Simone Peterman of Second Nights
Simone Peterman - Secondnights
Secondnights is the biggest entertainment community in SL. Simone Peterman is the creator and manager of it. With more than a year running the website of www.secondnights.com, the community is getting bigger and bigger, and the website is improving every time you blink your eyes.
Interview with Simone Peterman
Photography by Julie Hastings
Secondnights is a website where you can find all about entertainment in one place. At first was just an “event” post with categories and now it’s much more than that with good graphics, layout and ideas. All of this came from one mind: Simone Peterman. I had the pleasure to met Simone before he started with Secondnights and was a DJ, very low profile, and now… who can tell about the explosive career of Simone? Look at you kid!! “AllI have to say, be a secondnighter today….”
AK: Can you explain what Secondnights is? How does it work?
SP: Well, Secondnights is a Website for all the SL people that love Entertainment. On Secondnights you can find all the latest news about fashion, events, DJs, clubs, magazines, TV and radio. We have more than 24 different TV shows, over 14 magazines with all the issues live on the site. We have also a complete event system with categories and venues. All our members can participate and post events, photos, videos, blog posts and other. I think that now, after a year since we began, we can say that Secondnights is the most complete web platform for SL lovers.
AK: Secondnights began in 2009, what motivated you to undertake this project?
SP: Ah ah , good question. I’m also a DJ and all start from this point. When I started my DJ work I asked myself “hey, where I can find clubs or events where I can play or listen music?”, and I couldn’t find any on the net a website for this objective. So I started to build the site starting from the event system. Later we added magazines, the social network community, TV and all the other things.
AK: What were your expectations?
SP: I hoped that Secondnights could be in the future a point of reference of everything that happens in SL and all the members continue to build with us the success of the site. We are a real 2.0 website magazine I think.
AK: You decided to use the internet platform, off world. Why that decision?
SP: As I explain before it all started by the research of a place where one could find info about events and clubs. But we also had another idea …Our mission is to show all the people outside SL what you can do inworld and how creative and fun an SL activity can be. We also think that people can’t use SL every time, for example at work during the lunch break or with their smart phone. With these devices or in that moments, it is hard to log in and get info. Going on a website, reading an RSS or seeing Plurk, Facebook or Flickr is easy and simple.
AK: You first started with the promotion of musical events in SL, but then you have advanced to new areas, explain how that evolved and why?
SP: Yes, we started with music and events but soon we realize that “Entertainment” involve lots of fields: art, music, TV, radio, magazine. We try to cover all the multimedia fields giving people and members a unique place to find all. In few clicks on Secondnights you can read all the latest issues of the majors magazine, watch the lastest TVshows like Fashion Feed or Tonight live. See what is happening, reading feeds and news. and talk with your friends, old and new.
Today we have about 28 official media partners, we work with the major multimedia brands of SL and we do a real cooperation. We don’t ask money, we exchange visibility and work together to promote our projects. When anyone has an event or a new idea we try to give that all the visibility we can. For example all our blog posts and events are spread all over our social networks pages on Plurk, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, AvatarsUnited and other.
AK: Each new project has difficulties, what difficulties did you find? How did you deal with them?
SP: well, the first problem was to find the good platform to develop the site. On the web there are lots of free/pay platform “ready to go” to build social networks community or blogs. But in that way you can´t change the look or the services following the changes of the moods or trends. We decide to use our own server and develop the site by our self, so any time we can do things that can improve the experience: Change the graphics, adapt graphics for specified theme (Halloween, …) change the home page highlights and add new services. Lots of work, but we love it.
AK: Tell us how you have grown your site traffic. What have you done to achieve this?
SP: Today we reach over 2k daily visits and on August we move over 700k page views. I remember the first days when we were only 2 or 10 on the site. To improve traffic we use all the major web community of the net like Plurk, Facebook, MySpace and SL Feeds. We post our news and events all over these media and with the time people start to know our site. We have done lots of contests and events inworld. As I told you before we work with over 28 partners that “talk” about us in their activity. Is a long and hard work, we don’t use “spam” techniques to get members or other, we prefer less traffic but a better reputation.
AK: You've received feedback from Secondnights users? What do people value most?
SP: People love the events and the magazines. Lots of clubs or musicians need a place to let people know what they are doing and people want to find new occasion to have fun. This is the first service of Secondnights and today, it is still the most appreciated.
AK: What has been your greatest satisfaction with Secondnights?
SP: Ah ah, another good question. With Secondnights I met lots of new friends and people, I expand my mind knowing people from different countries and when we work on a new idea or on an event promotion. It is amazing thinking that you are talking with friends from 3 or 4 different countries at the same time.
I’m proud to say that another great satisfaction is to get in 1 year the trust of lots of SL brands that were in world from lots of time before us, I am talking about Avenue, Treet.TV, Dj World, Glance and others.
AK: With over a year under your belt, what are the plans for Secondnights?
SP: We try to be always updating on new tendencies and moods. Soon we’ll be 2 new services on the site and great surprises. I can’t tell more but continue to follow us.
We are enthusiast to see the developing of Secondnights and what else Simone has in his hands to offer. One thing is for sure, Second Life is not only an inworld place, Simone showed to us platforms outside the viewer are a good option for business and communities to keep SL more than alive.
