Will The Last Corporation Leaving Second Life Please Turn Off The Light

It is possible the equation is not working out for corporations but several small businesses and independent folks claim they are making a good life on second life. But then, again, it might be that the tip of the iceberg making a lot of money while the larger part is just there for the brag value

I think the bottom line is corporations plainly need to operate in the real world.

that’s not a surprise, lol - i saw this a while back that the businesses placing their storefronts in SL wouldn’t get anywhere.

people don’t exactly login into SL with the intent to window shop/buy, if anything - they just login to play this multi-player, mediocre online game.

Duncan, you also have to include the cost of staffing the islands, which is what most companies do - that really racks up the costs involved in running an island.

Duh!

Irrational marketing at best. SL is a crappy online game for geeks. Let the geeks play, and spend corporate marketing dollars in media engaged by decision makers and influencers.

Nik
good point

SL residents dont really care about RL corps, however if RL companies would be sleek enough to engage with SL residents there would be unique opportunities such as honest customers feedback and true opinions, hard to to get in real life or on the internet, let’s not forget brand re-inforcement at a VERY reasonable cost :).

Second Life it’s a game if you want it to be one. The amount of creativity in there is unreal, you just gotta know your way around to find it or learn *the game* to create something yourself.

Where can you create a building such a gallery or a museum and people from all over the planet can experience it in 3d or flying in it? Give it 18 months when the servers will be open source and there will be many…many grids.

”
Duncan, you also have to include the cost of staffing the islands, which is what most companies do - that really racks up the costs involved in running an island.”

racking up cost? lol..that’s peanuts compared to how much they pay for one ad on a national publication…that ain’t nothing don’t ya think?

Corporations should stay out of Second Life.

They don’t bother me…ya don’t have to get involved with them if you don’t want to

Ria’s got it, actually. It’s the small businesses that typically do well because they are more agile (if they pay attention). Some large companies do well, but their revenue model isn’t Second Life dependent.

Personally, I could do with less marketers. Period. The products and services are good and useful, but where marketers go wrong is building hype. That hype has, as expected, bitten them back. We could go into how the blogosphere feeds the hype-bubbles, too.

Au is a reasonable fellow, so I won’t comment on his post. What I can and will say is that… it’s the summer, marketers have had their bubble which has burst, and maybe now people can focus on what is important for a change. What is important? Depends on the person and what they want out of their life. The same for businesses.

Having spent some time in Second Life I fail to see what the attraction is/was for businesses. Most people in Second Life are there for reasons other than wanting to engage with “real life” business

Pontiac’s Initiative in SL was actually quite awesome– it engaged the users, didn’t shove corp messaging down throats.

As far as the whole ‘Real Life’ nonsense, may I direct your attention to product placement in video games and movies that has been going on for years?

That is all.

As a matter of disclosure btw, I was one of the applicants who was accepted to be granted land, where I built a music listening center on one of Pontiac’s Motorati island– I was not paid by or representative of Motorati. I wouldn’t have participated if I didn’t think they were a corp with their head screwed on properly. As an aside, I am relocating my music center into the virtual world of Kaneva as the architecture there is better for my work with music promotions (indie, podsafe, etc).

“Duncan, you also have to include the cost of staffing the islands, which is what most companies do - that really racks up the costs involved in running an island.”

I argree with this.

I spend a good amount of time in SL to find graphic designers, artists and musicians for various projects I’m working on. It’s FULL of them, if you put the time in to find them. However, I don’t consider that a strike against SL - it’s just like the regular internet. You have to look for good content - it doesn’t look for you.

Most corporations fail in SL because they make the same mistake most journalists writing about it do: they don’t do the research to really understand the platform. SL’s big drawback is that it has a steep learning curve to get started, so anyone looking to get into it should bear that in mind and actually spend some time there before opening a plot. You wouldn’t fire up your first computer and start a good, successful website ten minutes later, so I am always baffled at why a corporation would do this in SL. Buying an island is actually not a bad deal - it’s not more expensive month to month than any other land in SL, but that extra set-up fee ensures the fastest kind of server and better control over your land, right down to the color of the grass.

