Starting a Second Life?

Most people find that they don’t have enough time for their first life, let alone a Second Life! However this virtual world is rapidly expanding around the globe with the largest corporations and universities embracing its potential and investing in ways that they can communicate with this growing community. As a business owner, you can’t afford to ignore it.

Second Life has a user base of 1.7 million who use the site regularly. This online world has been entirely shaped by its residents – from the landscape to the activities. You can be whoever you want to be and do pretty much everything you have always dreamed of – from flying, to skiing to just relaxing on a desert island. It is easy to see how this online Utopia is appealing as an escape from the usual daily grind.

When you first log into Second Life you create your Avatar – a digital image of how you would like to look to the virtual world. You can choose your hair colour, height and body shape – allowing you to look the way you have always wanted to, without the plastic surgery.

Once you have created your Avatar you can go see a band, hang out with your friends in a bar, talk politics, debate with top scientists from NASA. It is all possible within this virtual community.

Second Life has its own currency called Linden Dollars, exchangeable to and from US dollars. In fact more than $1.5 million changes hands every day in this economy.

Businesses are using Second Life in many interesting ways.
One of the most useful facilities for business is virtual conferencing. You can book a virtual meeting room and then allow your work colleagues to take their Second Life virtual characters to this meeting. You can even connect a real meeting through web cam with a second life virtual meeting. You can imagine that this would be especially useful for large corporations that want to include colleagues from all around the world in an important announcement by the CEO or in a product launch. If a company has a lot of colleagues that work from home they can communicate and have virtual meetings with their teams using Second Life - bringing everyone together.

The BBC is using Second Life to broadcast concerts and hold music festivals on its own virtual tropical island. New bands can launch their careers on this virtual stage and get feedback on their performance. Recently the BBC broadcast “The Money Programme” within Second Life, travelling around the virtual world and meeting with online entrepreneurs making money from the virtual world.

There are increasing numbers of individuals and companies making money from Second Life. In fact over 100 big name companies have invested heavily in this platform. Reebok, Nissan, Calvin Klein, Sony, Reuters and IBM are a just of few of the household names embracing the opportunities that Second Life has to offer.

Mercedes has built a virtual race track where customers can test drive their latest car models. Dell has a place where you can custom build a virtual pc and then a genuine model is delivered direct to your door. Sony is developing its own virtual area within Second Life called “Home” where Playstation 3 owners can socialise and hang out in this exclusive area with other likeminded individuals.

Educational establishments are embracing the opportunities in Second Life. Edinburgh University has invested heavily in Second Life through its virtual campus and the opportunity for this type of learning is tremendous. Imagine being taught by the best and brightest minds in the world and sharing ideas with students across the globe? Lectures can be held via virtual classrooms and tutorials and study sessions can even be held on a virtual beach or by somewhere even more unusual.

Check out the Virtual University of Edinburgh: vue.ed.ac.uk

There have been several articles covering the keys to success in Second Life. A recent article in Information Week (Aug 21 2007) covers the “5 Rules for Bringing Business into Second Life”. To summarise, the 5 keys are:

1. Engage – don’t just preach your marketing message. Converse with the Second Life community.
2. Add value to the community – ensure that you have something interesting to give and not just a marketing message. For example, IBM has developed popular interactive games. Before going into Second Life businesses need to consider what they can add to the community.
3. Don’t believe the backlash – Second Life has been experiencing some bad press after much praise, however to put it in perspective over 1.7 million people use the site regularly. This offers a big opportunity, especially since the community consists of mostly wealthy individuals who may be your most valuable customers
4. Be smart about keeping out trouble makers – Ensure that as a company you protect yourself by implementing the security settings within Second Life. These will keep out the users hostile to businesses, as they can cause you grief.
5. Think of Second Life as a beta technology – The software is still prone to crashes and is limited by the technology and server space.

Second Life offers huge opportunities, but keep in mind that there is a dark side:

1. As with any online community, people aren’t always who they say they are. It is easy to create an online character different from your real life persona.

2. As visitor numbers to Second Life have grown so has virtual crime. For example, big name designers wanting to sell their virtual products online are oftentimes finding that copies are already there claiming to be the real thing. It is not surprising that there is now virtual lawyer making money from protecting Intellectual Property, as these sorts of disputes are a growing problem.

3. Be aware that some aspects of Second Life can attract unsavoury characters. It is estimated that up to 18% of the real estate is used for sexually oriented activities.

The tremendous opportunities outweigh the negatives and it is impossible for businesses to ignore the virtual world. Perhaps in the future there will be some parts of society that spend more time in their Second Life than in real life. Big business has really embraced Second Life and it is only a matter of time before all companies consider it as a crucial part of their marketing mix. There is also a real opportunity for money to be made by companies with the vision to embrace this virtual world and interact and engage with this community of potential customers.