Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to be convinced about marketing on Second Life

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» Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to be convinced about marketing on Second Life

I have been analyzing Second Life for months, but a great article in Brandweek titled “are marketers dying on Second Life?” prompted me to write this post.

Second Life is the Internet-based virtual world, which has been a center of attention for mainstream media after IBM, Dell, American Apparel, Adidas, Starwood Hotels, Nissan and many others developed a presence or bought islands. Developed by Linden Lab, a downloadable client program enables its users, "Residents", to interact with each other through avatars in a virtual society. Residents can explore, socialize, participate in group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another. Second Life has roughly 3M subscribers.

I really believe that Second Life is another example of a web 2.0 property that marketers should explore and understand. It opens up a window into the future of 3D web, but I still need to be convinced about broader marketing activities and here is why:

#1. The technology is still too complex – it takes an average user too long to feel comfortable navigating, teleporting or flying. See Steve Rubel’s take on the need for PC horsepower.

#2. The model is not yet scaleable – Second Life can only accommodate less than 100 people in one place at any point of time, not a very exciting statistic for a large brand

#3. The subscriber statistics are misleading - my colleague Scott Berg has an interesting statistic: if you take subscribers online at any given point of time and Second Life square mileage, Second Life’s density is 23,000 per square mile compared to 143,000 for Manhattan. Except for a few places, you will meet few people on a Second Life tour. Check out these pix on Valleywag.

#4. The model’s scaleability is further threatened by a corporate IT backlash. According to a recent survey by Sophos, 90.4 percent of IT pros want to block users from accessing Second Life and other similar sites; and 62 percent find it essential to block users from accessing from their corporate PCs. The reasons include increased IT security risks; burden to company bandwidth, and wasting valuable business time.

#5. The content is primarily adult oriented – None of the top 20 destinations is adult oriented in the web; most of them are on Second Life. Are you ready to take the risk of having one of your press events attacked by animated flying genitals?

#6. Brands are underestimating the investments required. Most brands have focused on the upfront cost (i.e buying land, web design and creative fees), but most have not taken into account the on-going investment into Second Life. Most indigenous businesses will have hosts and even the owner welcoming you to the island or store – most branded islands do not have any employees and operate on self service. Furthermore many indigenous businesses pay other residents to dance on their properties (a tradition in Second Life to boost your ranking) and I have not seen any brand operate that way.

#7. Brands are not staying true to the Second Life values. Second Life is about realizing your fantasies and being something different than you are in real life. Many avatars have a different gender than the subscriber or take animal forms. However most brands mimic their real life experiences and value proposition in Second Life. Brands have also disrupted the local economy by offering some of their goods and services, prompting a backlash by residents. 70% of Second Life residents are disappointed by the branded experiences.

#8. Second Life experiences are not integrated with the overall brand experience. New Second Life ventures by leading brands still feel too much to me like PR coups vs. being truly integrated into the broader set of the brand promise and experience. How many brands have a link from their online branded presence to their Second Life presence and seamlessly connect both?

#9. Potential revenues and profits are limited. If you combine the first 7 points, I cannot imagine that the revenue potential is anything by minimal. Valleywag has an interesting take on this, by sharing the example of Amsterdam - one of the most popular (adult) destinations - which is auctioned off for a mere $50,000.

#10. I barely have time for my first life……

I am happy to be proven wrong and would love to get your take on it.

Posted by Eric Kintz on Monday, April 02, 2007 12:26 PM

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Comments for Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to be convinced about marketing on Second Life

Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

I have spent some time in there Eric and I would say I have to agree. I do know companies like Nissan and Starwood have had success with what they were trying to accomplish but am not sure what the long term prognosis.

Posted by WillWaugh on 4/2/2007 1:53 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Great post. I think we completely agree. I hit some of the same points last November in a post. http://www.churbuck.com/wordpress/?p=886

Posted by dchurbuck on 4/2/2007 2:33 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Wow great post, David, seems like we are really aligned! For those that don't know him, David is the Vice-President of Global Web Marketing at Lenovo. Eric

Posted by erickintz on 4/2/2007 2:43 PM
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Nice post! I can't say I disagree with any of your points, Eric, especially number 10. (!) But at the same time, you said it yourself: "Second Life is another example of a web 2.0 property that marketers should explore and understand. It opens up a window into the future of 3D web... ." That's just it: Second Life is a great place to learn how brands fit in various 3D virtual environments. What kinds of approaches work? What sorts of activities relate to results? It's a test playground... flying organs and all. As Greg Verdino said in an interview I did with him in January, "Outing Second Life": "These don't all need to be about marketing and sales—for example, virtual world implementations can be built to support R&D or employee training initiatives. But the key is doing something now that will set the stage for smarter metaverse integrations down the road." Read the full Q&A here... it's a doozy. : ) http://www.marketingprofs.com/7/handley5.asp

Posted by ann@marketingprofs.com on 4/2/2007 3:06 PM
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Great post. My 2 cents on this Eric, while I agree with your post and Karl Long's http://tinyurl.com/37y5c8, the concept of a 3-D experiential environment to support a brand is very intriguing. A couple of aspects to further develop: 1. SL's technology has to be simplified so non geeks like me can easily interact. 2. Marketers need to think outside of the "first life box." What that means I'm not sure. However, what does appeal to me currently is the use of SL (and 3D virtual communities) for training e.g., after market support, sales training, customer service, etc. Seems people would be more engaged than a webinar with slide after slide after slide. Amazon has used SL for this and it seemed to work. http://tinyurl.com/2dk935 A sidestep is education and distance learning- http://tinyurl.com/3yuhxy I wouldn't discount the concept of SL/vitual communities. The technology has to catch up and marketers need a better understanding of the "tool" and how customers want to engage with it. And avatars with cute shoes wouldn't hurt either (smile).