But seriously, anyone who would pay $10k USD to have something built for them or their company is being had. The most beautiful thing about SL is that anyone there can build anything if they are willing to put in a little bit of runway to learn. Or, you can go somewhere in between and buy yourself a pre-fabbed building - I rarely see any that cost more than $20 USD, even for the nicest ones that are made by real-life architects and graphic designers, if that gives you any idea of the luxury it must be to have a marketing budget.

In the end, most corporations fail in SL because they do pretty much nothing to engage the population there. They spend a fortune to put up a pretty build and then sit there and wait for people to flock there and then presumably click through to their website. The businesses that do extraordinarily well in SL are the ones that create content that engages the users. There’s a very strong blog network among SLers and any entity wanting to hang up their shingle there would be wise to investigate those further before getting started. Word travels fast in SL *IF* you have something good to offer and make the effort to tell people about it IN SL, and not just on your regular channels.

But hey - if anyone wants to pay me $10,000 USD to build them something, we can talk.

SL = NTY (Not There Yet). It will die or essentially be morphed out of existence.

The UX is awful and the UI sucks … and it doesn’t function well (in a relative sense) as either a communications or collaboration tool.

Okay for someone who has been in second life for over a year (no i aint a fanboy cause parts of SL suck big time) but when it comes to corporations in SL, its tiring listening to people go on and on about corporations who leave because they sucked at building an island/venue/shop/inset faboulous thing here/widet.

American Apprael sucked because they didnt even bother advertising to SL consumers in world (that i can remember seeing). Thats the classifieds section in search (not a place listing in search thats costs L$30. Which is pretty damn important if you want customers who shop in world and most dont or havent even heard of blogs such as the SL herald, New world notes, Secondlife insider etc.

Their clothing sucked too. It was designed by Aimee Weeber who is a really good designer but the clothes looked horrible and the shop was badly laid out for shopping in SL. If you are spending L$600 on clothes in SL you want the good stuff and fashion like in real life is a very fast paced busines, so why by from a shop that doesnt advertise in classifieds that you wont have heard off and who bad designs and hard to navigate shop where things were badly laid out.

Ok that is one example of a (Real Life) rl company not getting it.

How about another. Wow how about Play Boy in Secondlife. After all SL is all about sex etc, porn, sex beds, genetallia, so Play Boy Should fit well in there.

Luanch day in SL was popular for playboy. They drew a massive crowd. Trouble is though. It wasnt much of a bunny party. Sure it had live music in their hard to find club/dance area floating above over priced SL versions of Bunny Merchandise on the island which had nothing much to do with what Playboy is mostly associated. (Sex, Girls, Bunnys and Hugh Hefner) Maybe i missed something but i couldnt see there easily, it was laggy their after all.

Lastly, traffic in secondlife is meaningless. It doesnt mean *****. If you want to make money in SL. Count Sales, not traffic/pages and run your SL business like a Real world business. After all you are there to make money arent you.

Sigh Real World products in SL dont sell cause why go into SL to look for a real life product like a car. After all you wouldnt expect a car to fly in the real world yet funky looking (insert famous brand here does) oh and change alloys and paint at a click of the button too. Why cant i do that with my real world mercedes If a real world car handle like one in SL, they wont sell many.

Marketeers will move on to the next thing, facebook, sorry i mean your iphone app, no i mean myspace, no i mean widget, no i mean youtube ……

If SL was so bad why do people keep buying islands, land, buy linden dollars (they was $2,000,000 (us $) bought the other day according to Secondlife insider), Goto live music concerts, clubs with a real dj, free sex areas, take part in charity events like Relay for life, shop (and lots of it -> Women in 30’s in SL make up userbase who spend real money on clothes, accessories,more than the men do, like real life Buy a prefabricated house, learn how to build in classes, play Tringo ( you know that game that was invented in SL and now sold on PC, Nintendos etc) or Devil May Care (SLingo), buy textures so they can make their own buildings, objects etc or upload textures so they can make clothes.

Yes i went on to long. But saying Corporations are leaving SL who didnt have a clue anbd paid fancy consultants stupid money in droves is like flogging a dead horse in the hopes it will run in the Kentucky Derby. Look at SL as a developing community/economy/world in uncharted waters still in early infancy.

