Second Life – What Is It Good For?

Tracking with Moore’s Law, the number of virtual worlds is doubling every two years.  So, it isn’t surprising that the discussion surrounding Second Life is beginning to move from that of marketing phoneme to serious questions about what it means for business. 

More articles - from mainstream business pubs to IT trades - are exploring where the benefits and opportunities lie in virtual social worlds.  I’ve added my own few cents along the way.  Some in interviews with journalists who happily are starting to look for deeper meanings, and a few more in an article published in Optimize magazine this month (although it was written a couple of months ago). 

In that article I mention seven areas in which organizations can immediately look for opportunities: 

Fast and Low Cost Prototyping: The Starwood Hotels project in SL, Virtual aloft, is almost universally highlighted as an example of cost-effective prototyping.  However, IBM’s Circuit City and Sears stores in Second Life are prototypes of their vision of new-age retail stores.  Architectural firm Crescendo Designs prototypes residences for clients and MTV even used Second Life to prototype a virtual world they were creating on another platform, There.com.  The fact that every SL resident has 3D building tools means companies can co-create products in real time with employees across disciplines – or literally realize at least one of the promises of social media - co-creating with customers.

Training and Learning: More than 200 universities and learning-focused organizations are currently exploring delivering learning and library services in 3D spaces through Second Life.   Thompson NetG is reportedly realizing more than $10,000 a month in revenue from its course offerings in SL.  U.C. Davis uses the Virtual Hallucinations sim in SL to give caregivers lessons on what it is like to live with schizophrenia.  The CDC practices disaster response.

Global Collaboration:  Real-time text chat translation; voice integration; object and identity persistence make global collaboration possible in real time.

Marketing & Advocacy:  The economies and high-engagement quotient attract marketers and social advocacy.  For example, the United Nations Millennium Campaign commissioned a poverty awareness project in Second Life. And programs on the Parioli sim are teaching business students about merchandising in the real world by dressing virtual stores.

Media:  Publishers, like Penguin and news outlets like CNET and Reuters are actively exploring content and value propositions for virtual audiences.  Libraries and museums are experimenting with new models of interacting with media and information.

Added Value at Low Cost: Social worlds that enable user created content, like Second Life, are reaping the benefits of large-scales of additional content with little additional cost, and both user and company are benefiting from user investment in the space.

New Products:  New hardware, software, browsers and protocols will be needed to support immersive, spatial environments. Rich media and 3D search solutions will become increasingly important as virtual worlds and their applications expand and/or move out onto the web.

The physical world is increasingly being represented in the virtual, and the virtual is increasingly informing the physical world.  So too the business opportunities.

January 24, 2007