New Research Services from Involve, Inc. and Metaversatility

A slew of virtual worlds announcements is likely being unleashed from the floor of the VW2008 conference, which opened its doors this morning. I opted to observe it from afar this year as VW200x tends to focus on virtual world development, technology and corporate forays into virtual space.  As a business strategist and social media consultant, my interest tends toward how people are using – and are transformed by - virtual spaces and virtuality.

To that end, a couple of announcements came my way a couple of weeks ago - eons ago in virtual world and blogger time. But, important enough in my world to do the nearly unthinkable in blog space – write about such “old news.”

Just a few days apart, developers Involve, Inc. and Metaversatility each announced new client service offerings – research. (By way of disclosure, my company introduced a directly competing research service last year). 

This is a very good trend – more accumulated research means we all get a better understanding of the unique characteristics of place and people in virtual spaces.   Operating in the virtual is far too new to have risen to the confidence level of “marketing staple! go blindly forward” and it creates far too deep an impression to just wave away vital insights good research affords.  I dare say the widely hyped corporate virtual marketing “failures” of 2007 might be fueling this trend just a tad, as well.

Developers are responding to very real client needs – to learn more and to show results.  Clients often can’t get emerging media guidance and expertise from their “traditional” agencies and developers are wisely stepping into the role by partnering with organizations that can provide some of the “best practices” agencies bring to the table and clients have come to expect in more traditional settings. 

Involve, Inc. has teamed up with Strategy Analytics to offer “consumer insight” to inform emerging media initiatives and business strategies.  The service is called the “Emerging Media Impact Assessment” and reportedly focuses on defining objectives and metrics.

In an interview with Virtual World News, Involve president Drew Stein says he believes Strategy Analytics “gets” the space, and he tells me that the two companies make a dream team.  I have no reason to doubt that, as SA is a respected research firm and Stein definitely does “get” emerging media principles. 

But I just have to say that I hope Involve will prove a valuable learning partner for SA in lightening them up a bit and helping them embrace the new 2.0 era of communications.  Their white paper, the results of which is touted in the partnership announcement, is locked away behind the SA firewall, requiring registration - which only supports IE6, by the way - and the registration form has checked by default 500 (exaggerating, but not by much…) areas of interest I want to receive information about from SA.  Yes, I am one of those “abandoned” visitors in your web stats, SA.  The executive summary is available on Involve’s site, but it doesn’t provide any real insight into what is in the report, and warning: the summary is dense reading.  (Do I sound annoyed?  I think I sound annoyed...).

That said, I hope Involve's clients will budget more and early for research.  Ideally, implementation should be informed by it and is then a process developed over a longer-haul budget.  I also hope that Involve and SA will share with the community some of the insights gained as they accumulate more knowledge through their research.

Metaversatility teamed up with GSD&M.  GSD&M has been trying to be a player in the virtual worlds data game for a while.  They took a big lead in the Second Life Market Data Project that ultimately wound up being abandoned - in my opinion from watching the progress - due to a lack of expertise toward developing virtual world appropriate research methodologies.  So it makes terrific sense for GSD&M to partner with Metaversatility to help them gain that expertise and the appropriate resources.

Metaversatility is also providing GSD&M's IdeaCity with a branded research “bot” to automatically screen and survey avatars in-world, rather than using “out of world” web-based surveys.

This in-world surveying has value from the standpoint the person behind the avatar is “in” the environment being researched.  So, it will be interesting to see if IdeaCity’s results differ significantly from other researchers’ based on this approach.

However, I think GSD&M’s characterization of their new research service as “ethnographic” is using the term rather loosely.  Ethnographic study deeply involves the researching human who is observing in a native environment – generally over a long period of time.  By its nature, it is not objective research.  Bots don’t fall into that definition, at least not yet.  This is qualitative research, to be sure, but the mere fact that surveys or interviews are done in world doesn’t make it ethnographic research.  Maybe there is more to their ethnographic story, so hopefully someone from Metaversatility or GSD&M will step in here and provide more context.

I’ll forgive (soon) both GSD&M and Metaversatility for the blatant PR spin in their press release generalizing the “gaping void” in “best in class virtual world research.”  There has been enormous amounts of truly impressive research going on for years in virtual environments (academic and commercial); several consultancies and agencies have been quietly affording clients data and research-informed advice and solutions.  A few have distinguished themselves as leaders in 3D virtual spaces.  Metaversatility has itself had various research services as part of their client offerings since they were founded, and members of their team have shared their research at past conferences, including VW2008 this week.

No matter the details,  I wish them each success.  The entire community will gain from more research being done in virtual spaces and these are two partnerships that can only help further everyone’s knowledge about these environments and the people who inhabit them.  Even if the research these companies undertake isn’t widely shared or made available, it will leak out in the form of better initiatives, case studies, new services, and a higher degree of client satisfaction.

Photo credit: Australian National University, Centre for Mental Health Research

April 3, 2008