- Jay

(Yeah they are probably typos and i made mistakes but its late and who cares, hopefully you can get the points I amke and then do your own research to correct the ones I did)

This is no surprise to me either. I mean “Oh man I have to go to that AOL/Time Warner Island. I heard it’s pretty kick ass!”…. I don’t recall ever saying that to myself or hearing others say that.

I’m with most people when it deals with Second Life. What it really is, is a half-assed piece of crap 3D World, where people pretend to be Furries to have cyber-sex with eachother. That’s all I ever saw in that game… well that and the griefers spamming Mario TGA’s all over the place lol. That was pretty funny to me when I first saw it happen.

I did like creating stuff in the game. But that did not last long. Not until I realized how Linden Labs charged you for anything you wanted to do creatively. You’re very limited there. And I wasn’t willing to spend real money in the game at all. I’d rather just spend the $14.95 a month on World of Warcraft.

I don’t think Second Life will fade out of existence on the net. Not as long as Linden Labs has 40k+ morons willing to continue paying for Land Tiers, and sex-related avatar skins. Remember.. Second Life is Serious Business.

SL? Even Borat know better than time waste there

Just wrote my own article on the topic. Second life may be ahead of its time and advertisers may be too far behind. Nissan should consider advertising in a casino…then watch what happens.

dot boom boom
http://dotboomboom.com/2007/07.....ir-island/

Oh the money is there, its just like with most new media the indie users are reaping the initial benefits instead of the large corps.

I think businesses need to also consider this more as a branding tool than a revenue generator at the moment. For a good (and fun) example go the weather channel sim and try the various activities.

SL is dying slowly. I used to be on all the time and spent time with a large group of people and there were loads of new people around. Now *none* of the people I spoke to are on, ever, and the streams of new people have stopped completely. I pop in now and then to see what is happening, and the answer is nothing, and I usually end up with the client failing on me - the software is amazingly unreliable and the as someone above said, the UI is just clunky. I did visit the IBM and AOL sites - once each : there was no reason to stay. SL is full of constructions that people have spent enormous amounts of time on which are devoid of actual visitors. It eminds me of many art galleries.

SL will flame out and burst with energy in v 2.0 and the corporations will return. we’ve seen this story before, it probably will take voice activation or wii UI to take it to critical mass.

until then,its a happy little nerd paradise…

I think SL’s main bottleneck is the graphic/computing power of the general public. SL’s experience is just really not that great even on decent computers. SL on the average laptop is subpar as well, let alone the ones w/o Nvidia or Ati video cards. In order for SL or any virtual world for that matter, to be highly successful, it needs to make us really feel like its another virtual world. With that said, extra emphasis on graphics, sound, and atmosphere is of utmost importance.

Somehow, Nvidia and/or Ati will undoubtedly play a key role in this race to establish THE virtual world for the masses.

Rather than delve into a rant about how offbase the pronouncements of Second Life’s demise as a platform for corporate marketing are, let me hit you with a few facts from the front lines and then a link to a longer piece I just wrote on the subject.
1. Second Life is great for some things and not great for others. Specifically, for cost effectively creating communities of passionate users around a brand its phenomenal
2. Efforts that are erected and neglected tend to wither and fail. This is not Second Life’s fault and nobody in their right mind would suggest otherwise.
3. Second Life is capable of delivering Engagement statistics that are unmatched in other environments. Our recently launched campaign for Microsoft ( http://millionsofus.com/blog/archives/245 ) has an average engagement per user of 24 hours. That’s better than most console video games and . . . . well, you know how it stacks up to banner ads.
4. Here’’s the longer rant. Bottom line is that this is turning into a bigger and clients want a breadth of choices. No longer are they choosing one virtual world vs. another but rather making buys across a variety of worlds.. And that’s a good thing. http://millionsofus.com/blog/archives/273

I think the idea of second life is not successful.

Apparently there was a fire sale at the “blinder” factory and everyone is wearing a pair. Does anyone recall the early days of the web when these same type of articles were circulated? Millions of people learned how to download browsers, configure Winsock and surf the bare internet. Can you say Pathfinder?