Posted by Toby Lyn on 4/2/2007 3:18 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

One of the things i recently saw and was impressed with was Staci Schiller talking about the Wells Fargo's online virtual world for young adults around topics of money management called Stagecoach Island http://blog.wellsfargo.com/StagecoachIsland/.

She presented some of the Wells Fargo Social Media strategies at the recent BlogHer business blogging conference in New York. Their first try was on Second Life but decided that it would be more effective as a separate community and more manageable(and i suspect largely due to compliance issues that banks need to deal with and issues like animated flying genitals).

I suspect that it all comes down to the audience that companies are trying to attract. Like David's post points out as a 'preferred environment' Wells Fargo might have a good reach since their target it young adults who need to learn about money management (they have a student loan blog as well). I suspect that many schools are looking to virtual communities and i just found this one about using SecondLife in a first year property law course that i thought was interesting http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/04/using_second_li.html.

On a personal note, i have been trying to give myself a SecondLife for over a year and i just can't get myself to commit the time- i would however gladly make the time if it was a virtual community that could replace something that i am passionate about in my 'real' life and that a company or education community i trusted offered me access to.

Posted by danielabarbosa on 4/2/2007 5:21 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Hi Eric and Daniela: I was at BlogHer with Daniela and heard Staci's comments re: WellsFargo.

Cisco was also at BlogHer and seems very happy with their foray into SecondLife -- lots of engineers running into other engineers and product managers and the whole lot enjoying face-to-face meetings via avatars.

However, I don't know how beneficial their island is from a customer's perspective -- yet. And that seems to me to be a hiccup.

Beyond getting some PR and press mentions from investing in an island and holding meetings and conferences, etc., I see a lot of financial investment and a whole lot of time, energy and resources required to get the short-term bennies. Call me short-sighted, but I'd rather get a much more robust blogging and social media platform launched first to engage our customers directly and more frequently before we go willy-nilly in SecondLife.

Posted by Angela_LoSasso on 4/2/2007 8:07 PM
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>#1. The technology is still too complex I think what some tekkies mean to say by this is that it's too easy for people like me to learn without dependency on them. Gamers find it very intuitive. Non-gamers take awhile. It's not rocket science. The trick is simply to skip the Welcome Area and have a friend show you -- that enhances the experience anyway. >#2. The model is not yet scaleableany Most people don't watch television with thousands of other people as they would at a football stadium, so it's an artificial goal to try to make events that are like football stadiums. The goal is to make events that have lots of niches and variety for lots of increasingly sophisticated and diverse people. 35 people is actually about what is comfortable to talk to in an hour and let everybody be heard. >#3. The subscriber statistics are misleading That's silly. There is a lot of empty space on SL to make up oceans and roads. You open up the map and look for green dots to find people. The number of 5 million is fake, but look at the number of people who spent at least a dollar last month, that's a more realistic figure, and interesting enough: Total Customers Spending Money In-World 229,578 (up from about 180,000 in January) You don't say, oh, there's only 5 million people in Washington, DC, it must be small and boring! Depends on what kind of people are in a city, what they're doing, and what's in it for you. >#4. The model’s scaleability is further threatened by a corporate IT backlash. I remain puzzled how it is, that one IT guy's grumpiness that has gotten memed around like this has become an industry standard. How many people reading this have SL blocked at their workplace? I don't. Did the people who answered this survey understand any distinction between SL and games like WoW? What was the sample? >#5. The content is primarily adult oriented – A lot of Internet stuff tends toward the adult if you don't have better things to do; so you make better things. It's not that the Internet is adult; you are. As for flying stuff, you won't have this happen if, unlike CNET, you turn on autoreturn, and, unlike CNET, you create a group for entry to the event or have some other means of controlling the door just as you would if you held the event in a normal building somewhere in RL. And the top 20 sites are gamed -- these club owners pay people to remain on the land, drive up the traffic rates, and that puts them in the top 20 with artificial ratings. Look on the backs of avatars in their PICKS pages to see what people genuinely pick. Start go link from one avatar to the next through interesting event and pick up people's aggregates links lists, search HUDS, etc. and shed all that fake gaming of the top 20. >#6. Brands are underestimating the investments required. I agree, it's like most businesses underestimate the costs of opening in Moscow or Beijing. Yikes, I hope no RL businesses adopt this awful practice that lags sims and creates mindless AFK zombies. Not all SL businesses can afford constant staffing but they do have more of it by a long shot than these RL businesses. They need to create more events and have more staffing, and yes, that means more resources. More resources spent on staffing instead of on fabulous builds nobody visits would make more sense. You can do as much on a 4096 m2 with a part-time staff person on the mainland as you can on an island in some respects if your purpose is merely representational/presence/informational and not heavily reliant on events. >#7. Brands are not staying true to the Second Life values. Some companies have really flat-footed it and disrupted the labour force, the events calendar, the media coverage and indeed that has backlashed on them. I agree that some brands' *presentation* would be utterly inappropriate; nobody can drink Coke in a virtual world, you can't drink. That doesn't mean Coke couldn't sponsor hockey games, ballet, clubs, live music, architecture just as it does in RL. The companies need to support the environment and the experience so that avatars begin to associate the brand with their virtual experience, not be literalist about pushing a discrete product into their little avatar hands. The poll of 70 percent is another one of those mind memes flooding the blogs without any actual analysis of how limited it is: a) the sample size is 200 b) the people polled are Germans and other Europeans with an allergy to America in many respects, embodied for them by what they see as crass American advertising; c) they were asked questions about being *disappointed* that may actually have also had to do with an expectation of more -- which might have been met had the companies interacted more. Ultimately, you cannot judge the attitude toward brands by one poll, with 200 people, made by one German polling firm. That can never be representative of the very diverse and scattered SL population at this point. Many, many polls and studies need to be made, and live focus groups with lots and lots of heavy contact and observation probably make more sense right now that static questionnaires where the very terminology and the very perception of the experience differs wildly. >#8. Second Life experiences are not integrated with the overall brand experience. I wouldn't expect this type of seamlessness a few months into this phenomenon of RL businesses in SL, any more than I'd expect to find flourishing telemarketers six months after hearing Alexander Grahama Bell say, "Mr Watson—Come here—I want to see you". >#9. Potential revenues and profits are limited. Totally. That's why it's merely for some brands and some companies ultimately. But any brand or any company can keep a foot in there at a minimal price just as they would any new market or media to explore it and see if it works for them. We're all online anyway. We will all be in virtual worlds in one way or another more and more. Companies that provide products and services will be there too. Basically, any company that wants to be with the people making the media and communities that will shape the whole online experience in the next decade will want to be in SL. That won't mean a quick ROI anymore than going to Russia and China 10 years ago meant a quick ROI. #10. I barely have time for my first life…… SL is just another tab you have on your many applications. Sometimes you tab it open and go in it for a meeting or an event. Other times you ignore it for days if you are busy. Unlike "a game," there's no way that your "skills die" or you "lose energy". It's just there as a world when you want to dip into it.

