It seems that not only has Linden Lab started doing some advertising for Second Life, but they’ve decided to take advantage of the hype over the highly popular movie “Avatar.”Seen here and here on Flickr (special thanks to inacentaurdump and gogolita), the advertisement banners show a thinly-dressed blue lady with blue skin in front of a wilderness area with a moon rising in the sky behind her. The caption reads “Free AVATAR.”The woman is not technically a Na’vi avatar. She isn’t wearing tribal clothes, and has no pointed ears or catlike features. But the connection to the movie is obvious.Peter Linden has been asked about the ad, and had the following response:"While we’re certainly fans of the Avatar film and of blue avatars (not to mention pink, green, yellow, and robot avatars), we do not want to cause any confusion between Second Life and the movie with this advertisement, and we plan to change it to avoid any misunderstanding."The advertising campaign does seem to have made the desired results. After slowly declining for much of 2009, their “user concurrency” numbers suddenly rose. Tateru Nino of the “Dwell on it” blog had her own comment about Linden Lab’s ad campaign in comic form. The Lindens will probably want to take their time before removing the ad.Linden Lab isn't alone in taking advantage of the "Avatar" bandwagon. Social network IMVU has also come out with their own banner, featuring a blue woman with the caption "Get Your AVATAR."It is notable that a number of people have created various Na’vi avs up for sale in Second Life. While there are a few cheap and demo ones, most cost hundreds, even thousands of Lindens. Some Pandora roleplay areas have sprung up in some sims as well.Bixyl ShuftanSources: New World Notes , Massively
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