responsibility. Kudos. Excellent work and The Arbor Project extends an open invitation to work with you on any similar projects in the future. In this aspect of SL, I don’t think we see any group working to improve the Mainland and users’ experiences as competition.
November 29th, 2006 at 10:54 am
Wow, I am happy my small contributions to the beautification of Second Life have not gone unnoticed. I have been working with both Arbor and Peace Park projects in Second Life. I know there are others who hold the same goals and many who contribute with donations behind the scenes as well. Point I am trying to make is that it is never a one person show, there is always a network of support involved and I am happy to see this network is growing.