Posted by Prokofy on 4/3/2007 1:04 AM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Do you limit this to Second Life, or include all virtual worlds, including the ones that may begin to emerge on the consoles--- the living room-centric devices. (Sony Home for example) When I ponder companies like Coldwell Banker entering into the virtual world space (SL, namely), and see them start to get involved in selling virtual real estate, I question whether or not its an initiative beyond just the press release (I dont see CB as doing a lot of community building), but instead, it's an experiment in a relatively low-risk environment to perhaps position themselves into becoming a type of VAR for emerging spaces: Could Coldwell Banker be a broker for land transactions on the Sony Home, a living-room based device? Using SL and the early adopters as a springboard to enter into a more mainstream channel, might be a valid line item. It's uncharted territory, sure. Or at the end of the day, are all companies basically media companies? I can see certain lifestyle areas of HP that would work in SL--- teaching someone about printheads and inks--well, maybe not so much-- but the lifestyle slant, perhaps.

Posted by ericrice on 4/3/2007 11:54 AM
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Thanks to all for these great comments, I am happy to receive different points of view, showing the benefits of SL. Prokofy- do you mind sharing what it is like to live and work on SL? Eric

Posted by erickintz on 4/3/2007 12:31 PM
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I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's fascinating, and the place to be to follow Virtual Worlds and the revolution in 3-D Internet and social media emerging everywhere. The frustrations abound, as they would in any new pioneered place, but so do the insights. I did try to post my thoughts with spaces, but for some reason, the spaces aren't showing up, sorry for the difficult read.

Posted by Prokofy on 4/3/2007 12:51 PM
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Any argument about putting scarce resources into current technologies and services vs. future technologies and services will short the future. That's the role of big business, to make small, risk-reduced bets. But much of big business doesn't happen without all the many smaller risk-taking individuals and organizations. Big business has the resources to sit around and then jump in when things look more stable/usable/lucrative. Sure, if that is your game go for it, but we don't really innovate or deliver things like delight and significantly more value to customers that way.

IBM is a nice example that underscores this point. They are so big that their experiments in Second Life are not a large risk compared with their enormous resources, and they see the risk as greater in not innovating, not getting out in front and gaining the learning experience advantage.

It's a little sad that others can't see that the future is not low-hanging small-risk optimizations of the same, but creating something new, which entails risk, creativity, and effort.

Posted by jeffmcneill on 4/3/2007 1:40 PM
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Eric, I enjoyed reading your post because it offered me some insight into how people with a background in traditional marketing view the Second Life phenomenon. However, when Second Life is placed into the grander scheme of social media, I think we first need to better understand how people interact with each other on-line, in these new environments, before we think of how and where a brand might fit into the picture. I wrote more about it here, http://millionsofus.com/blog/archives/198

Posted by rodicabuzescu on 4/4/2007 1:49 AM
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Having helped a major corporation get into virtual worlds and amonst others use second life I do understand your comments. There is a lot to be learned and the industry, as that is waht it is now, has a way to go. Applying traditional metrics, and traditional marketing concepts may not be the way forward. Sibley from teh Electric Sheep Company made a very good speech on this at virtualworlds2007 last week. Its also not all Second Life, this is a major platform, and it has ignited the industry and we are all figuting out what that now means. Complexity, scalability, usability, openess are all things that will get addressed as things move forward. Worrying about 100 users in one place at one time is a misleading problem. You cant get 1 million people in 1 department store in real life. The presence of others is the most important element to the metaverse, those people interacting in whatever way is whay works. Again to quote Sibley, they dont stop spending millions on making movies becuase you only get 400 people in a movie theatre at a time. For brand to work out how people are willing to engage with them, to take them and shape them as creative owners is not your usual banner ad or flashy website concept that many will have been brought up with. So brave brands will engage correctly and benefit. e.g. I mentione Reebok all the time, in corporate presentations. I cant say that that was ever a subject in a normal software or even web2.0 presentation a year ago. There is more on eightbar http://eightbar.co.uk/2007/03/31/virtual-worlds-2007-it-was-good-for-me/

