Yawn – Another Misinformed BBC Article
Oh look. The BBC have written something about Second Life again.
This article asks the question, “What happened to Second Life?”
What a stupid question. Might I first suggest that journalist, Lauren Hansen, tries checking out the Second Life website for some usage statistics before opening an article like that.
The picture used is equally stupid.
According to this image, a prim sign on a glass store means that Second Life is a thing of the past. My own stupid question in response is – if the store was really closed anyway, why would the building be up? If the store owner is still paying tier, then surely their things would still be out!
While Second Life no longer has the hype of 2007, its userbase grows (though active user stats more slowly than inactive users). Read any Second Life blog or website, read the Google news feed and you will see just how many educational institutions are coming in. Yes, the businesses left Second Life…. but only because of their own failings. And besides, they have been replaced by more education and creativity, which is a far better use of the platform in my opinion.
In this article, the journalist quotes Wired UK’s editor, Ben Hammersley, who says in relation to businesses opening in world stores, “You could go and open these stores and no-one would turn up,” he says. “They would have 20 to 30 people there when it opened, and after that no-one would bother going in there again. It just wasn’t worth the spend.”
And that right there is what was wrong with every single business that opened its doors in Second Life only to fail soon after. They did indeed, like Ben implies, just open up. That was all they did. A bit of press surrounding their opening would pull in the initial couple of dozen. And then nothing. They just expected people to come to them. As I have said before in a post about Second Life business, you can throw out the grad school ‘Marketing for Dummies’ text books whenit comes to virtual worlds. The people who put the effort in are the ones who will reap the rewards. The biggest problem for the Fortune 500 companies who opened up in world was that they expected people to go to their stores just because of their name. Who gives a shit about a big arsed company’s name in Second Life? Nobody does, we’re all too busy flying, driving massive tanks, shooting off into the pixel space in a rocket and looking like supermodels. Why would we care about your brand? And so what if you offer free t-shirts at the entrance. This is Second Life, for heaven’s sake. Don’t give me a t-shirt, give me a Malibu style loft that appears on one click, complete with helipad and helicopter (branded with your logo if you insist).
The point is that just turning up doesn’t impress. And evidently, the extra effort required in virtual worlds is “below” the businesses who came, failed and left.
Good riddance.
Tags: second life business
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Random Thoughts and Musings
Skylar Smythe
I couldn’t agree more.
Second Life™ is a platform and a software product. Like any product, it follows a typical lifespan.
Early adopters found this grid, came in fast and made easy money while competition was low and demand was high. No marketing required.
Anyone can make money in the growth phase… no skill required.
In the maturity phase where competition is plentiful, stimulating a virtual economy takes work. If you want to make money, you can no longer sit back and reap the rewards without doing the leg work required to keep your business on top. This requires blood, sweat and promotion, and this is where business amateurs get weeded out.
Natural selection…
Businesses unwilling to invest effort, fall by the wayside while any business who excels in this area will thrive. It requires understanding the culture and demographics of Mr. or Miss Avatar and purchase motivation.
The decline phase is marked not as a negative, but as an absolute maturation of the product. Early adopters or your “lighthouse consumers” will have moved on to “the next big thing” Blue Mars perhaps? It is in the decline that main stream acceptance of the product occurs, so you can expect to see a steady increase in new users of Second Life™, after the hype and novelty have passed.
I agree with you entirely about the platform evolving into an incredible creative medium. Musicians and Writers are thriving in the environment, benefiting by global collaboration with other creatives. This is where the grid truly shines. Will the next major music talent emerge from Second Life™? What about the next Pulitzer Prize winner?
This is what I stay for. The creative community and global friendships I have fostered…
…and I really like looking like a super model…
Sigmund Leominster
Something that lots of these commentators forget is that in real life, it is typical for the majority of businesses to fail. So why should all SL-based businesses succeed? Just like real life, there are a small number of SL business entities that do really well (ask Stroker Serpentine or Simone Stern about their earnings!), a smaller number that break even or just make enough to be happy; and many that disappear after a month or two.
You sometimes hear that the SL economy is “different,” but fundamentally, it isn’t. It’s more that the amount of money in circulation is small. I can earn up to $5000L for an article, which is about $16 US, and that won’t pay my RL mortgage! But it WILL pay my monthly SL tier fee, let me buy in-world goods out the wazoo, and even shuffle stuff OUT to the real world via PayPal, which I can use to feed my iTunes and Amazon.com habit!
The point is that if a business expects RL equivalent returns on an investment, forget about it. That’s why we hear about RL businesses “failing” in SL – it’s because the ROI is low. However, if you are a SL-focused entrepreneur who can accept lower returns and produce a sustainable product (sex scripts and clothing being two good examples) SL can be a profitable venture.
Skylar Smythe
Awesome points Sigmund. Couldn’t agree more.
/me invents the comfortable avatar boxer short.
Kitty O'Toole
My sentiments exactly! Couldn’t have put it better myself, I was VERY cross when I read the ‘article’, but then I realised it was utter nonsense…
=^..^=
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