23 Musings

Wow! Good progress is being made towards allowing humans to immerse themselves in virtual worlds. This video shows a new camera which allows you to translate body movements into Second Life.

It may look a little basic at the moment but once the worlds get more 'real' there is real potential for many industries (including travel) to really go to town on providing the next best thing to their 'real' products online.

In amazing news it turns out that terrorist groups are using Second Life as a virtual training ground for attacks in the real world.

As they can't practice in the real world it seems jihadists are turning to the virtual world to train and fine tune their skills. Will this now lead to mass infiltration of Second Life by spies and counter terrorism officials? Most likely...

There's a great article in Wired Magazine talking about the wasted marketing dollars that are being ploughed into Second Life at the moment. Here's some excerpts below:

At least 50 major companies have ventured into the virtual world to date, spending millions in the process. IBM has created a massive complex of adjoining islands dedicated to recruitment, employee training, and in-world business meetings. Coldwell Banker has opened a virtual real estate office. Brands like Adidas, H&R Block, and Sears have set up shop. CNET and Reuters have opened virtual bureaus there. It's as if the moon suddenly had oxygen. Nobody wants to miss out.

On a random day in June, the most popular location was Money Island (where Linden dollars, the official currency, are given away gratis), with a score of 136,000. Sexy Beach, one of several regions that offer virtual sex shops, dancing, and no-strings hookups, came in at 133,000. The Sears store on IBM's Innovation Island had a traffic score of 281; Coke's Virtual Thirst pavilion, a mere 27. And even when corporate destinations actually draw people, the PR can be less than ideal.

This shows that for all the money invested, Second Life residents just don't seem to be into the type of offerings that are placing themselves in the virtual world. Does this make it a waste of money? I reckon so for large investments, it's still worth getting into Second Life because it could be turned around and become more valuable to marketers and to win it you will have to be in it. Just don't jump in with a huge investment straight away! It is with having brand presence!

Crowne Plaza hotels have set up some virtual meeting rooms in Second Life. You can book these on their website and meet up virtually to hold your all important meeting or conference.

I'm getting a little tired of all these Second Life fads. There are plenty of conferencing tools out there which do this job perfectly well without the need for avatars and flying around.

There's many useful Second Life opportunities but business meetings is surely taking it one step too far. Are agencies spinning Second Life so much that brands are willing to buy into every crazy idea? You can book these meeting rooms for free so there's no revenue for Crowne Plaza, therefore it must all be about brand awareness and being part of the virtual world thing. Time to get a dose of the real world perhaps in order to learn how to fully leverage the virtual and monetise it?

Apparently vandalism has been an issue in Second Life for ages but one act has made the press today. Australian broadcaster ABC has an island (the third most visited apparently), today they found the island looking like a nuclear bomb had gone off and covered in craters.

This act of cyber destruction may have been digitally recorded by Linden Labs they hope!

Want to see who's doing what and where in Second Life from a brand perspective? This useful map from KZero shows where the major brands who've entered the virtual world have set up camp.
Interestingly, KZero have also started offering Second Life Safaris for marketers who find the online world daunting and need a helping hand to find their way around. They'll also help you understand the potential brand exposure you could glean from moving into the virtual world.

After the intial rush to dive into Second Life and try to establish brand presence in the virtual world, marketers are now reigning in their ambitions as they find it a tough task understanding the world and leveraging it's potential. Even worse, the locals (regular users of Second Life) are taking a dislike to many marketers as they are adding no value to the community and purely using it as an advertising platform to further their brand.

Disregarding the community is a fatal error. Marketers risk total failure of a venture in Second Life if they ignore the locals and fail to give something back. The same happens at MySpace as brands which launch profiles that are purely adverts find they get very little value from the venture.

The community is key. Engage them, entertain them, add value, give them a reason to interact with your brand and you'll win. Establish a need amongst the community and give them something they will want to take part in. Fail to do any of this and you have definitely wasted your money (except perhaps a bit of launch PR).

In Second Life some shops set up by brands are all but abandoned as the marketers involved fail to work out how to make it work to their advantage. 70 percent of the locals say they are disappointed with the presence that marketers have established.

It's a risky venture (unless you have big pockets) and one to research properly and plan a strategy for before you begin. Get it right and you could be laughing, get it wrong and you can generate a lot of the wrong type of PR.