Posted by epredator on 4/4/2007 3:44 AM
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epredator, in other forums like the Herald, you've been uncomfortable at the suggestion that Second Life might not be the leading platform for big corporations, and other worlds like There or Kaneva may begin to overtake it. But it seems to me developers really have to keep their options open and be flexible to chose the platform that meets their clients' demands best, and SL will not be that platform, and it doesn't mean that the intelligentsia touting SL is less intellectual or cool, it just means that the dumb money is as resourceful as the smart money now, and mass audiences are what advertisers need right now, not lots of little niches people can't figure out how to access. Your argumentations about audiences and spaces don't add up. I appreciate what Sibley is saying about the experience movie-goers get in a theater but it seems woefully unpersuasive given that what movie producers spend millions on isn't the experience of one set of 400 people in one movie theater, but the *uniform experience of many thousands of sets of 400 people all over*. The movie producers don't have to *care* whether the 400 people interact with each other or only the rats in their urban cinemas (a reason chasing people whom to their video cassettes). They are supplying *a uniform experience to masses*. THAT is what advertisers are wondering about with SL or There for that matter. Who is supplying the *uniform experience for the masses*? And it is not done on one sim, or even huffing and puffing and making multiple instances of one sim that still has to funnel the experience of interactivity to one set of performers, just like broadcasting. You don't get one million people in one department store. But you get one million in *the uniform experience of the many department stores franchised everywhere, where branders understand the setting and expectations of how their brand will appear*. So you have to be straightforward with marketers, as I think Reuben Steiger has been good at doing, explaining to clients that they'll write one half of the script, the customers write the other half. It's not about one concert or event funnelled to the millions. It's about the ten percent of the millions able to make thousands of niched, individual, non-uniform experiences for the millions. That's going to be *harder* and it's not going to *work* for *some kinds* of branding; it will for others.

Posted by Prokofy on 4/4/2007 11:01 AM
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The Social Research Foundation realized the need for more detailed market research in Second Life and has created the First Opinions Panel™ (firstopinionspanel.com). Current membership is 700 of the most active SL residents, not technies, but the owners of SL businesses, land, groups, spend the most time and money in SL. All volunteered to join without compensation to participate in focus groups, surveys etc. from Fortune 500 and other reputable companies.

Posted by hpblog on 4/5/2007 8:27 AM
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More follow up

Prokovy, I think I have maintained a consistent approach to all this, though not a fixed one as we have to adapt to new ideas. I think that Second Life has been a catalyst, and a very powerful one. It may also have to be an agent though as a catalyst is uncahnged by the chemical reactions around it and SL will have to adjust. I am concerned other platforms, that do not provide all that SL provides may take some of the momentum away form the industry. If a platform is regarded as the next better one, but misses the mark then I would be unhappy. I regard all these places as things that need to exist together. They clearly have something we do not have on the web, the presence of others. The balance is then one of creative control, ability to contribute, and social tools to help the communities combined with business value tools. As we have talked before on blogs about this, I do agree that the movie analogy, and 400 people is not perfect. The presence of others and the live nature of events differs from a movie and makes it more like a westend/broadway play. The thing is to get people to challenge the internet millions of people on one site model, and the Real life 400 people in one theatre model and find the new middle ground. Metaverses can replicate, can change can provide a different view to each and every viewer. The Sim model of SL is one approach, the shard of WOW is another. We may find in a distributed computing model there is another model. Marketeers, like the rest of people in the industry have to examine the changes, the way people interact with brands, the activism of the consumer is changing, whether in virtual worlds or not. People are getting savvy to marketing tricks long established and new ones are emerging. It is true that the pure SL experience as it stands right now may not be the perfect thing for all brands, but 10 years ago we had the same discussion over why on earth anyone might need a website. Websites have provided uniformity of experience, except when we tinker with personaliztion. Now we are tinkering with personalization and the people around us too in a metaverse. We can make it as uniform or freeform as is needed. So, lets imagine all sims have teh same name, "my product" in SL. When I TP there I am load balanced to an instance, where I engage with both staff from "my product" and fellow customers. Its not what we do much in SL but we could. In real life we load balance our real selves into geographic areas, places we live and can get to. That does not limit the placement of franchises. Admittedly we have a concurrency in the world limit. In RL we dont worry about that in computing we have to as we use CPu and bandwidth to represent things. However, that can and will be solved. distribute the processing a la web and everyone can be somewhere at the same time. I am all for mass market, but I also like the long tail elements. Its not all solved technically or socially by any stretch of the imagination but we are so much nearer to answers now, becuase of the past year and the experiments we (you I and the rest) are all doing that I hope we dont all get scared away by people with traditional thinking.

