Second Life to Open in Second Life

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Second Life to Open in Second Life
Ultra-virtual "Third Life" becomes the first virtual for virtuals

Virtual fans everywhere rejoiced with the news that Second Life is creating a presence in Second Life.

“Fluffy Poostar has been asking when he can play Second Life,” noted John Smith. “Hopefully this will shut him up so we can focus on more important things, like figuring out how to get off f%^&*@g Help Island.”

Second Life creators consider this a natural brand extension.

“Third Life helps differentiate our brand and gives Second Life players even more of a good thing," says Getta Life. “It was either this or Second Life cereal, but Mikey's agent was being a real prick so we bailed. We also got tired of everyone announcing their presence in Second Life. This should shut the marketers up for awhile."

You get the idea. But before a brand hops off MySpace to set up shop in Second Life, the team should ask itself two questions.

• Is my real world experience worth recreating?
• Will this increase customer engagement?

Make sure you do not get caught up in all the hype and simply try and pick up short-term cool points by tapping your brand into the next big thing. Due diligence is not as exciting, easy or fast, but it ensures that "if you roll, you roll big."

Update: It looks like Darren Barefoot was way ahead of me and presents some compelling stats that boost my satirical argument for pragmatism. Thanks Darren!

Update 2: Canuckflack took the red pill and joins the fray. Max Cannon weighs in below on the news that Text 100 is opening an office in Second Life. Most notable in this news is that they hired Electric Sheep Co. to create the office. So we're to believe that Text has an SL expert in-house? Look before you leap folks.


tags | Second Life | SL | marketing | branding | brand | virtual reality

Comments

[Darren]

Heh, good one: http://www.capulet.com/weblog/darren/be-wary-of-avatar-based-marketing.

[Owen Lystrup]

Thank you for posting this.

We should create a release that says something like:

CYBERSPACE, Nowhere-- August 3, 2006 -- SecondLife, a first-to-market product that simulates "real life" online, announced today that it is excited to help "normal" people distance themselves from reality, from family members and friends and to waste real money on intangible, useless products like outfits for simulated characters that look nothing like real people. The product also provides a way for people to ignore reality and refuse to deal with anything important happening in the world by being immersed in a world of mindless morons.

I'm still kicking around the language a bit. I tried to include all the cliches I could. I think "collaborative" should be in there somewhere.

[Georg Kolb]

Dear pragmatists (Kevin, Darren, Canuckflack),
It’s always good to listen to the voice of those who aren’t blinded by the hype. Let me just clarify what Text 100’s move to SL is about. We don’t go there because of its current reach. Of course, we know the numbers on Darren’s post. That might change in the future, though, since we are also aware of the prediction that there might be 3.5 m SL residents in a year from now (http://reuben.typepad.com/reuben_steigers_weblog/2006/07/how_many_people.html ). But again, currently we are not there for the reach. We are there because we see it as the next stage in the evolution of peer-to-peer media like blogs, wikis, social networks and other online forums. We know from social networks like MySpace how people love to communicate and create content on them. Second Life is adding a new dimension to this dynamic since it’s in 3-D.
We view it as an emerging new public we need to understand first hand and based on this experience advise our clients how/if it can support their business. It is still early days, but we are sure it presents a couple of interesting opportunities to our clients and ourselves. E.g. we can enrich the experience of online meetings, be it an internal training or a press conference. And we can give some customer engagements a new quality based on the interactive 3-D environment SL provides. E.g. I find it fascinating that designers (e.g. of a house) can co-create new designs with their customers and offer them a 3-D experience before they are built in real life. So, let me close by addressing Kevin’s questions: we are not in SL to recreate the real world experience. We are there to do things we can’t do elsewhere. And for the time being, we don’t go there to increase customer engagement by quantitative measures, but it is our intention to bring a new dimension to it. I hope this makes more sense?
Best regards,
Georg Kolb