Advocacy Avenue

Enlightenment for Second Life: finally a tool, not a curiousity

(image by Jeremy Kemp)

Second Life has been sitting in the Trough for a while now.  A post from PBS's MediaShift blog remembers the boom-bust cycle: "How did the media go wrong in coverage -- and participation -- in SSL, and what went right? It was a typical hype-and-backlash scenario, as I detailed in a previous post on MediaShift. Some journalists simply tired of SL, as so many people tried it and then bailed because of its steep learning curve and high technological requirements."

But there are a few encouraging signs that we might be seeing the upslope, to where Second Life becomes a useful tool, a means for communication, and not just a topic for breathless "isn't it shiny" stories.

First, there's what isn't happening.  Reuters and Sky News have pulled their reporters.  CNN remains, but with user-generated content.  I haven't heard of any recent campaigns getting attention like Coca Cola's or CSI's.  Second Life has largely been left to its residents, rather than having large outside organizations try (with more or less success) to make it a vehicle for advertising.

So what is happening still in Second Life?  Well, business students in INSEAD's EMBA program are visiting classrooms that let them network with each other whatever their physical location.  Second Life events are being used to extend the reach of real-world events.  Distance-learning students are getting a traditional graduation ceremony by non-traditional means.  (Interesting thread of education running through all those examples....)

Most importantly, we're no longer talking about Second Life residents as "those weird people, aren't they funny?"  Newsweek's article last week, "Love and Desire in the Digital Age," profiles a couple who met in Second Life and focuses on how virtual worlds, webcams, and internet phone calls enable their relationship - while making them sound pretty normal.  "Before they met in Second Life, neither Lillie nor Hawkins had dated on the Internet before. They weren't gaming addicts. They weren't even especially tech-savvy."  They enjoyed each others' company, and technology made it possible for them to meet and to maintain a relationship (if not one without strain).

Here's to the upslope, and letting technologies and the communities around them grow organically.  Got a good story about Second Life after the hype?  Would love to hear it.

Virtual Worlds: Think of the Children

We're talking a lot these days about Second Life and other virtual worlds, and the recent AdAge Digital Next blog post Mom, Can I Have My Virtual Allowance? demonstrates why: "the vast majority of [the 100 million people in virtual worlds] are kids and teens." That means in five or ten years, kids who grew up with Club Penguin and Webkinz and World of Warcraft will expect to spend time in virtual environments. Our clients need to know how to meet them there.

Reuben Steiger's post goes on, "Collectively, the kids in this "mall" are spending over $1.5 billion on avatars, clothing, pets and the like. That's real money on virtual stuff." It's real money on stuff now largely created by the virtual world operators, but that will shift over time, especially in adult- rather than child-oriented worlds. Because Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, says content creators own the rights to items they build, most things in that world are built by residents, including corporations and nonprofits that have chosen to move in and join the community. That kind of system will become more wide-spread over time.

So what organizations will be able to interact successfully with supporters in future virtual worlds? Those that begin to get involved now will have an enormous advantage. It takes some trial and error to avoid stepping on residents' toes, and it takes time to learn to build both items and campaigns. We're excited to be helping our clients hold events and launch their own spaces in Second Life, and we look forward to virtual worlds' population growth and resulting impact.