Posted by epredator on 4/5/2007 2:55 PM
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epredator, I'm not getting why you think that if you express enough "unhappiness" or you think it's "a bad thing" that you can stop the tidal wave of the creation of other virtual worlds beyond or instead of or even better than Second Life. It's just inevitable. There is too much wrong with Second Life for anybody to sit still. LL itself is always trying to make SL better. The Broadway play analogy doesn't even hold, because a Broadway play is the same text pretty much each time performed, whether in Peoria or off Times Square, unless you plan to make the experience uniform, which you cannot do in a streaming world with unpredictability, ephemera, and changing appearances. I don't care what kind of discussions you had 10 years ago about the Internet at a very deep level; because there is *nothing* to say that everything replicates perfectly, history always repeats, and Web 1.0 gurus already pwn everything -- no, in fact all the hatreds that Web 1.0 gurus developed ("We hate geocities" "We hate AOL" because they are walled gardens etc) are NOT going to pertain. You might be dead wrong. In fact, you *are* dead wrong given 8 million people in the walled predictable uniform garden of World of Warcraft, and about 250,000 *really* in SL, with many millions trying and *leaving forever*. This "we could" stuff in SL is no good; you *can't* load-balance and create multiple instances *unless you do not have uniformity of experience". And that's fine. I'm cool with that. Let's have 200 music groups with 20 avatars watching each of them, instead of the prefabbed and modulated Duran Duran act possibly run by puppeteers anyway. You seem to have an almost religious fervour about evangelizing for the one sim experience in SL, with its 40 or 400 limitations on it as to people. Instead of evangelizing that, realize that it's not about that, it's about have 100 sets of 40 *doing all different stuff in the niches they create or co-create with companies which really have enabled them to do that*. That's harder to accept because it means you as a developer cannot make claims to your clients about huge numbers of eyeballs and clicks and hits and traffic. Then don't. Figure out the basic template that can replicate in a 1000 ways by people's interaction to make it something different and owned by them. That means following them to their sims to sponsor what they are doing, not trying to drag them to your one sim. If you truly claim you're for long tail -- which you aren't really, because your clients aren't truly for long tail yet -- well, then lash the tail. The concept that people telling *the truth* about how similar this new media stuff is to old media so far(little technically-superior elites casting it and broadcasting it or trying to broadcast it, tiny cadres trying to enforce uniformity of architectural style and "professionalism), or *telling the truth* about its severe limitations for broadcasting a uniform experiences, aren't people "scaring others away with traditional thinking*. They just aren't paid to hype *shrugs*.

Posted by Prokofy on 4/5/2007 4:15 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Prokofy, I dont think I am trying to stop any tidal wave. I want things to be better, bigger, faster, nicer, happier etc. I am not sure why you are saying I am not long tail minded. I am personally. Maybe we are mixing corporate messages and placements with my views here. I use "we could" because I am looking at the longer future. I like SL becuase it lets us explore that future. Its very easy to say whats wrong with something, but much harder to come up with what something need to be. Uniformity of experience means nothing once you let people loose. Uniformity works in some places, for some ideas. For others you want a complete lack of uniformity. The one sim experience in SL, nope I do not want that and only that. But the sim model is one that happens to be running at the moment. What happens is the server side stuff gets open sourced and we can run as many sims as we want, or sims with as much capacity as we want. Thats what we do with web applications (we being the world, not just my employer). That to me is where we get to explore the deeper potential. For now, we need to know what all this means, not just treat it as billboard in 3d. Which I think we are agreement over? This whole thing is a frontier, it will get colonized, settled and even more main stream unless we all desert it en masse which I think is your point? You are saying its too rough at the moment so maybe we should warn everyone not to come? I am just saying wow this is fun lets explore as I feel a vast untapped set of opportunities and I want to help discover them. (By whole thing I do not mean just SL, I mean non game avatar based metaverses.) I would have to disagree that the broadway play analogy does nto hold, because whilst the text may be the same the experience is not. Humans perform and adjust. Seeing and being part of that is why theatre still exists and has not been totally replaced by a 'movie' experience. We should treat metaverses as places to perform with people, rather than a way to pump in movies?

Posted by epredator on 4/6/2007 4:31 AM
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Prokofy: "epredator, I'm not getting why you think that if you express enough "unhappiness" or you think it's "a bad thing" that you can stop the tidal wave of the creation of other virtual worlds beyond or instead of or even better than Second Life. " epredator on his own blog (in a previous post that Prok replied to!): "5. Second Life is not the only platform to consider." Doesn't sound like someone trying to stop the creation or adoption of other platforms to me

Posted by daniellivingstone on 4/6/2007 5:53 AM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

This is a conversation started by Erik Kinitz about why he still needs to be convinced that SL is good for marketing. Did he get convinced yet? No. And he's absolutely right to ask that question. He's correct, he and others concerned about marketing DO need to be convinced and by their probing questions and experiences some will discover no, SL is not for them, and that's ok, we can't sugar-coat it. SL will either get better, or they will change, or other avenues will open up for them. epredator and others promoting SL because a major corporation hired them in it, and due to its open-ended creativity, have trouble absorbing the message here, which isn't *my fault* or *my choice* but is simply the fact on the ground: that Second Life is not a form of media that enables the reaching of mass audiences easily, or which enables the mass audiences to reach it. It's not MTV. What apologists for SL do then is a) try to prove that reaching mass audiences doesn't matter any more or b) that reaching mass audiences is for conformist, backward mediocrities or c) that the kewl kids who do creative open-ended things create in SL so that everyone else should catch up. But...that's silly. There or Kaneva or Sony's Home will have people using it who are just as creative and just as interested in pushing the envelop who will be empowered precisely because developers made it easier for them to be creative without having to learn C+++. By limiting some of the things that make SL a horror (griefers, flying objects, performance, steep learning curves) they may not necessarily sacrifice creativity. I say this as a person who plans on remaining with my considerable land portfolio in SL, which has the most realistic and robust economy and the most creative people at this time. But it would be foolish to say to *companies and marketers* that they should cling to laggy, poorly-visited servers along with us in Pioneerville, when they can achieve their purposes -- reaching mass audiences -- by going to work with There and MTV on Virtual Laguna Beach or whatever properties they come up with. Marketers, after all, have a job to do: marketing. We can all huff and puff and say "Market to tiny demographic niches that don't have very much spending money but are at the bleeding edge" or "marketing now means identifying thousands of little niches and changing your approach and message to them" but only some of them will be persuaded they need to spend time, talent, and treasure on that. It's good that some companies have the staying power and the long view and the deep pockets to be part of the cutting edge (like IBM). Another deep fallacy that the platformists and avante-gardists suffer from is the idea that open source will bring more freedom and more massivity, and create an even more mass media that is "The People's" and not "The Man's" that is even more of a marketers' dream. If anything, as I've always said, open source=closed society. It means a million people making Basement Pirates, not a million people all accessing the same kind of world at once. How will marketers surf the crowd sourced? Platformists and SL apologiosts treat those who wish to have a more mass experience as somehow pedestrian and gross. But maybe they just want a more mass experience in terms of a more comfortable and easy environment to free their further creativity with other skills besides computer programming and graphic arts. Not everybody wants to learn code and script wierd geometric shapes in their basement. daniellivingstone, this conversation goes back to epredator slamming me on the Herald for *reporting the fact that* There did far better than SL at Virtual Worlds 07 because it is simply more attractive to advertisers for very important reasons. This was a betrayal! But it's just a report. I'm not decamping to PG There with no real land market in it. He's willing to concede that SL "isn't everything" but he's expressing profound dismay with people who won't accept his argument that we all need to stop worrying about getting and keeping 100 people on a sim. But we can't stop worrying. We certainly *do* have to worry about getting and keeping not only 100 on a sim, but 100 times 100. All of these notions of greater avatar capacity or open-source leading to all these freedoms are in the far, bright future that isn't here yet. My solution is very different than yours. It's not about empowering the 10 percent who make the 90 percent content for others and marketing strictly to developers. Do that, if you want to take that rough ride. It's about leveraging these worlds that pay in micropayments and have people willing to learn as they go and willing to work part-time in micro-time slots or for micropayment wage levels to *serve customers*. This is about *really* managing crowsdsourcing, not just invoking it at your pleasure or harnessing it for your own goals, but really *giving back* to the crowd. The companies will eventually figure out they have to follow the recipe the Lindens invented, then abandonded: providing payments to club owners, event organizers, arts and culture boards, socializers, to keep the grid populated and growing.