Virtual worlds are at the same point in time as the early web regarding interest and development. Its already proven that millions of people use these worlds and spend millions of real dollars everyday in them. Whether or not Second Life is the catalyst to make this happen is irrelevant. There are a dozen more worlds behind them. This field has far too much steam for the train to brake. Those wearing blinders can release the emergency brake cable now, you just look silly with your arms in the air. The revolution will be virtualized.

I don’t understand why Second Life is getting treated any differently than the broader internet. There are tons of poor advertisements on the internet that end up costing way way more than they should ($60 million on bud.tv anyone) but nobody says that it’s the internet’s fault.

Just as with the broader net, Second Life has pros and cons (I find SL ugly and awkward myself, but I’m a fan of the concept). The real issue is not SL, but rather the agencies and advertisers flocking to create heavy-handed marketing materials without innovation, creativity, or an understanding of what might attract people to their offering. That and the dearth of customers in SL are the real issues.

Frankly, if an advertiser came along and did something really creative and compelling in SL I bet not only would it be worth their money, but might even boost SL traffic.

“…Second Life doesn’t rely on corporations for revenue and the decline of corporations on Second Life doesn’t really matter all that much to Linden Lab.”

You have got to be kidding? SL positioned themselves as a momentum story that in reality was nothing more than an overly hyped fad. Its positioning has been hugely dependent the syrupy coverage by a compliant mainstream media. One of its major sources of stories have been the press releases from the corporations drinking the SL Kool-aid about various events they were doing. As the corporations fade away so will their silly events and consequently so will much of the press coverage that SL has enjoyed.

The only thing left to write about on SL will be its actual stats which the LAT piece shows will not be to SL’s liking. If I was SL I’d be very worried. The tied has turned and mainstream media is finally coming around to start asking the same questions that the blogs started doing at the end of last year and we’ll likely see a series of very uncomplimentary stories. In other words good-bye fad.

Couple of things:

First, fantastic title for this article. Normally I never comment about the title but this one really struck me as perfect for the rest of the post.

Second, as noted in the article, Second Life doesn’t need traditional corporate presence to continue its popularity and success. If players are looking for items sold by these traditional corporations, they’ll do so through traditional methods. Players do not make “real life” purchasing decisions based on whether a traditional corporation has a Second Life presence or not.

Third, commerce in the game is all about buying things specifically for the game. Whether it’s clothes for your avatar, or land for a home/business. No one comes to Second Life to “shop” for something not related to the game. Sorry, Second Life is interesting but it’s NOT the “new frontier” that Linden Labs wants you to think it is.

Finally, traditional corporations showed up in Second Life because they bought into the hype and heard that people were making “real” money in the game. Once they arrived, they quickly realized that a form of money was changing hands but not for their products. Their realization led to questioning whether a Second Life presence made sense. Fundamentally, Second Life is a “game” regardless what people might think. I blogged about this at one of my blogs a few weeks ago: the game of Second Life is the economy. Participate in the economy and you are playing the game of Second Life. Unfortunately for traditional corporations, Second Life players are playing in an alternate economy which does not easily translate to real life.

Second life article

I don’t think we can generalize. There are some businesses that lend themselves to second life and some that don’t. Anything where people need choices will do fairly well on SL whereas if there are no choices needed, then SL has very little to offer.

Hey, at least SL keeps ‘em out of WoW.

As with a real estate deal, the most important part of the equation was location, location, location.. Second Life, merely is subjected to timing being right, and it will be before we know it…

Second Life started as an underground vehicle for young people. and already is being used by some of the largest corporations. Success is imminent, I bet with 8 million current residents, it’s on its way…

Regards, Dorothy

I would give props to all those companies failing on SL:
1. They dared venturing (and failing), probably with a not well-definite business model, into something new. Usually we blame corporations for being slow and late-adopters.
2. They quested the virtual world like colons did back in the days. That’s brave, mostly when share-holders are wondering why in the hell their companies is investing time and money in a silly video game.
3. They failed and retreated: I guess Second Life really is a game, where you can die and you can start all over again. At least that’s how we should see this.

Second life is not dead at all because cat has nine lives.