Another corporate Second Life entrant has been announced this weekend. Pontiac have set up a virtual dealership offering one of their models of car for a few dollars to users. The car can be acquired in a stunning array of collars from polka dots to stripes (and I thought Pontiacs were ugly enough anyway!).

The Pontiac dealership is set on Motorarti island and the rest of that island (96 virtual acres) will be given away in lots to Second Life members who are interested in setting up a car related business. Ideas for these include car customising garages, drive in theatres etc. Sounds like a good move by Pontiac to expand their reach beyond purely their own dealership, if it works out it should build a nice little community of Pontiac related businesses.

In other Second Life news a worm has hit the virtual world which almost brought the servers to a standstill. Spinning gold rings (no it wasn't Sonic) began appearing and as a user interacted with them they replicated and spread across the Linden Labs servers. This caused extremem lag and at one point Linden Labs had to lock out all log ins while they began the task of cleaning up. The issue is now resolved but this is the largest denial of service attack on an online game to date. With such a large amount of trade going on in Second Life it's got to be a big target for denial of service so I'd expect to see some extra security put in place asap.

A piece of software has been developed which allows users in Second Life to replicate any exisiting content without paying for it. This is causing mass consternation amongst the residents of the virtual world as people are making livings out of supplying avatars, clothing etc.

The program called Copybot has been developed by libsecondlife, which is an open source project that receives support from Second Life creator Linden Labs.

This is the first threat to Second Life which has been receiving nothing but great PR for weeks. Something as simple as the Copybot has the potential to put users off and cause a drop in the huge amount of cash changing hands daily in the virtual world.

How long until they face they're next big hurdle? I think it's likely to be pretty soon and will most probably come in the form of the U.S. Government and their opposition to the free and untaxed trade which is going on.

Here's the news I mentioned below...

Dell are apparently trying to seem all hip and in-touch by holding a press conference today in the virtual world Second Life.

Apparently this event is purely to announce their ongoing involvement inside Second Life, hardly breaking news as this has been talked about for months.

As Mike Arrington says on TechCrunch, this is hardly revolutionary and Dell should stick to what they are good at. I know they've had poor sales figures (or at least not as good as expected) lately, but jumping on every bandwagon is not the way to help yourself out of a rut.

I'm still convinces Second Life is a great place for brands to be involved but taking it as far as closed press conferences is a little extreme, I'd rather see them make an announcement to the real world once their activities in the virtual world become established.

Microsoft have launched a 3D rendering of 15 cities in their Virtual Earth/Local Live mapping product this week. It looks really good and it's really interesting to see Microsoft going down this route with what up to now has been a purely functional application.

With Microsoft at the helm this could get really interesting. They've placed billboard advertising in some areas which has been developed by an in-game advertising firm called Massive who Microsoft bought this year. The advertising has been taken up by some large corps (Nissan for example). The fact that an in-game advertiser has created this could point to developments to make this 3D mapping project progress into a really immersive way to geo-navigate the world online with advertising in the mix as well.

The new 3D platform is open to developers as well so if it gets a lot of interest we could see some great ideas come from this. I'd love to see a 'real world' kind of Second Life emerge in the future! With Microsoft and Massive involved could we see Virtual Earth being integrated into a game for XBox Live?

I wouldn't normally blog about Big Brother, I can't stand the tv programme. It churns out wanabee celebs who really have no talent or anything interesting to offer me. I find the nations fascination in these people incredible, I have zero interest in knowing what they are all getting up to in that house.

But being a tech freak I am interested when Endemol (the production company behind Big Brother) announce that they are going to do a virtual version of the show in Second Life.

Fifteen international Second Life residents will occupy a glass house on the site, with each one being voted off over a month until a winner remains. The final contestant will receive a virtual island within Second Life. It's said that contestants will spend up to 8 hours a day in the virtual world (sounds rather boring to me).

I find this interesting as it's another example of a real world brand moving into the virtual world. I hope Endemol use this as a learning experience to broaden their knowledge of Second Life so that they can keep improving their integration with the virtual world. It's such a good way to raise your profile, make yourself look cutting edge and expand awareness of your brand offering!

I love Second Life. I mean as a concept, I don't spend much time in it I just have a nose around and what's being developed, but conceptually it's a great idea and I can see it becoming a hub of online activity for a huge part of the online community before long. I'm certain that the web will move to a more immersive experience before long and artificial worlds seem a natural progression for many services we all use online.