Posted by Prokofy on 4/6/2007 11:53 AM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

It's unfortunate that due to greed and the gold rush atmosphere, the bar has been set so high for any corporation's experiment -- if they don't buy at least 16 islands and spend hundreds of thousands of money *on developers* they aren't getting as much visibility in the old media. But for those willing to go down below the radar a bit and spend a lot less, there is still much to be learned. I can understand why *developers* keep telling them to go the gigantism route, but the rest of us can point out that buying or renting far less space; having far less expenditure on big builds; focusing more on customer service, events, actual products sold or given away might be a less costly and difficult route to take and reach more people in the long run. Please, we can all appreciate the usefulness of having smaller events for smaller niches of people -- even micro-niches. I've made that argument myself in my first response to Eric -- why corporations should bother -- some of them should. But I don't think we need to be bending and twisting analogies until they break, either. The Broadway show has a script that stays put. It's the same wherever you produce it. It's copyrighted by the author to stay the same, for God's sake! And that matters. It's intellectual property that you may interpret, and even mash up a bit, but to take it and mangle it and slice and dice it breaks not only the legal contract of what intellectual property is; it breaks the social contract. Trying to say that the individualized experience I have with my friend watching the Broadway show on Broadway is fundamentally different from the experience of the person in Peoria is really stretching it -- it isn't. But what new media is supposed to do is to enable the community of New York theatergoers and the community of Peoria theater-goers to drill down their own niches and talk across frontiers and create their own media space. You don't have to deconstruct the Broadway play to do that; you can merely empower and amplify the consumers to make their own co-created media response to media. It's a value-add. OK, yada yada, we know that SL is "disruptive media" and "will disrupt" all this IP stuff and mix and mash...except who's going to pay for the sandboxers and script kiddies to do all this mashing and disrupting? Disrupting for disruption's sake is just as boring as mass culture, frankly. It's better if it is a balance between predictability and disruption that isn't destruction. Second Life is a difficult but accessible enough platform that enables companies to experiment and prototype their eventual presence in the growing scene of virtual worlds. After they're done experimenting and prototyping, they may conclude, like Wells Fargo, that they need to move to another world, even one with more creative limitations, to meet their needs. Or they may conclude, like IBM, that they need to embrace the technology and the communities forming around it even more to position themselves in the new world.

Posted by Prokofy on 4/6/2007 12:22 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

"Disrupting for disruption's sake is just as boring as mass culture, frankly. It's better if it is a balance between predictability and disruption that isn't destruction. Second Life is a difficult but accessible enough platform that enables companies to experiment and prototype their eventual presence in the growing scene of virtual worlds. After they're done experimenting and prototyping, they may conclude, like Wells Fargo, that they need to move to another world, even one with more creative limitations, to meet their needs. Or they may conclude, like IBM, that they need to embrace the technology and the communities forming around it even more to position themselves in the new world."

Excellent summarization, Prokofy. The point I want to underscore here is the experimentation and prototyping that Eric does suggest is important, does not appear on the larger agenda. The question of course is how much resources should one devote to these virtual worlds.

Allow me to address three of the other points above, which may not be as useful as they may at first appear:

#3. Subscriber statistics: Eric makes the point that Manhattan is more densely occupied than Second Life. Well, Manhattan is more densely occupied than many or most places. Calcutta is extremely densely occupied. The point here is that the kind of people in Second Life have a demographic which make them particularly attractive to certain advertisers. HP, being a technology company, I would assume would want to be inside of a virtual world which requires that participants use product from their own industry to enter.

#4. Corporate IT backlash: As a former network engineer, I can with confidence say that Corporate IT attempts to resist any new technology that could complexify the network topology and increase the number of applications they must support. This is natural, though certainly not a reason not to innovate. If Corporate IT had its way (and I have been guilty of this myself) we would have completely locked down workstations, software upgrades would happen once per year, and everyone would use ten character case-sensitive passwords that change every 30-days.

