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.

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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 fircomments@gmail.com.

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

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