French politics enters the virtual world

Nicolas Sarkozy has joined the growing number of real people and companies setting up shop in the virtual world.

The French presidential candidate has opened a campaign office in the online game Second Life, with some help from the French blogger Loic Le Meur.

Mr LeMeur’s blog reveals that he recently acquired an island within Second Life, which has a lively market in virtual land speculation. He has now divided his island into two, reserving one half for himself and giving the other to supporters of Mr Sarkozy.

The blogger acknowledges that the island is not yet the political machine that he might want. A photograph shows a rather lonely-looking bunch of activists’ avatars wearing campaign T-shirts and carrying placards, framed by a beautiful virtual sunset.

Mr Sarkozy is not the first to venture in to Second Life, hoping to gain publicity and access to a growing audience of young online gamers. A few months ago, the news agency Reuters announced that it was sending a correspondent into the game to cover events there.

Comments

[Adrian (Designer, Cheshire)]

Second Life could be a serious communication platform if it would hurry up and improve its graphics, make a live, in-world speech system and enable you to graft your own, photographc face easily onto avatars...