#5 Adult-oriented content: As Adhmer Hynes, CEO of Text100 notes (http://mondaymorning.typepad.com/monday_morning/2006/11/first_lessons_f.html)

"Frankly I wouldn’t bee too concerned with the adult content side of Second Life right now. If you look at the beginnings of the World Wide Web – it was an issue then just as it is here but it didn’t stop corporations setting up websites. And of course adult content is still a big part of the WWW but it hasn’t stopped its development in many other dramatic ways that we couldn’t have even dreamt possible when it first took off."

Aloha and mahalo for the blog entry that spurs thought and dialogue.

Jeff McNeill

SL: Donnagh McDonnagh

Posted by jeffmcneill on 4/6/2007 2:00 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

It is understandable that corporations are worried about the fact that a lot of SL is about sex. If you look at the history of communications media in the past, you see that porn is a driving force behind most innovations--- in recent years porno operators were early adopters of the internet, and of home video, etc..... but it goes back way way farther back than the 1980s. Even in caveman days, some of the oldest artifacts are sexual: e.g., the "Venus of Willendorf" wasn't merely a "fertility goddess", she was a depiction of her era's Anna Nicole.

Posted by TimothyHorrigan on 4/9/2007 11:13 AM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Okay, thats typical, As you said there are islands where no persons are - i am a marketer and i do a few things for larger companies in the internet in europe especialy web 2.0 - the problem is that most company did not know what they do in secondlife - means the bought and island place a building and present there products! - and now they are waiting that people are seeking there brands - THATS the problem Secondlife is like the internet was at the beginning - especialy the large companies are yll buying from guys which are in secondlife not so familiar - okay problem is marketing ingame - come on no larrg company actualy does anything in SL - its like when u have a hugh store in a larg forest u think someone will find you in RealLife when u open a store in a larg forest - i would not say any more - sorry - and the integration in the rest of the communitcation - is the same as it was with the internet there where excelent webpages - but noone knows from them because they where not communitcated - feel fee To contact me - i always help persons to get a right view what possibilities are in thes virtual world an i have had several meetings -wher the marketer wants to be the heror - sorry - sometimes the persons who are familiar with that media are the experts not the guy who is doing things with the numbers in his ofice. okay u can send an email if you want more info - FUTURE WILL SHOW - WHATS GOING ON - BUT WE ARE DEFINITLY IN THE RUN .- THE TRAIN IS RUNNING FOR INERNET 3D - GUYS U SPWND A LOT OF MONEY IN ADVERTISING IN NEWSPAPERS but just think how "cheap" there is instead Secondlife - sorry will not say more

Posted by Johnvan Hartmann on 4/10/2007 12:43 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

I'm failing to see why Second Life is "like the Internet". To the extent that Web 1.0 gurus try to force virtual worlds into their 2-3 strait-jacket, they fail. Virtual worlds are *worlds*. They aren't pages. You don't interact with a page. You don't have relationships with a page. Marketers would do better treating SL like a real country, or at least a village, where they need to work at identity and customer service. Virtuality is actually a retreat or a regression to earlier kinds of human interactions that the telephone, TV, and the Internet in fact obliterated or at least utterly transformed. Virtuality is about reconnecting at a campfire or a fireplace or a table, and sitting and looking people in the eyes -- at least to the extent you *can* look an avatar in the eyes. People are restoring something from the past, not barrelling into the unknown future. No need to be cute and clever about it. It's about people. I'd strongly advise any company going into a virtual world to put *their own people* on the job. Every company of any size these days has IT, graphics, etc. people. Let them learn the tools -- it really isn't that hard -- and make bulding and adapting to the world part of your experience. Don't shield yourself in fear from the experience by paying tens of thousands of dollars to sherpas to carry the load. Carry it yourself to find out what you can bear.

Posted by Prokofy on 4/10/2007 1:40 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

I agree with some of your points. Technically, it IS possible to have 1000 people (or more) at the same time in a SL function. A New Year's party with almost 1000 people was held just to demonstrate this. Our foundation is researching with corporations to find marketing and branding value in SL. As a first step, we have put together a research panel of over 700 of the most active SL residents (1-2 hours a day) who own the most groups, land, etc., demographically studied for over 30 attributes (both RL and SL). The purpose is to engage them in dialogue, focus groups etc. in First and Second Life. Our FREE analysis is available for download at: http://www.socialresearchfoundation.org

Posted by hpblog on 4/10/2007 2:20 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Dear Eric, have been following your blog for a long time and infact have been using information here as a base for some of my research. Kindof consider you an authority on some of these issues. Considering how successful your corporate blog is, i would like to know your take on 'Corporate Blogging as a tool for CRM' and how customer feedback can be incorporated towards successful co-creation...

