• FIR #305: We See You And You Can't Come In

A petulant venue owner is using facial recognition software to keep people with whom he has issues from entering his spaces—including a mom with a Girl Scout troop. Also in this monthly long-form episode of the “For Immediate Release” podcast, Neville and Shel discuss the value of virtual goods and whether brands should start taking them seriously; business schools are exploring the potential for teaching in the metaverse—especially classes about digital technology; it hasn’t been a great year for metaverse activations, but at least brands are learning; it has been a year since Lush closed its Instagram and Facebook accounts, which means it’s time to see how that decision turned out; and the better ChatGPT (the AI text-generating chatbot) gets, the more worried some people get about its impact on truth; and Dan York shares a year-end Tech Report with a range of updates including using WordPress for newsletters, WordPress’s State of the Word 2022, and Tumblr Live.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 26.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat each Thursday at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request the credentials in our Facebook group, or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. Neville’s Asides blog is also available.

Links from this report:

• Are virtual goods the next big category for brands?
• Virtual goods are untapped opportunity for brand growth: study
• Metanomics: How Generation W Will Create A Virtual Market Worth US$5 Trillion
• Razorfish Finds 70% of Web3 Early Adopters Value Virtual Goods as Much, or More Than, Physical Products
• Business schools explore teaching in the metaverse
• Learning From Metaverse Missteps
• ‘People see why we came off now’: Lush has no regrets about quitting Instagram and Facebook
• Lush shows it’s time for an anti social media policy
• Madison Square Garden Uses Facial Recognition to Ban Its Owner’s Enemies
• Pouring Through a Crisis: How Budweiser Salvaged Its World Cup
• AI chatbot could spell doomsday for truth
• How to spot AI-generated text
• ‘The Return of the Crawling Evil,’ a Sci-Fi Story Created by Robots
• AI-Created Comic Could Be Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection
• Could an AI Chatbot Rewrite My Novel?
• This Bot Will Argue With Your Internet Provider For You and Get You a Cheaper Bill
• Steve Coulson Tweet on Schools Banning ChatGPT

Links from Dan York’s Report

• Automattic Promotes WordPress.com as a Platform for Email Newsletters (and provides improved support)
• State of the Word 2022: A Celebration of the Four Freedoms of Open Source
• State of the Word 2022 Recap
• How to buy a social network, with Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg
• Announcement: Introducing Tumblr Live
• Tumblr Live Overview & FAQ