Serbia decides to build its virtual self
Looks like we decided to cut the crap with the real world and enter the virtual one. Ministry of Diaspora together with Marketing Srbija magazine bought a piece of land in virtual world called Second life, an advanced social network service allowing you to choose the looks of your virtual self, so called avatar and communicate and interact with other people online – currently a bit under ten million of them. By doing this the ministry hopes to establish stronger connections with people living abroad, who use internet daily to stay in touch with motherland.
The island of Serbia, land owned by Ministry, as you can see at the pictures here, is currently pretty empty and looks like a huge lounge. You can find it easily by typing ‘serbia’ into the search box once you log into Second life. To fill the current empty space, the ministry will, judging by one of the announcements there, throw a competition for best architectural solution of their virtual building:
Second life may be the most advanced social network in terms of graphics, animation and idea, but it is not for everyone – namely, it requires a strong graphic card and even stronger internet connection – obviously not very popular in Serbia itself for this sole reason – hopefully in the near future everyone will be have internet connection strong enough to support this kind of networking and engage in virtual activities offered by Second life – which comprise mostly, as far as I can see, cyber sex and hitting on people.
That doesn’t mean that other networks are neglected in Serbia as well, because if you look at Myspace and Facebook, you’ll find tens of thousands of Serbian citizens already there, interacting, throwing sheep at each other and generally wasting time, myself included. Of course, there are numerous good and useful things these networks provide, and keeping in touch is definitely one of them. This is what Ministry in collaboration with magazine is hoping to achieve, together with good opportunity to sell virtual advertising space to companies operating in Serbia.
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I think it’s a good idea, especially if it is extended to the whole spectrum of social networking media. Moreover, if the intended audience is Serbian people living abroad, the concern about availability of a fast internet connection may be less important.
Anything that puts us on the map is good ( hopefully beyond cyberin n hittin on people)
Good idea.
It is just an advertisement for the ministry and marketing agency;)
Now we can only go virtual. Long live Virtual Serbia!