Corporate opportunities

Ok, serious question. As we perceive the trend for LL to want to attract corps and dump us little annoying people. What is the perceived benefit of LL to a corporate?

I haven't ever visted a corporate thing, never felt the need so they're of no interest to me in my leisure time.

It's (in my opinion) a terrible conferencing platform, corporates don't need to spend meeting time, walking little cutesy avatars around to sit around a virtual table. They can just as easily use phone conferencing, tools like webex or depending on budget, full video conferencing.

Where I work, we have a huge number of VC rooms but people are just as happy using phone conferences all day long so the whole "meeting space" doesn't sell to me.

It's a terrible platform for presentations, not exactly easy to show a Powerpoint presentation for example and as far as looking at products, well it's a quirky form of a web browser. Much easier to browse the web. How many of us shop on xstreet/onrez *first* then go in world if we're interested in seeing more? It's NOT the other way around for me, because I choose the fast option.

So, i'd be interested to hear from people who are genuinely using SL in a corporate environment and getting a real useful benefit from it which can't be achieved by other methods. I'd rather not hear speculation or quotes from the LL bullshit but usage illustrations from corporates.

anyone?

From my experience in corporate circles, SL is perceived as unsuited for "serious business" because the platform is (i) too immature (frequent SW updates), (ii) too unreliable (frequent performance degradations and outages), (iii) too demanding on computer and network resources for the benefit of an immersive environment (too HW expensive, in other words) while (iv) not offering mission critical tools like application and data sharing.

The leisure value is undisputed, but insufficient for real business.

Disclaimer: I work for a company which is using SL, although I'm not in a department which is directly engaged with SL or LL.

The latest blog post might give you some pointers regarding the solution providers. The immersive workspaces was another angle but it's all at a very fledgling stage and there's no way corporations will put up with being treated the way Linden Lab have recently treated their residents.

There are quite a few who see the conferencing aspect as beneficial, especially when you can meet and talk with people in your field from all over the world. Whether that will be a long term attraction depends upon how the platform develops.

I'm not against corporations using SL as long as their requirements don't compromise the SL experience for individuals. There's room for both sectors.

But the usefulness to corporations is limited. My example I qouted before is that if you want RL bus times, it's easier to look them up on a website than to wander round a virtual bus station in SL which has the timetables up on the walls!

My guess is that the main value of SL to corporations is in informal staff contact - sort of half work, half social.

I think SL is not suited for any serious business use either, for reasons mentioned already, he only use they have, is to use it to advertise their RL products. I have no desire to see them in the world at large. If they are on their own sims where I can avoid them, fine. Otherwise, I hope they stay out.

I do not want Corporations in SL at large, marketing their RL products to me. If they keep to their own sims where I can avoid them, fine, i won't have to see them. Otherwise, I prefer they stay out.

I believe the goal is not so much to market to SL users (though there is some of that continuing), but to provide "immersive digital workspaces for collaboration, meetings, etc.

Will this be viable? We'll see. I personally am not convinced.

That's what LL is pushing, yes. I agree with those that say SL is not ready for that.

Well, there is this thread, /352/2c/293255/1.html , discussing some of the "Solution Providers" aka corporations using Second Life.

I agree that the platform is still too unstable for corporate meetings (and video-conferencing is hard to beat for that) but I do see it becoming more viable in the future. I think that virtual immersion platforms, like Second Life, will eventually become commonplace, the way the graphical web browser changed (commercialized) the Internet. So, while still experimental and fraught with many "what ifs" and "oh mys!" corporate clients will become a bigger presence, eventually. I am sort of surprised there aren't more virtual name-brand shops creating clothing and goods here and pushing their RL catalogs, for example. Perhaps they ARE out there and I just don't see them.

I have attended a few educational seminars inworld and am going to one in about a half hour. For educators, the 3d immersive environment offers something that the 2d internet can't, the ability to have presence within the learning environment. The 3d building and interacting is a lot more promising than "Blackboard" style e-learning.

I do feel like I am AT these conferences, in the same way I feel like I am at a club when I go to hear a musician inworld. I like meeting the other educators, too.

I don't think SL really wants to alienate the Resident user-base. I just think they have made some marketing choices that they realize they cannot support -- ie, the current OS situation. I don't believe that they have handled the price increases well. It would make more sense to grandfather the current OS SIMS, eat the server expenses, and then establish the new products that they can support. Also, with CPU power getting cheaper all the time, the miscalculation of resources is, perhaps, temporary.

Not only it SL not ready - this scenario doesn't even play to SL's strengths.

There are two main commercial uses for VVs: collaboration and simulations.

In terms of business collaborations (meetings etc.) the sort of things you would typically want to create an avatar which looked similar to you, probably want to create a virtual space similar to physical spaces, want to share digital materials like powerpoint, word, excel..., want 24/7 uptime, want service level agreements, rapid support response, require low end hardware typically found in business desktops or laptops, use firewall friendly protocols (preferable all over http/https), officially support wifi, work over low bandwidth connections (e.g. from hotel broadband) etc. i.e. lots of things SL just doesn't do but there are tools out there which do offer some or many of these (e.g. qwaq forums). To be honest, in this context it virtual worlds are probably a distraction - what people would really want is some form of 3D video conferencing.

