Gabetti on Second Life

After a ghost phase (in full Apple style) of 4 months we’re releasing the Gabetti Island: the first step of the presence of the Gabetti Group in Second Life.

The whole island has been developed by the Electric Sheep Company. You can take a look at the various phases of development in this Flickr Slideshow picturing the various avatars at work (big props to Chosen Few, the 3D artist who developed the island, and to Jeremy Flagstaff for the great work done).

We have a dedicated team, the Bright Five, operating inworld. You might find them browsing around or operating on the Gabetti Island. Go meet them.

And now a Ill Clan made launch machinima:

Mastering the Gabetti Second Life press launch

Gabetti Press Conference in Second LifeWe’re now through, finally. It’s been a tough week, I’d say a tough period in order to prepare a proper press launch. Both Maurizio Monteverdi (Gabetti Group CEO) and Leandro Agro’ (Italian Second Life main guru) rocked the stage, the machinima and our contents have done the rest.

I’m about to upload In the forthcoming weeks I’ll upload You can find the press video (Italian only, and had to cut it down to 10mins in order to be accepted) on You Tube, the photos are coming up on Flickr accounts.

The results, Geez, are further over our brightest expectations: we knew we’d have been perceived as (as Marcello says) “zupa cool” in Italy, but never expected that Reuter immediately translated a news tha has then been published on the Washington Post, Scientific American, Wired, eWeek and the Financial Times (DE version) just to name a few.

Just a sad point: I’ve asked our PR agency to invite bloggers. Well of the 30 and more invited, just two of them actually came and enjoied the free wi-fi network dedicated to live posting. Guys: what are your daily-life chances to interview a public company CEO, have the answer and even eat for free? Damn: you loose it!

In these days, using mainly Technorati, Google News and Google Blog Search I compiled a list of interesting articles about the entrance of Gabeti Property Solutions in Second Life. Here it is:

International Selection

Gabetti joins Virtual Land rush in Second Life (Washington Post)
“Second Life” jetzt auch mit realen Immobilienmaklern (Financial Times)
Buôn bán nhà đất trong thế giới ảo, kiếm tiền thật Dantri (can you get it ? :-) )
Gabetti eröffnet als erste RL-Immobilienfirma virtuelle Dependance SLinworld

Italian Newspapers/Magazines

Gabetti: affari reali nel mondo virtuale MacWorld Online
Gabetti vende case anche in Second Life Excite
La Gabetti e i suoi agenti sbarcano su Second Life La Stampa
Gabetti, l’affare-mattone si fa virtuale Corriere della Sera

Selected blogs

Gabetti@Second Life (Live Report of the press conference) Infospaces
Gabetti va Inworld! ma il vero punto è il brick’n mortar che fa innovazione Leeander
Gabetti su Second Life: è l’innovazione che conta Infoservi
Gabetti apre una sede in Second Life Tecnozoom News
Pondering The Pond Ambling in Second Life

Gabetti website redesign – BETA version online

Just 8 months ago the Gabetti website looked as picted below, starting from July 2006 we worked hard to publish a brand new website with all the bells and whistles a website should have in 2007 (XHTML+CSS, accessibility, cool interfaces, some ajax magic, usability and a little bit of web2.0ness). The first result was a dead-man-walking, low budget version of the site created in a couple of weeks and useful to convey the Group new identity.

Gabetti website - last year redesigns

I’m now honoured to announce that, after a long & working hard weekend we published this night the redesigned version of the Gabetti Property Solutions Agency website and the brand new version of the Gabetti Group website (disclaimer: Gabetti is the real estate group yours truly works for).

From the very beginning we wanted the interfaces to be user compliant and the whole wireframing and mockuping phases to be striclty user centred: a lot of work both from Nurun (the agency that developed the site) and us was spent into this. Moreover, we performed a full optional eye tracking study on all the interfaces throughout the whole design phase, a tough job that rewarded us with great usability, at last – I’ll talk about the study once we formally publish it.

This is a beta version and a lot of work needs to be done in the forthcoming month. I’ll update you on major releases here, preparing for the official launch by owr very own Marketing department.

Stay tuned. Stay foolish.