Virtual Couches

I woke up this morning to a tongue in my eye and hearty bacon breath panting at me, and realized two things. 1) Dogs and beds should not be the same height. 2) I see a hugely excellent reason to have a pet you can keep in a file folder.

I was having dinner with three close friends on New Year's Eve, and one of them was telling me about her virtual pet on Facebook. I, having proudly resisted the urge to open up an account for several years, officially caved to peer pressure after she told me that.

Although I haven't spent much time on it yet, I'm interested in the rest of the things it can do. Is there a virtual couch you can sit on? What about a virtual cup of coffee? What applications have amateurs developed, considering there were almost 200 hits for virtual pet program applications on Facebook when I searched tonight.

Personally, I've gone from being a consumer only to a producer-consumer. More and more, the line between amateur and professional content is getting blurred. When blogs are getting more hits than professional newspapers, with equal and sometimes superior quality, I think it's time to ask ourselves what is the role of the producing consumer in today's business model?

ITunes is another great example. Just a few years ago, Ipods didn't exist. Now, ITunes is the second largest retailer in the US, trailing only Wal-Mart. Local bands, without the ability to promote themselves in the same way that major labels do, can nonetheless get benefits out of being available to download.

If you haven't read Chris Anderson's book and blog The Long Tail, http://www.thelongtail.com/, I highly recommend it. It's a fascinating theory that proposes if, given infinite choices, consumers' demand will swell to meet that number of choices.

So, back to Facebook. While I've been writing this entry, three people have written on my wall, I commented on two of their statuses, made plans with another for dinner next week and considered adopting a virtual penguin. As Facebook's corporate image has always been that they don't care about money, the tide is starting to turn - you have ages, genders, interest groups, localities - about everything you need to run a successful marketing program. Now the only question is how will they use it in a way that the commercial aspect doesn't take over?

Is Chris correct? Are there infinite demands for infinite choices?

If virtual penguins didn't exist, would we ever have known that we needed them?