Second Life's PR Punch Dims, But Potential Holds

Although I keep a balanced perspective, I believe that 3D virtual worlds are going to become a place where people will increasingly spend time and conduct business online. Therefore, making an investment or two in Second Life is a worthwhile experiment for certain kinds of brands. It's a bet on a bold new future.

Virtual worlds like Second Life are not right for everyone, of course. You need to know what you want to get out of it.

A recent Forrester Research report noted that the platform isn't quite scalable yet to accommodate huge audiences. It's also mostly made up of male alpha users. Finally, Forrester also correctly observes that the PR value you get by launching a presence in the virtual world has diminished - unless it's truly breakthrough.

The Nasdaq is a great example of a brand that would pack a lot of PR punch by entering Second Life. They remain interested in launching an exchange in the world, but for now are playing it coy. It's smart for them to hold off for a bit.

So why am I still enthusiastic? The reason is that avatars tap into the human need to fantasize and socialize - most likely not as ourselves. Lots of gamers, for example, spend hours playing games like Tiger Woods 2007 so they can win bling for their virtual golf bags. Yahoo Avatars is another site that appears to be thriving, judging by the custom icons I have seen popping up over on Yahoo Answers.

Second Life is like Geocities was in 1998 - a big idea, but a little ahead of its time. I suspect that within a year or two robust 3D virtual worlds will eventually get far easier to use and run completely in a browser. Then they will become more mainstream.

Comments

[Charlie Melichar]

Steve -

Couldn't agree more. In fact, I just posted almost exactly this on my page with a post titled, "Second Life - The Betamax of the Net/." I think there's been a bit of a craze which is clearly overblown based on their churn stats, etc. but I also don't think it's something to be dismissed -- just look at how many people are spending money (some are spending a lot of money) in SL.

It has a place, just not on every desktop.

Charlie

http://intermedia.typepad.com/intermedia/2007/05/second_life_the.html

[Gary Goldhammer]

As it happens I just spoke with Cory Ondrejka today (CTO of Linden Labs), who said SL users are about evenly split male/female; the median age is 34; and the older you are, the more involved you are -- and there is more involvement on the part of women than men at any age. Not sure where Forrester gots its numbers?

The future is not about SL, but about an immersive, 3D web that builds on and expands today's Internet -- an Internet which 14 years ago was about at the stage where Second Life is today. That said, it's shortsighted to say that SL today is purely an "experiment" or a metaverse tapping into human needs for fantasy (emotion and deeper connection, yes). Look at Starwood's Aloft project, the more than 200 universities educating thousands of students, the Centers for Disease Control using SL to help save lives, the $60 million in USD transactions each month (and growing), 6,000 IBM employees conducting business and saving millions on travel costs, the explosion in original music...yes, I could go on and on.

PR value? Depends on your definition of what's valuable PR. Business value? Absolutely -- and that's good for PR, too.

[Ed Kohler]

I still haven't figured out why someone would need to go into a virtual world to gain real-world credibility. Wouldn't virtual world people venture into the real world to decide how they're going to spend real dollars?

[Thomas Knuewer]

SL is in the middle of a huge scandal here in Germany. TV-magazine Report found pedophiles in SL, playing rape scenes with kid avatars. Linden Lab-VP reacted shocked when they showed real kidporn-pics which were traded over the SL-system.
You can see the film (German commentary) here: http://www.swr.de/report/-/id=233454/nid=233454/did=2148514/pv=mplayer/vv=big/14lij94/index.html

[Kevin Reid]

I agree with Gary Goldhammer above. It is not about Second Life in particular... there are a number of thriving, scalable, immersive, 3D web communites out there including Whyville and There.com. Second Life is an important player in this field, but it isn't the only one. MTV is doing some amazing stuff in There.com and companies like Disney have run campaigns in Whyville. These are just two examples.

[David Scott Lewis]

Way too much SL hype. It really does seem like a place for people with no life.

Besides, the UX sucks. Takes way too long to master. I'm sure LL will make improvements, but it has a long, long way to go before it could even dream of becoming mainstream.

It's Worlds, Inc.: The Next Generation. In 10, 20 years, SL will be toast, only remembered by a few. Hard to believe that they'll be the platform that will succeed.