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Microsoft continues to throw marketing dollars at what it perceives to be the coolest, hippest, freshest new form of marketing. This time building its own island in Linden Lab's Second Life featuring sophisticated architecture (with glass walls resembling an Apple Store), a blimp, suspension bridge, and reflective modern sculpture. There is also an auditorium which Microsoft presumably hopes to fill with the avatars of attentive developers.

Microsoft certainly isn't the first to try extending its marketing outreach into the virtual world, but this effort solidifies the hopelessness of Microsoft to create cool marketing, to create a more "human" public face for themselves while the effectiveness of these efforts remains illusory. After benefitting from the warming of public perception with its blog policies, Microsoft continues to futilely throw away marketing dollars in scattershot fashion, thinking that each "new" thing can affect change for its monolithic perception. Like the ugly, obnoxious guy who has to hit on every hot woman in the club in the hopes of scoring, Microsoft would be better served by focusing its efforts on achievable, lowered standards.