It still has
Third life,
fourth life,
fifth life,
sixth life
seventh life.

So ppl here, how can SL be dead ? You can’t be serious.

I could have said this is going to fail when it comes down to it. You have to sell things people will buy in game; either flipping land prices, or creating a unique game/item/toy that will bring customers back for more. I know several people who make multiple six figure incomes by dedicating their lives to Second Life. You just have to do the proper research to know what people want, and be able to create it with little or next to no money being put into the game to have the ability to turn profit. You build a client base, THEN expand to a larger parcel of land. They were banking on their ability to have a well known out of game name out of game and bringing it in game. People aren’t stupid, they know those people are still new to the game and won’t have the ability to make quality products in game. Coupled with their thought that you need a massive amount of land to be able to turn money, was the complete opposite of what they should have done.

I’m a Second Life user, I don’t take it seriously, but I have fun in it, it has taught me a lot about graphics design, and each day I make more money in it without ever having put any money in. I hang out with a lot of people who are in my same situation. As per the topic, the main point should be that corporations are not what Second Life is about, and to think it somehow depends on corporate interest is misguided. A lot of people have mentioned how poorly done it is, and I’m the first to agree that LL has no idea what it’s doing, but what they’re doing is unique and unchartered.

Or you can think it’s all about cybersex and furries and wonder why you’re not playing WoW with the other people who are too cool for Second Life.

“Au notes that the visitor rate to corporate installations on Second Life is 0.8-2% vs a CTR rate on standard web advertisements on 0.5-1%.”

I buy online advertising for a living, and I find this statement very strange. If your “standard web advertisement is getting a 0.5 CTR, it’s doing very well. If it’s getting 1.0%, it’s amazing almost beyond belief.

Worth mentioning that for every company leaving (Starwood, American Apparel) there are hundreds succeeding (Pontiac, Microsoft, Intel, Toyota, Coca Cola, Thompson Net G, Telstra, etc.) The more I think about this, the more it seems to me to be the sign of a market maturing. More platforms, more choices, more interest from corporations. And along with that, lessons learned about how to fail and how to succeed.

Virtual worlds make possible things that were previously unimagnable and we’re early in the first inning. Companies, for the most part, are spending modest sums and experimenting, as they should be. And they call these things experiments because the goal is to learn.

It would seem that the reason for the corporate pull out is the cost for a island and the monthly rent. But they, should look towards other virtual worlds. I spend all my time “life” and lots of money on the alternative to SL. Its the virtual world of There.com. They have built 3 successful game virtual worlds platforms for MTV. The cost for land or islands is so low its as if they give it away!

Second life is not about playing second life now and playing with users. It is about preparing yourself, your company, your organisation for what is going to come in a few years time.

Playing around in Second Life now and realizing that 3D has arrived means budgeting more money for better computers in the next investment round.

Telecommuting never really worked, for several reasons. Playing and engaging now in a tool like SL (notice a tool like) means getting to know a possible future.

SL is the first real environment where the public took notice and in some way engaged with it. As a favourite quote from one of my customers go regarding SL “hm. that is not going away isn’t it?”

This is the great opportunity for bigger companies - to learn.

Tried it. Uninstalled it. Waited a year. Installed it. Tried it. Uninstalled it.

It’s an interesting idea but a waste of time. Too much wierd adult stuff too. Corporations had better be careful mixing their brands with the wierd shit that permeates the SL world.

Maybe these companies just need some smart ideas.
See my small cartoon:
http://geekandpoke.typepad.com.....y-in-.html

Bye,
Oliver

unfortunately, it seems that their Alexa line is pointing South-East even as there is so much wonderful buzz… but I think SL are smart guys and will figure it out - maybe outside of the virtual world - the very platform is great!

Most of the real-life companies on SL have terrible non-sticky places. Just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come. There needs to be some actual interactivity and means for socializing, otherwise it’s pointless. Although wonderfully designed, the SONY island is complete crap.

I got an account and was absolutely SHOCKED at how slow and clunky the whole program (secondlife) was. How could anyone use it and take it seriously? And why is it so damn slow and hard to use anyways? All of the new multiplayer online games have no problems with simple navigation and use. Anyways, interesting idea but needs some serious polish.

