SIM 2.0 free land project website

Check out our new website of our - non commercial - project SIM 2.0 @

http://sim2-0.com/

or join our group SIM 2-0 to get more information.


Tom

I want in on this. I tried registering with the noted website, but it isn't working properly. Contact me within SL, or through the email registered with the username 'SuperDave' at your noted website. Thanks for the possibility.

I wonder how many folks checked the link out.

I would think the offer of "free land" there would at least provoke a comment or two.

lol, don't what to encourage others until I get my 2500 meters first

I didn't even check the link. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but 'free land' just sounds too good to be true. And if something sounds too good to be true, I assume it is unless I have some compelling reason not to.

Sounds too much like work, with an element of popularity contest thrown in.

Who will prevent collusion between residents? Misleading adverts by residents? How will 'traffic' be measured for the competition? If you rely on the Linden generated figures, you will merely create yet another camp chair parking lot.

Yes, FREE is misleading. This is really a competition to keep your land every month. My prediction is not many people will get to keep theirs and this SIM will have a high turn-over rate. This can be good or bad, but will certainly encourage a lot of creativity.

ok, for sure it is not completely free. its a competition, but nobody has to pay anything for a appr. 2500sqm parcel. no basic costs. no tier fee, no other costs. as we have written in our blog: it CAN be a WIN - WIN situation for both "sides", the participant and the sponsor. there are so many skilled people inside SL, with good ideas, we will offer them a platform. and the competition is not as hard: on the end of a month 22 of 25 will keep their land. what we try to do is testing a new concept. if it works many can benefit from that.
the management is working on a non-profit basis (hehe, i think i should name it a loose-money basis) to bring SIM 2.0 on the grid, we are nearly finished with preparing the first SIM, perhaps we will gain enough popularity with that to find more sponsors - for your land. and to avoid deserted business SIM's like you see them in the whole grid.
for sure we will check what the people are doing, we will avoid mature content and unfair tricks. we have developed a counter system (in the product skyboxes, not on the private land) what is not working with the linden visitor count system, it only counts unique visitors/clickers. so no chance for campchairs.

I am a professional online consultant. I research, design and build Second Life commercial sites for businesses for RL-Money. SIM 2.0 seems to me to be a way of "cheating" my profession. You offer land (which I don't need) in exchange for promoting your sponsor's product. This seems like very little compensation for a project which would require of me several hours of design and development as well as continual maintenance. How do you justify this? Also, you want to offer professional builders a platform. What about quality and patency? A newbie parcel close to a parcel equipped by a professional builder? The result will be that the professional builder will leave in seconds. This cannot work.

Any scheme to help RL Companies invade Second Life is one I want to be nowhere near. I wouldn't touch this with a 10 Foot Prim.

Please let me start my answer on a different point: In fact, SIM 2.0 is the first concept that introduces Web 2.0 into the business world of SL: A social web. We drop the old concept of the simple online showcase with static content. In the World Wide Web is already started the "Triumph of the Amateurs", but the additional potential given by a virtual 3D environment is enourmous.

Today we see SIMs like Mercedes, BMW, Sony-Ericson, T-Online etc that, in my opinion, don't really work. Even with the big PR they get. Some even might be contra-productive (who likes to be knock down by a griefer in a car dealership?). We see Camp-dancers in otherwise deserted business SIMs, rather helpless tries to emulate a realistic small town flair in RL-Town-mockups... let's forget this. Seen it, done it, got the T-Shirt. To transfer a RL place into SL doesn't work that well. I assume it won't work for quite some time. And it's boring anyways.

The first movers - the ones who got big media coverage - are already present, and the follow-uppers arent noticed by the press at all now. Publicity isn't any longer a reason for RL businesses to be present in SL. The media became much more critical abbout the whole matter as well, supported by statements by (for example) Hewlett Packard - Eric Kintz or Volkswagen - Jochen Sengpiehl (who actually sees SL as „dangerous“ and „superfluous“). If you transfer the burst of the 2001-Internet-Hype-Bubble to SL it's only a question of time before capital (RL big business) start their final retreat. Rosalyn, back to your question: If these companies leave SL nobody (also not the skilled consultants) will have a compensation for his/their work - and now start to calculate the tier fees if only 2 small parcels are sold on your business SIM.

RL Businesses that want to advertise their products in SL need patience. And they need new ideas and concepts. IBM is oficially researching new paths, their SL presence is a learning platform, not a marketing tool. (Hey! You guys there at IBM! We could need like 4 more Sims right now! ). Imagine a future in which you walk your Avatar through a google-earth and can build their houses in the grand canyon or ayers rock (including a proper running, standardized language for everything, like today's html for 2D) – as in today's Internet social bookmarking and concepts like maybe SIM 2.0 will be very important.

The qualifications of the individual participants aren't the most important thing. More important is getting the concept to live and thus creating a network: „The result is not only a sum of it's parts, its the power of them“. It will evolve, no matter in what direction. We'll optimize it as we go. We hope that we can expand, so we're looking for sponsors who want their products to be presented in a living and changing environment: Why not present your new car model in front of a cool 50s style diner and 100m further down the road in an animated 3D tunnel instead having ppl drive it into the next tree in a wiggly simulation?

And: many of the previous SIM "Developers" and "Concepters" are houswives, Happy about some Dollars bounty for the next holiday trip. Or third-class advertising agencies with glowing eyes in the shine of the rising 3D-virtual-earnings-sun. Is a creative newbie here better or worser? We have 2 of the top builders respectively scripters of SL in our group (inworld: SIM 2-0). They will surely support.