I terms of simulations (e.g. emergency simulations, medical simulations, historic recreations) - you probably need a far greater accuracy both in the modelling and the programming than SL gives, you want real time response, high frame rates (i.e. no or minimal lag), proper backup and user controlled granular roll back tools (possibly version control), 24/7 uptime, service level agreements, rapid support response, etc. Basically one of the many multi-player game engine platforms out there is far better than SL.

So what *are* the unique selling points of SL - well basically the fact that there is a single world rather than lots of multiple worlds, the fact you can create content in world etc. These features make SL an ideal social networking environment or recreational environment but are of any particular interest to any proposed RL commercial uses (apart from advertising RL products). Indeed if anything these are undesirable - a company would prefer its meeting spaces to be private to just it and invited guests; it doesn't want people popping up at random, or others logging into the same environment who may overload the resources etc. In the case of a simulation, you typically only want the programmers to be able to create content (or at least users can only create content within the context of the simulation as programmed by the developers etc.).

So this is where I do worry about the future of SL - LL seems to be pushing it into a marketplace it is illsuited for where there are far superior competitors whilst neglecting the marketplace (i.e. recreational use) which it is so well suited for and it which it surpasses (at the moment) much of the competition.

Matthew

I think it's a silly idea myself, we would not hold a conference in SL. We use video conferencing, General Managers and CEO's of this company would have no interest in playing with pixel dolls at a virtual table

It's an idiotic idea and I question LL's intelligence that they still persue this. Which serious, professional company in their right mind would want to meet with puppets in a puppet room in a puppet platform with a puppet way of communicating, while there are so many more efficient, realistic and advanced ways of holding business meetings?

Sure, it may be fun for smaller businesses, just to try it out. But really, for serious business matters? Comon, I wouldn't even trust SL in terms of confidentiallity when chatting, IM'ing or using voice. The companies who are still in here use SL mostly as advertising medium or as a recruting portal for their real companies. And that will only remain interesting if visitor numbers grow beyond hundreds of thousands online at the same time. LL can't even handle that at the moment.

Focusing on rl companies is a stupid and unrealistic idea. Focus on consumers first and make a platform that can hold, let's say, half a million avis at one time. Then it might get interesting for real companies. But even then: still only as advertising medium.

Thanks everyone, pretty much inline with my thoughts.

Further, other than being an outsourced, if a company wants to trial such an environment, they could simply install opengrid or similar. Private and without the distractions of sl.

On recent themes, i can just see office affairs in sl but hey what about virtual christmas parties for those on a budget? Haha

I'm sure LL has some grand plan or vision of SL as a corporate world, but for various reasons that have already been offered I don't see it happening. Not yet anyway. However I can certainly see why LL would want to persue the corporate world.

Its the same reason why perfect good sport stadiums are torn down and replaced with new ones full of private corporate boxes. MONEY!!!!

Corporations have lots of money and they love throwing it around. They love throwing it around even if they go bankrupt doing it and have to ask for tax dollars to bail them out. But that's another topic all together.

Everybody: "But that's another topic."

Good points about scalability.

One of the biggest obstacles preventing SL from becoming more of a viable platform for large-scale meetings and events, and even smaller-scale instruction, is the instability of the grid and the impossibility of having more than 20 avis functioning in the same space at the same time. This limitation comes up during discussions about using SL in education. The current system is simply not set-up to deal with enrollments of 100s or 1000s of students every fall and spring and, currently, there are few tools for faculty to keep track of students, projects, assignments, conversation, or even who is who in RL. There are third party back-ends, such as SLOODLE, that address some of this, but via a web-based 2d portal. These issues, and plenty more, keep SL purely at the experimental stage.

Educators have smaller budgets than corporations, generally, so the lure of virtual meet-ups and collaboration inside SL is stronger than it might be otherwise. We're not going to get extensive travel budgets, or fancy video conference rooms.

Last night's conference, while promising in concept, was fraught with the usual SL issues. Problems with the stream, too many avatars arriving at once, causing crashes and keeping some from getting on the SIM at all (I crashed twice). There were at least 50 avis there. An announcement that the event was being recorded and that podcasts would be available later brought cheers. Add to that the user inexperience and individual issues slowing things down. However, there was still idea sharing among strangers and the sense of presence at an event. Perhaps we're just a more patient lot.

LL is brilliant!

they can retain chat logs from every meeting. they can read them. they can get firsthand inside information on all sorts of stuff, that could be directly related to stock buys/sells.

there are no secrets in SL. there is no privacy. classified information is not secure.

but i do see the draw of having a pixel stipper at a meeting, who then becomes a hooker, earning L5k for each avatar she has pretends pixel sex with - and then the guy not actually getting in trouble with his wife after he gets home (cuz it wasn't real).

i think we all know how this will end.

Exactly. Think of the money LL could get for all that confidential corporate information. But really, any serious business would be insane to even consider the idea of having a business meeting here.