July 15th, 2007
For business uses, Second Life is a fad and a crock
The Los Angeles Times reports that some companies that have opened virtual presences on Second Life have closed their virtual doors or are letting them rot through lack of attention.
We’re talking Dell, Best Buy (Geek Squad) Sun Microsystems, American Apparel, Starwood Hotels (Westin, Sheraton, etc.) In fact, that’s the Los Angeles Times’ screencap of a bare storefront in American Apparel’s Second Life presence.
After reviewing the carnage, and then getting a quote from Forrester Research that only 30,000 to 40,000 Second Life users are logged on even at peak times, article author Alana Semuels hits on the real reason for these corporate defections from Second Life:
For some advertisers, the problem is that Second Life is a fantasyland, and the representations of the people who play in it don’t have human needs. Food and drink aren’t necessary, teleporting is the easiest way to get around and clothing is optional. In fact, the human form itself is optional.
Alana is being informative, but perhaps a bit overly polite.
I am not going to be polite. Dang right I will shout.
Second Life is a really cool virtual world, but Second Life isn’t real. For business uses, it’s a fad and a crock.
These corporations and others built SL worlds either because they felt their competitors were going to do so, or because their executive level marketing folks allowed themselves to get suckered in by their ad agencies, and worse yet by the business-clueless, earring-wearing code jocks whose own agencies have relationships with some of these same ad agencies.
In other words, “Second Life is cool, here’s what we can do for you in SL”- and the buy-in for doing this seeped up the corporate decision tree until the company decision maker(s) gave their approval.
Well, I could have told you that zilch would happen.
Second Life is fun. I even have my own avatar there. But why bother buidling an SL world if you, a business, can tend to this cutesiness by crafting some robust Flash animations?
Maybe you don’t even need to do that.
if I had a Dell and wanted help with one, I would contact tech support. Why? Because that person is real (I hope).
Loading ...Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