Posted by Vandanaahuja on 4/11/2007 1:01 AM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Eric, as a relatively large HP customer, I'd love to have a 1:1 call on this with you. Reach out to Janis Abramovitz in your sales team, she'll know who the customer is who's been looking to talk with HP about SL. I have to strongly agree with Prokofy's first post (at least 90% of it...). Your arguments are eerily similar to the nay-sayers of the early internet. We had a divisional CEO who tried to shut down access to the Internet as late as 2000 "because people will be wasting time and not doing their work". His memo to the CIO to shut down access preceeded his uncerimonious departure by about 3 months. We need real technology architects handling this who are also business analysts - a difficult breed, but not impossible. WEB 3D (virtual worlds, metaverses, MMOGs, whatever your term) is inevitable. Ever read the Gartner paper on the Consumerization of IT? I have, and I believe they are exactly on target. Your employees will tell YOU what computers they will use (although I admit you have a leg up with your folks there...), what email system they will run, what blogs they will post to, how they will collaborate, what IM systems they will connect to, etc. Please don't talk to me about standards, most every standard written has had exceptions, nearly every VIP manages to get their new favorite toy supported. Ever watch a kid play The Sims 2? The next generation will have this in their DNA. So the next time you're face to face with one of these kids fresh out of NYU, you're going to hear about how "you don't understand the new business paradigms", how "we're losing competitive advantage by not being an early adopter of technology" and whispers behind your back about how you shouldn't be in management because "you just don't get it any more". Your IT strategy architects should be beating down your door to establish a proof of concept for testing this space out. A team of innovators should be experimenting with what works and what doesn't, and briefing the executive committee at least twice a year on the progress. This isn't a "bet the business" initiative, it's a "get in front of it so we can manage it" one. epredator, you're Eightbar (long bow of respect). Tell about how Palmisano spoke at Forbidden City to the Chinese. Sometimes, it's about you being recognized as a technology leader and innovator. I certainly don't agree with him all the time but I have newfound respect for him doing this because with one action it demonstrated the head of IBM was progressive, challenging and someone to watch. It also was a statement about how white shirts and blue suits just don't fit any more...

Posted by sysengr on 4/13/2007 12:05 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

The Social Research Foundation invites marketers to join our advisory panel for Second Life. The purpose is to share information & insights on specific projects by Fortune 500 and other corporate clients working with the SRF's First Opinions Panel™ in SL. Details are at http://www.socialresearchfoundation.org

Posted by hpblog on 4/15/2007 4:27 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Eric - was excited to see you're reading our Direct2Dell blog, and responded to your comments here: http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/04/20/12428.aspx#12692. Enjoy the dialogue, and if you'll let me know your SL avatar name, we can continue the conversation there. You'll find me in-world as Pyrrha Dell. ~Laura

Posted by Laura/Pyrrha on 4/24/2007 10:17 AM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Hi Eric, as a long time gamer and a pioneer in the enthusiast PC busines - I couldn't agree more about Second Life. I think there are merits with in-game advertising -- but I do believe money is better spent elsewhere. I am going to email you privately to throw some ideas that you may like :) Rahul Sood

Posted by rsvdhd on 4/24/2007 11:02 AM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

Laura- I was also excited to see that you were reading an HP blog! Say hi to Lionel for me. Thanks for the follow up comment on the Dell blog and detailed explanation. I thought you would also be interested to see the last comment on this post from Rahul, the CTO of our gaming business.

Posted by erickintz on 4/24/2007 12:27 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

How many of these objections could have applied equally well to the earliest days of the WWW? Name one that couldn't have.

Posted by dkrugman@gmail.com on 4/24/2007 3:56 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

I think that I can speak about this one from a unique perspective since we created StageCoach Island.:) We loved SL. We actually worked with them in a way that nobody else will ever be able to do. We had our own entrance, web client etc. Our business reality was that Wells Fargo prides itslef on diversity, community etc. It was too much to ask of our audience for them to have a computer that could handle the SL platform. Therefore, we were able to open up SI to a much larger audience by switching to the AW platform. It was a good, sound business decision.:) SL is awesome, but not for everyone.:) best of luck to everyone and their VW efforts:) E

Posted by swivelmedia on 4/27/2007 6:33 PM
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Re: Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to

I agree that the commercial value of Second Life, and virtual worlds in general, is still unclear and probably not the first priority for an interactive marketing plan. But.. now that Playboy is opening up shop there, I think real business models will start to emerge. Playboy doesn't go anywhere without a revenue plan :-) As I posted this week, worth watching what they do. On another note, I've always thought that a photo gallery in 2d Life with the winners of all the various HP photo contests would be a neat way for you to dip your toe in the virtual world waters.

Posted by sgetgood@getgood.com on 5/16/2007 4:35 PM
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You're wrong on 9/10, and here's why.

http://secondtense.blogspot.com/2007/09/top-10-reasons-why-you-are-convinced-to.html I took you up on your challenge to prove you wrong. And I did, at least on 9 out of 10. My name is Ron Blechner, and I'm Chief Technology Officer at Involve, Inc (formerly Infinite Vision Media). We specialize in bringing in Fortune 500 companies into virtual worlds, and we deal with these myths you've posted all the time.

Posted by rtblechner on 9/11/2007 2:25 AM
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Beware of misleading statistics and comments

It's hard to understand certain aspects of Second Life if the comparison is made with things that are so unrelated to it, although it's part of our natural human behaviour to do exactly that. Remember that most of the time you're comparing apples with oranges: http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2007/06/02/apples-and-oranges/ So it's better to try to understand how things actually work in Second Life, and why they're different: http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2007/08/26/please-get-your-facts-straight/ This mostly means that the newer statistics provided by the likes of Nielsen//NetRatings are, in fact, much better to classify the phenomena like Second Life, than the usual method of looking at Web site logs and concluding that a site "has many hits/unique visitors so it's a success". As mentioned above, a successful department store or shopping mall can have a a million visitors in a day. But if you enter it during the wee hours, you won't find a single soul there. 1/3 of the whole time nobody will be around! On most offices, it's even worse: they'll be closed 2/3 of the time, and work only 5 days out of 7 — and how many "visitors" does an office get per day, anyway? Even a large one? Understanding that is crucial to looking at Second Life's statistics and drawing conclusions.

Posted by Gwyneth Llewelyn on 9/11/2007 6:32 AM
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