Rep the brand.

-materialBITCH
http://www.materialbitch.com

I have had RL corporations as customers who rent shops from me in my communities — the RL travel company of RL Ravenglass in West Cumbria, UK, which has settled in my virtual Ravenglass sim; I’ve also had book, software, and mobile phone companies, in addition to the inworld tenants.

I wish more corporations would come off their islands and come on to the mainland and the residents’ shops on private islands and support them with their rentals — it also helps them get a lot more eyeballs than they were getting cooped up on their sims, waiting for us to try to TP into their laggy, or maxed-out events we couldn’t even get near. It costs companies *pennies* to rent in micropayments to inworld landlords who charge $3.00 US, not $300 US a month.

And who says you have to be on an island? You can achieve the same effect on 4096 m2 o the mainland with a sharp looking office and display with freebies and handouts for $25 US. And pay an inworlder in Lindens to staff it, and pay them a part-time low salary rather than a full-time outworld salary.

You don’t have to be afraid of “mixing your brand” on SL’s mainland and private island shopping, club, live music, and zoned rentals sims. These are well-maintained by dedicated people. They aren’t the griefing script-kiddy sandboxes you read about in the media. There are more than 8000 sims now, a vast trackless expanse. You cannot do the virtual equivalent of opening just in Pinsk or Minsk or Tomsk. You need the flagship in Moscow, but you need 20 or 30 affiliates or sub-offices or at least a logo or decal spread across the grid, and in doing so you help the economy and help yourself.

Big media corporations and their PR firms still think in static terms of push media, where the put out some big shiny thing, and everyone is supposed to come and bow and say, ooh, shiny. But people are busy pulling and pushing media of their own and saying ooh shiny about little things they and their friends make. You have to mix in with them.

Show me more than a handful of corporations that are actually getting and using Web 2.0 effectively. It took at least a decade for them to “get” the Web at all, and it could be argued that they are still struggling with the whole concept. Big corporations by their very definition don’t get new, disruptive technologies. The only difference these days is that they are a little quicker to dive head first into emerging technologies without actually understanding them or the dynamics that make them popular.

Second Life is representative of an emerging technology. It’s not the virtual world part that is interesting, rather it is the collaborative 3d environment for collaborative browsing of content that is interesting. The web is all about me experiencing content alone. Web 2.0 is all about lots more people being authors of content. Second Life (and a few of the other systems like it) is all about lots of people sharing the experience of browsing content. Of course a lot of it is sex and gambling, of course there are going to be major hiccups and burnouts along the way, but it is something to keep an eye on.

-josh

Second Life got popular because it got a lot of press whereby the experts hailed it a progressive way for corporations to leverage virtual worlds. Guys like Rubel was all over it then as were the experts out there, but for people that actually work on the internet predicted it would be a bust - and it was.

Absolutely no surprise… At least hopefully we won’t have to read any more silly posts by the experts pimping SL anymore…

yeah the startup cost - 5k-10k for a design firm, for something even more abstract than a website… to get to customers - that are the type to throw fake penis’s everywhere …

- no thanks

(1) The thing that says it all, to me, is that people, and respected publications, have serious things to say about it and are showing concern about these issues. (2) For a long time I kept an article published in a business publication (like WSJ or something) back in 1997 or so titled something like “Will anyone ever make money on the Web?” All of the issues in these comments are a replay of that article and its ilk. Maybe SL will fold, who knows? Seems to be doing pretty well to me right now though.

That is not important. What is important is that humans hold a desire within them to transcend their limitations. In the “western world,” we have chosen technology as a way to extend ourselves. SL is so clearly an expression of that. I think once you can understand that, you can find ways to use SL to your benefit, monetary or otherwise…however you may have to let go of some things you hold dear, and dissolve the more calcified parts of your world view.

If this does not make sense to you, I hope this does: it will get you nowhere to be a hater or tell me that something “sucks.” That is just noise that diminishes the value of the entire discussion.

Virtual worlds will be part of marketing, education, and media from now on. it’s worth being ahead of the curve.

