Hamlet who?

Hamlet Linden is no more. Arise Hamlet Au. Yup - it’s all change in the VW community this year. Betsy has gone There, Uri has gone who knows where and Hammie has gotten de-embedded.

I would suggest that you can read all about the real deal at LL from my hard hitting interview with the big H where I reduce a grown man to confused tears of rage and pain, or reveal the true life kiss-and-tell story of CA geeks gone wild replete with photo’s, video and avatar reenactments. But no. I’d love to say he’s also joined There, as that would just be funny. But no again.

The truth of is it that he’s changed name, changed URL but has managed to smuggle out the New World Notes brand with him. And he’s writing like crazy, covering free speech, creative commons, abusive float monkeys all this week. Though I have to say the images in Hamlet Reborn are kinda spooky, like a dream where your freakish new clone pitches up and presses your off button.

Anyhoo here’s his new pad: nwn.blogs.com

[note: this message was brought to you by the friends of Hamlet and the letter H, the opinions expresses were bias and may or may not represent those of the author, genuineness being proportionate to units of alcohol bought for said author at time or times to be determined]

Comments

[Mark Wallace]

1.

But yes. You can read the hard-hitting (-ish) interview with Hammie over at the Herald:

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/02/a_valentines_da.html

[Torley]

2.

I'm still waiting fo' the sequel, A Tale of Two Hamlets. ;)

Seriously tho, lotta change in the air--I remember the first time I read a NWN story. It was the one Hamlet did with Francis Chung about the Seburo, "Shooting to Kill". I knew then that I would want to find out more about Second Life... so I put Hamlet as my referrer!

Shortly afterwards, met with him inworld on Shipley Shores @ his office.

Really dramatic (in the best of ways)... he became a Resi, I became a Linden.

[Jessica Mulligan]

3.

Does this mean he is no longer being paid by Linden Lab?

[Hamlet Au]

4.

That is correct, and the blog is now my private operation affiliated with John Battelle's Federated Media network. Please take the reader survey at the new site, I need the ad revenue to afford Ren's bar tab.

[Prokofy Neva]

5.

Erm, he's no longer being paid by Linden Lab, but he did get some sort of golden handshake, no?

*And* the right to keep the brand. AND he still has a dedicated thread within the Linden forums above the fold, with the most eyeballage. AND an iconic link with his picture on the Linden home page about the "embedded journalist". (He was still referring to himself as "embedded," but if you embed...you have to have an embedder who embeds you no? And now...what would that entity be, if he is not embedded by a something, but just...there?)

Now, it will be very interesting to see whether the LL webmasters catch up on this at LL in the next few weeks and dump all these links and eyeball portals...especially given that Hamlet nee Linden Au keeps posting in that above-the-fold section with his new concept, which is to sift through all the events of SL every week and just feature certain ones to his liking. Of course, it's his blog, he can do that. But...it replays back in pride of place on the official SL forums and becomes a kind of iconic stamp...steerage...SLURLage...you know how it works. Could we make up a word like "SLurlola"?

I would say, follow the money, and follow the advertising, but most importantly, follow the content and who and what he covers. LL may not technically pay for him anymore. It might be that third-party businesses very close to LL, like Electric Sheep Company, become his advertisers or sources or become featured in his column -- that's how it worked before in fact.

You can write to his new Federated Media network host about advertising -- he provides a link. But once you click through all the buttons, you find yourself reading the fine print, which says Hamlet has the right to clear on any advertising associated with his blog, and he has the right to deny certain advertisers. Interesting!

[Prokofy Neva]

6.

Update: gosh, so clever! What LL did with this is get rid of the dedicated forum within the Linden forums, so far so good in terms of the optics of his "independence" but...

...they then gave Hamlet his own dedicated "SL Group Forum" within the user forums as if there were a "fan group" that had gotten together and asked for a group forum. I think normally you need 25 people to get permission for a group forum from the mods. I'm not aware of any 25 fans who formed such a group and went through the regular channels, so this is Yet Another Fete, but I imagine even if H nee L A had to get 25 people into a group, he could. ROFL. I just found this interesting!