Yes, it could be this SIM 2.0 concept is too soon - or too late for the SL platform. The most advanced people often aim to own a business or make at least some money. SIM 2.0 (http://www.sim2-0.com) is one of the few (the only?) concept- offering them a platform to show and realize their ideas and strategies, allowing them to show their skills clustered to the public. With zero costs.

You are a great salesman I must admit, your use of "worser" not withstanding. Your one stated aim, to help resident businesses grow and develop is admirable. I prefer the Mom and Pop operation in RL. Your other objective, to bring in the RL big boys is another story.
What I like about SL is that it is free of the incessant corporate jingoism that permeates our culture. I would hate to see it be the corporate Wasteland RL is. You mentioned some corporations who already have found SL is not for them. Perhaps that is a good thing. Maybe they don't belong here. They are coming, no doubt about it. And you will help them. That's fine. You seem to be sincere, and professional. (Just brush up on your grammer ). Personally I will continue to avoid them here at all costs.

Hi there!

I'm a participant in Sim 2-0 and allready antsy for the handing out of the parcels of land tonight (for me). ^^

I see it like this: Yes, there's the chance that all my work in this competition (if I get in in this round) will be for "nothing" because either my idea isn't good enough to attract enough ppl or maybe the sponsors will quit.

Sure.

Buuuuut: Then I (a "smalltime" SL player with the rule not to buy any Lindens with rl money) WILL have had my own Sandbox to build in and try my idea for a month. I allready collected some experiences with building and scripting here and there, but THIS for me is a unique chance.

If, for that, I have to point to the skybox with the sponsor's product in it (or better - integrate it into my ideas somehow) - I have no problem with it.

And I'm not too scared I have to run against a sim filled with contestants offering camping chairs or things like that... Somehow I assume that pro's with much more money than me rasther have their own land instead something like this. I guess the other contestants will be from my class mainly ^^.

If you have a computer that is able to access Second Life in the first place.. (I mean you have to have sufficient RAM and Graphics Processing Power to even log in) and you are also sitting on top of a broadband connection that you apparently have no trouble paying for each month, the startup and upkeep costs on a 2500 sqm parcel is rather negligible isn't it? If you are an established company that has brought product to market, your business cards cost more than this. I don't see the logic in using Mr Kintz's statement in reference to what you have to offer.

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Thank you for the feedback, Brenda. We could discuss advertising a long time: the advertising on the street before your house, on nearly all professional websites, in blogs, during the big sport events... . Also hidden control ov avis in SL, called "Behavioral Targeting", on 700 places on more than 50 SIMs. Now decide for yourself: Is our model a WIN-WIN situation for companies and the participants or not compared to them? We offer also all visitors a high-quality give-away, some hundred lindens normally in inworld stores. And: sorry about my (german barbarian) grammar, i try my best as a non english native.

Dirk, you are right: But its not my intention to rival with you as an estate agent. The participants must decide for theirselves if its worth to invest initial costs for a 2,500 sqm parcel with 20-40k lindens in average and a tier fee with for minimum 20 US$/month for a standard parcel. And the companies must decide if its worth to spend (ten-)thousands for a test in SL. You know yourself how much some advertising agencies charge for a equipped company island, for a non-working concept as we see on many deserted Business SIMs. This is only the costs side. As stated before we want to bring interaction with products and the Web 2.0 idea into SL, please ask the owner of myspace.com if his clients couldnt pay for their webspace at a regular internet provider.

I want to take the chance to announce the distribution of the first 25 free SIM 2.0 full prim parcels with appr. 2,500 sqm today (Sun, April 29), at 1pm Linden Time (22.00 CET). Check out http://sim2-0.com/ or join inworld our group SIM 2-0 for more information.

Tom, I humbly apologize for chiding you on your grammar. I was assuming you were an Native English speaker, based upon the way the rest of your statements were written.

hi
I'm Gabriele Jewell
Owner of one of the parcel
I was in contact in the past day for the positioning of the new exposition... but we never had the oppurtunity to be online in the same moment,

now i have several problem to log in
i had to download the SL viewer, but at this moment the site (or my connectiion) are really slow and i can't finische the download

sorry for this!

Hi there folks!

I thought that some of you might be interested how S2 is coming along, so let me give you a little inside feedback:

Since the initial start of the whole project some time has passed, the first rounds have been played out, a few rules have been adapted and, most important to me personally, the SINNIQ SIM 01 has become a live place with a great community of people.

The general atmosphere is a friendly and helpfull one, we see each others more as neighbours than competitors. People exchange tips and textures and often meet on the Firebeach (one of the spots) for a nice little chat.

If you visit, you'll find a nice variety of things to check out on the 26 parcels: Shops, hangouts, a castle and a spaceport, a 50's style diner with a rock jukebox, a flowerist, a sound engineer, a gallery , a skydiving place, a danceclub, a garage where you can get help building your own vehicles, a chapel for sl weddings... You get the picture.

An important change "behind the scenes" has been the creation of the management team that, besides the S2 officials also includes Dekka Raymaker and myself to take part in the day to day business of the Sim, and also to help represent the community in decisions and discussions. This works just fine, and Dekka really deserves his group title of "Mayor" of our town, he puts a lot of his time and effort into it.

A long time ago someone wrote: "This is really a competition to keep your land every month. My prediction is not many people will get to keep theirs and this SIM will have a high turn-over rate.". A little about this: Initially the aimed for turnover rate was 3 parcels/month, right now it is more like 4-6 every 2 monts.

As it happens everywhere, people on S2 too can leave SL or find something else inworld to occupy them and move on. Actually this "natural flow" of people makes up for a good part of the recycled parcels, so even fewer people really lost their investment of time and energy due to the rotation system.

If you got any other questions about S2 - fire away.

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