So here are some ideas I'd like to see come out of it. Most of these will probably happen in some form, even if only as a viral marketing piece (some are a bit unlikely, but you never know). And don't shoot me down if some have already been done, I didn't know...

1. Retail - imagine a virtual music store where you could browse the shelves, listen to songs, view videos, buy MP3's, download posters ready to print and in the same trip to the store communicate with other users and people who work there to find what you're looking for. Not that far-out! I reckon this will happen before long. Books, clothes (dress up virtual characters before buying) and anything else could sold in virtual stores quite easily.
   
   
2. Games arcades - walk in (virtually), pay your Linden dollars and play the latest arcade games. This could be done right now with downloadable games, but as bandwidth and computing power increases there's no reason why you couldn't play a virtual copy of the latest EA game in virtual comfort in your Second Life world.
   
   
3. Speed dating - okay, a bit of a jokey one, but it could work! Virtual speed dating, if someone set this up as a business in Second Life they could make a lot of Lindens :)
   
   
4. Project management/consultancy - this is most probably being done already. With so many marketeers wanting to get their brand into Second Life it would be a really good place to position yourself as a consultant able to get them started and point them in the right direction for help and development. Call me an old hippy but a co-op approach of consultants and designers offering Second Life services could be a powerful thing!
   
   
5. Takeaway - so you've spent all day shopping in Second Life, and now you're playing games in the arcade, but you're getting a little peckish... Just nip round the corner to the local Second Life Domino's and order a pizza for delivery to your home (real home not virtual). As people spend more time in virtual worlds this seems a natural thing to move into for the major takeaway businesses who operate online as well. Thinking about it, why not in console games too? When you're hooked up to Xbox live and playing GTA wouldn't it be nice to order a pizza without having to pause and use the phone...
   
   
6. Adult services - again most likely being done and I just haven't delved deep enough ;) Virtual strip joint anyone?
   
   
7. Fashion shows - as the graphics get better and the realism improves then why not show your latest collection virtually (and then sell it to people in your virtual store).
   
   
8. Car showroom - get a virtual look inside that new motor you're thinking of buying. Again as graphics, realism and computing power improves why not test drive the thing?
   
   
9. Learning - virtual schools, workshops, conferences and demos. These could all be a lot more interactive using a virtual environment.
   
   
10. Travel - someone should arrange virtual itineraries around Second Life. Great for n00bs (like me) and if done by someone with an exisiting real world travel brand it would be great PR and a chance to acquire some new customers/prospects.

That last one (travel) can apply to most industries. There's an opportunity to be the first in your field to get into Second Life and from that you can derive a load of brand equity and a great chance to acquire new prospects.

The list could have been much longer, there are so many ideas that could transfer to Second Life in some part, either as a new channel to market or purely a great viral marketing exercise. Large brands are moving in to the virtual world every day, don't get left behind. There's such a huge buzz surrounding it at the moment that now is the time to stake your claim to a piece of land and increase your brand awareness online!

Edit: Should have mentioned the social networks! MySpace, Bebo etc surely must be watching Second Life with interest and before long you'd expect to see some way of relating your Second Life character with your social network profile! Surely that's a given??

All ideas above copyright 23Musings :)

Second Life is getting a lot of buzz lately. First there were the stories of large sums of money changing hands, then someone bought a nightclub in the virtual world and now it seems to be the place that companies want to have a presence. Whether this is to seem cool or to speak to a new customer base remains to be seen...

A good example of the way Second Life is being used by companies is a marketing initiative launched by Intel in the virtual world. They have had world-renowned virtual builder, Versu Richelieu, creating a new masterpiece in the Second Life virtual landscape using an Intel Centrino Duo based laptop for 72 hours. While working she was eating, sleeping, and living a completely digital life in a New York City shop window. A great bit of viral work to show how powerful their new Duo chips can be.

The hotel industry has got involved too. Starwood Hotels are creating a hotel in the virtual world before they create it in the real world, there by giving people a preview (and of course generating a buzz). The Aloft Hotels are part of the W Hotels range and this is giving them some really good exposure.

Finally, Reuters have today launched a news bureau in Second Life. This will provide news updates to residents of Second Life via a mobile device they carry around while online. Top story today? A piece about whether virtual economies deserve taxing like real ones!

So what's next? There seems to be an opportunity for a travel company to get involved in Second Life. A virtual tour operator perhaps? Who knows, with approx 900,000 members Second Life is a viable platform for marketing on now and with money changing hands it's easy to see why companies are moving in.