Using Second Life for business or education requires specialized expertise. This need extends beyond the initial construction phase. Projects should have in-world events to draw visitors. Updates and experimentation will keep visitors coming.

Corporations are operating on an archaic concept. There are over 12,000 sims on secondlife. the idea that they should spend their time bringing Mohammed to the mountain is outdated and asinine. to be successful in SecondLife, Corporations are going to have to learn to bring the mountain to Mohammed, much as I have done with The Kiosk Kompany, a secondlife company designed to put product in front of consumers in the places where they play as opposed to putting the consumers in front of my products in the places where my product exists. welcome to 2007…. a time where mountains are finally fluid!

Corporations shouldn’t have entered Second Life in the first place. What’s the gain for them? They are corporations outside of it and also inside of it. They don’t have a different identity, but the very same one, but individuals choose so millions of other identities.

Therefore the CTR and CPM are way too high especially considering that if anyone wishing to get real, accurate info on a certain company will just google for it rather than looking into Second Life…

Or maybe I’m too obtuse…

It’s the next platform, the 3D web, and there’s no stopping it. Those who fail do so for lack of imagination and/or follow-through. (I’m saving up my Linden dollars to open a string of Oxygen Bar franchises.)

These articles and negative reviews can often be traced to organizations that want secondlife to be gone. any concern an la times article defaces must be a good investment since the la times is a lame rag that serves it’s psycho left wing masters. the fact that rl companies can’t make it in sl is because they have not a clue how to go about doing things properly. they hire so-called experts who build with all the skill of a 5 day old amateur. they hire other consultants that have no visible business acumen to help promote them.

meanwhile other business continue to flourish and expand. it is almost as though these left wing organs have only one manner of reporting. to listen to heresay and then take it as facts and then spin the bs into a larger steaming pile.

then there are the secondlife wanna be companies starting up that disparage secondlife every chance they get because it is their vested interest to see secondlife fail.

the world and secondlife would be better off if these garbage publications and all of their executives shut the lights off on their way out of this existence.

five to ten thousand dollars for building some structures on a sim? now that is insane and whoever is paying that much money is smoking crack.

it costs zero to build other than time. and it doesnt take that much time. i can build a sim in a few days that is far better than the crap like what showed up on playboy island. anybody out there want to pay me five to ten thousand dollars a week? by all means i am ready to take your money.

the author of this information is an idiot who has exactly zero knowledge of secondlife and should be terminated for falsification of information.

the $10,000 is probably L$10,000 or around $37 USD. $10,000 US is around 2.7 million lindens. anybody ever hear of a design firm in sl charging this much for building within the constraints of 15,000 prims? thats L$180 per prim! what a total crock of crap. this idiot confused lindens with dollars. this is a clear example of why any rl company and/or news organization should simply log onto sl, spend 30 days making an avatar look good, for free, and learning how things work and who really knows wtf they are talking about before putting fingers to keyboards to write and especially before signing a check for real dollars for a build.

You want to hire someone that knows what they are doing come and see me. Maybe you can convince me to give up my business that started with zero in January 2007 and is now paying my rl bills to make even more. i would happily build sims for a half million USD per year. I won’t be holding my breath though. i don’t smoke crack so i have no pipe dreams about things that don’t really happen.

My thoughts on the numerous comments about brands leaving Second Life.

Firstly, remember that in many ways, Second Life (and other virtual worlds) is just another marketing channel, albeit with unique characteristics.

When companies run marketing campaigns on other channels (such as TV, radio or print) and the campaign fails to deliver the desired level of response, one of two things happen:

1. The creative concept is critised as not being appropriate or good enough. In other words it did not resonate enough with the target audience or deliver the right messages.

2. Expectations were too high in the first place. Either because they were not correctly analysed or the channel has a different set of metrics.

You rarely hear about the media channel being critised as being incorrect. Some brands have run campaigns in Second Life and the platform has been critised with very little commentary on the quality of the actual concept or the metrics being used to assess the success.

The concept of media planning in Second Life (understanding the attributes of the channel audience - what motivates them - what they want - what the platform can deliver) has been overlooked to a very high degree to date in Second Life. This is the area that successful virtual world campaigns should focus on.