Mainstream "traditional" media picking up on new trends in media

Not suprisingly, the mainstream media has been giving a great deal of attention to new social media trends. SecondLife, the online virtual world that , has recently been featured in high profile articles in magazines and newspapers around the country. The latest coverage comes from the Boston Globe's article on SL

The use of SL as a new marketing tool has been the subject of most of the articles that I have seen. When CC Chapman's blog post "Not Getting It (which I highly recommend) pointed out this post knocking SL it got me thinking-- Is all of this SecondLife hype and coverage a big PR scheme for companies and institutions to cash in on??

My opinion is no. SL and other future iterations of the same idea will change the way companies, and institutions do business. That is the reason for the PR rush. Like any new trend, it will have it's doubters and be labelled by some as "just a fad".

I bet the Recording Industry was hoping that downloading music was "just a fad" for "computer nerds only" when Napster came out. Seems like they miscalculated...