Autism and Second Life

Since the first wave of Second Life mania has subsided, the virtual world starts to be utilized by various groups for what it really is: A platform to communicate with other people. Above is an incredible story how Second Life helps people with autism. I'm hopeful Facebook will become less of an advertising tool and more of a people tool.

CNN Story

Shrinking Cities

Our human nature makes us focus on and celebrate booming cities like New York, Mexico City, Tokyo and Vegas.
But we're surrounded by cities that are disappearing in front of our eyes: Detroit, Venice and Leipzig come to mind. Rural towns in the Mid-West.

This phenomenon has reached virtual worlds as well: Second Life lost 2.5% of its population in June and some of the bigger corporations have left for now.
Leaving behind abandoned buildings and islands, marketing displays celebrating nothingness, and one of the largest banks in the virtual world, Ginko Financial, closing down because of insolvency. Abandoning urban areas seems to be a pattern of our civilization.

The German project Shrinking Cities focuses on this social, cultural and economic challenge. It started with the fact that in Eastern Germany since 1989 more than 1 million apartments remain empty and countless structures and facilities have been abandoned.
And the project continued with a global research on this topic, Second Life being one of the global players.

Currently, they are sponsoring a contest in order to reinvent Second Life.

This is an intriguing project since we tend to focus on the new, new, new thing and when that turns into an old, new, new thing, we forget about it quickly.
It might be too late for Second Life to get the major marketers back but it might be enough to catch a second wind.

Is second life close to death?

How times have changed: The last few months Second Life was grabbing headlines in the traditional press and blogosphere. Apparently, many first lifers believe that things are not going that well in Second Life: Empty stores, brands mostly going instead of coming and advertisers feeling disappointed about the ROI of their investment.

I'm not surprised.

Second Life was envisoned as an alternative to real life. The residents wanted to escape their daily routine, communicate with friends and strangers on a different life, experiment with a virtual world and see where it would take them. And then came the brands. Billboards, showrooms, commercial displays. Second Life turned into Time Square because marketers didn't understand the premise of Second Life. Instead of working with the community, becoming a valued participant, they decided to disrupt and be annoying. The good news is: the disrupters are bailing. Nobody visits their islands. Nobody cares about their brands.

Instead of lamenting the demise of Second Life, we should be celebrating the opportunities for a real second life. Community-centric, a place where brands can experiment and discover how they can build relevant connections to their customers. It was always meant to be that way.

What marketers don't understand about Second Life

I'm a big believer in Second Life and the future of virtual, social networks. But I continue to be baffled by marketers transferring their advertising techniques of real life to Second Life.
Second Life has quite a few problems but also many opportunities.

The problems:

1) Technology is not user-friendly. It takes too long to get acquainted with the controls and to be able to explore.

2) The subscriber numbers are a farce. Yes, more than 5 million signed up for SL but only 30,000 are exploring SL while I type this entry.
If you take subscribers online at any given point of time and Second Life square mileage, Second Life’s density is a mere 23,000 per square mile compared to 143,000 for Manhattan.

3) 70% of Second Life residents are disappointed by the branded experiences.

And here's the opportunity for a forward-thinking brand: Don't replicate your failed marketing efforts of real life and push them to SL. Explore your brand promise and experience, and truly integrate it into Second Life. If your brand promise is to be adventurous, offer an adventurous experience. Don't just put a cool building on an island and hope for the best. Become part of the community, become a real citizen in SL. The first wave of PR coups have died down and the buildings are a sad reminder of brands not getting SL and the changed consumer landscape.
SL is all about the consumer. Only if you involve the consumer will you be successful. I'm still hoping someone will get it.

Molotov Alva

You have seen many videos about Second Life, but now there's a film that was shot inside the virtual world. In the film 'My Second Life' the main character is the hero and we follow his journey. According to the site, a man named Molotov Alva disappeared from his Californian home in January 2007.
"Recently, a series of video dispatches by a Traveler of the same name have appeared within a popular online world called Second Life.
In these dispatches Molotov Alva encounters everything from Furries to Cyberpunks to Neo-Luddites to Sex Slaves to the King of the Hobos. Orhalla Zander, who becomes Molotovs guide as he searches for the creator of the brave new world."



Second Life is maturing. Reminds me of the last 10 years of the Internet: It starts out as a people network, the almighty dollar almost ruins the whole idea until the creative community takes over and advances it to a whole new level.

Sony goes Second Life

Wired reported today that Sony is about to launch a new 3D virtual world community, similar to Second Life, where users will be able to create a pesonal avitar, explore a high quality 3D world, purchase space and personalise it with purchased or made objects. Sony’s ‘home’ community will be hotly anticipated, as the machine has extremely powerful processing power, so the experience should be visually far more impressive than that of Second Life.

Sony’s move is a response to the recent explosion of social networking and so called web 2.0 sites that are eating into the time spent playing on games consoles. But to be seen will be just how they will learn from Second Life and other social networking sites to make the experience truely compelling and advantagous to the user.

Each person will have their own appartment to which they can invite friends and in which they can chat, play and share video, music and other content that they have on their Playstation. Their trophies from completing games will be hung on their walls. This is very likely to take the experiences that have made MySpace so popular, but deliver them in a far more compelling and enguaging way.

No doubt seeing how brands have been keen to jump on the Second Life phenomenon, there will be a queue of companies looking for new ways to be featured in Home. Appealing to the commercial potential for advertising within this 'game' Sony have designed it so that dynamic advertising can be delivered through the virtual environment including hi quality video.

The software will be downloadable for free, and is due to launch in late 2007.

Sony is the first big player to jump on the VR Social Networking badwagon. Is the long anticipated Google announcement coming next?

P.S.: After my last post about PS3, I moved Sony from deathbed to life-support.