James Au of New World Notes reports that Long Beach, California city council candidate Brian Ulaszewski has extended his campaign into the virtual world of Second Life. I don't have anything good to say about the virtual-world campaign.

The campaigner's real name is Brian Ulaszewski, but his Second Life name is Brian Omegamu. In marketing, this would be called "brand confusion." On voting day, will voters who can't find Brian Omegamu on the ballot vote for Brian Ulaszewski? Another council candidate is named Bry Myown. What if another Myown started a Second Life campaign? Then voters will be dealing with two fake names and two real names, all starting with a "Bry" sound.

Few voters will be meaningfully exposed to Ulaszewski in Second Life. According to Au's report, residents of L.A. zip codes 90802, 90813, and 90814 are eligible to vote for Ulaszewski. How many active Second Life users are from the Long Beach area? How many are from eligible zip codes?

According to an article published on LongBeachPolitics.org, "only about 3,000 people (5-10%) vote in the Second District City Council races." The number of potential voters in Second Life has got to be far lower than this. I'll be extremely generous and say that out of the 3,000 people who will vote in this local election, 200 of them are Second Life residents [1]. These are people who could vote, but don't necessarily know about Brian Ulaszewski in real life or his alter-ego Brian Omegamu in Second Life--there are 11 candidates, after all.

How many voting SL residents will be aware of Ulaszewski's Second Life campaign? Let's say half, or 100 people (again, an overestimate). That's assuming there is some way to reach all eligible voters with information about the SL campaign. Second Life doesn't reveal real-world locations of its users, so voters can't be geotargeted in the virtual world.

How many of those aware of his campaign are likely to interact with it? Well, it's often said that response to a direct mail campaign is usually under 5%. Based on the U.S. census conducted in 2000, 70% of Californians responded. Just for fun, let's average these two and imagine that 38% of people aware of his campaign are likely to interact with it. That's an imaginary 38 people.

How many of those who have interacted with his Second Life campaign will vote? Let's say as many as voted in the 2004 U.S. elections. 64% of 38 leaves us with roughly 24 people who will vote.

How many will vote for Ulaszewski? Or is that Omegamu? Let's say we lose 3 voters because they don't see Brian Omegamu on the ballot, or mistakenly vote for Bry Myown. We're left with 21 people to vote for 11 candidates. At this point, does it even matter how many of them vote for Ulaszewski? One of the most recent council elections was decided by only 15 votes, so perhaps Ulaszewski has a hope after all.

In his article about Ulaszewski's Second Life efforts, Au writes "[L]ike the Internet-driven meetups which spearheaded so much of the campaigning during the last national election, particularly for Howard Dean, [Ulaszewski's] hoping raising awareness in here will translate into a base of supporters for the early June election." I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Second Life is not the internet any more than an IRC chatroom is the internet. Any "meetup" is limited to dozens of attendees (or perhaps over a hundred if the meetup is divided into quarters across 4 blocks of Second Life space). This is nothing like the internet groundswell behind Howard Dean. It's a tempest in a teacup.

At the end of the day, I don't believe Ulaszewski's virtual-world campaign is intended to influence potential voters in Second Life. How can it, with only a (theoretical) two dozen voters? It's more likely that this is about getting Ulaszewski's name in the press. Like a recent BBC radio festival, 20th Century Fox movie debut, and major-label listening party in Second Life, this is all about show-biz and spectacle. The impact inside the virtual world is negligible, but "the first political candidate to use a virtual world to help build a coalition of supporters" [source: Au, 2006] could get lots of play in the media. Most outlets are extremely unlikely to deconstruct what a "coalition of supporters" really means. This is true not just in Ulaszewski's case, but any of these hyped events in Second Life. The virtual world is not the internet. You can't reach millions of people in a short period of time. At best, it's an environment conducive to slow, viral marketing aimed at thousands (not tens or hundreds of thousands) of people--but do thousands of people even care about your efforts?

[1] At the time of this writing, 114k Second Life accounts have logged in over the last 60 days. 75% of those users, or roughly (according to stats from March 1, 2006) are American. So there are roughly 86k active American accounts. Some users have multiple accounts, and some of the people who signed up 60 days ago no longer log in. This information gives us an idea of how many users are spread across the entire USA.