Second Life’s Ride on the Hype Cycle

Bloglines has brought me several pro and con Second Life (SL) posts to read recently.

SL is experiencing growing pains and will continue to do so considering the media’s ebullient build-up of any topic is usually a set up for a tear down.

Arrows and accolades aside, let’s apply SL against Gartner’s Hype Cycle. Tom Murphy (my second favorite Irishman ;-) conducted a similar, pragmatic exercise in September of 2005 to gauge the evolution of an array of PR tactics. Was SL even on our radar at the time?

DISCLAIMER: Second Life was humming along for quite some time before mainstream marketers joined the grid. And while most veteran residents consider this entrance ham-fisted at best, this exercise does not take early SL history into account.

We’ve passed the peak of inflated expectations—during which SL brought us a virtual millionaire and even helped determine TIME Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” But IMHO it’s still early and we’re not in the trough of disillusionment.

If When SL reaches “the slope and the plateau,” I think marketers that created an SL presence as a stunt for short term awareness will be gone.

The remaining brands will more closely align with residents’ real world demographics. They’ll also understand the opportunity with SL is not to simply mirror brands from real life, but to take advantage of SL and extend brands in ways they cannot in the real world.

SL residents help illustrate my point. How many real world folks can fly, teleport and completely alter their physical appearance with a few clicks and keystrokes?

What's your take on marketing's flavor of the month, er, Second Life? Where do you think Second Life is on this chart?

UPDATE: Linda Zimmer at Business Communicators of Second Life joins the discussion here .

tags | public relations | PR | media | Second Life | advertising | marketing | social media | branding | brand

Comments

[Neville Hobson]

If you're looking at this from a critic's perspective, Kevin, then where you've placed SL on the hype cycle seems reasonable to me.

From a communicator's perspective (that includes marketing and PR), though, I think the red arrow should be pointing to somewhere near the top of the technology trigger, ie, before you get to the peak of inflated expectations. I don't think SL has crested that peak yet from this point of view.

If you were an active SL resident doing quite well at running an in-world business, you'd no doubt have an entirely different perspective. You'd probably place that red arrow on a spot somewhere along the plateau of productivity.

It's all about perspective, isn't it?

[Kevin Dugan]

Neville: Thanks for jumping in. You're spot on about perspective.

While the post is meant to be pragmatic as opposed to critical, I am pro-SL. Communiktor Nouvelle is my SL name (a bad play on New Communicator, I blame SL's naming process :-)

I'm enjoying it in bits when I can during off hours. This has made it tough for me to participate in some of the SL get togethers though.

That said I may be premature in my placement of SL on the curve. It's based on some of the louder, external discussions around SL. But I think the critics and commincators are probably closer to being at the same place on the curve. Active residents would definitely be different (hence my disclaimer). The sooner we move through inflated expectations and disillusionment in my opinion, the better.

[Mike Keliher]

I, too, agree with Neville in terms of the placement on the hype curve, which, by the way, looking at Tom's post, is a brilliant little thing.

Also, Kevin, just a word of thanks on your blogging efforts here and at BPB. You don't post often, which occasionally disappoints, but when you do post, it's always worth the wait.

Now that the holidays are wrapping up, will we see some more bad-pitch analysis?

Mike

[Kevin Dugan]

Wow, thanks Mike. Yes, some more Bad Pitch blog posts are in the works. In fact I just posted one of them this morning. Happy New Year!

[Prokofy Neva]

There's another graph of cycles you could put up behind this that would in part explain some of this -- the cycles of patches, or new versions of the software which have new features in them each time and target new audiences.

Linden Lab now puts them in every Wednesday or even more frequently, but about every 30 or 90 days they put one in that has so much in it, in terms of new features, and also so disfigures the world and breaks so much stuff from the old features that people take for granted that the shock makes quite a few people quit or sell off their Linden dollars or tier down, and that makes for those sloughs.

But then...even MORE people come in and raise up those dips and make the land and dollar even more valuable as they become more in short supply. So there are 7 day cycles with patches and also Linden stipends when everyone on the premium account gets paid, then patches every 30 days that demolish the world but add some bright new shiny thing in, then Horrible Events that happen also on a 90 day cycle like "The Great Telehub Removal" or "The Great Data Base Hack" or "The Forums Removal" etc. often on the 6th of the month as they run behind targeted schedules.

Getting to know the production cycle of LL itself will help figure out these charts.

[Kevin Dugan]

Prokofy: This is a great idea and thanks for the tip on LL production cycle as well. I created a new post with updates and refinements to the idea thus far.

[Hiro Pendragon]

This chart has 0 quantities, scientific studies, or actual polls to back it up. That makes it:

HYPE.

If you want to look at real numbers for SL, pay attention to 3 things: concurrent users, land owned, and US$ worth of L$ sold on the Lindex.