The Question LL Asks

That's my major gripe about LL strategies.....lack of Marketing. I was horrified when M.Linden stated that they did not have a Marketing budget as such (well not a meaningful one!)




.

There has been an argument made that major marketing efforts would backfire due to the high cost of adding capacity (including both the cost of the server hardware and likely additional labor costs in upping the number of servers), as well as the time involved in getting additional servers up and running.

From this viewpoint, it's understandable that LL would conclude that a major national promotional push would be counterproductive, since it would result in a lot of unhappy people who'd encounter only frustration in their attempts to get inworld.

However, a well-planned campaign of targeted marketing could surely bring potential SL-customers inworld at a pace that another well-planned campaign of hardware acquisition could handle.

Well i wasn't like thinking of a TV campaign like WoW.....but more like waht IMVU were doing with their Internet banner advertising. LL could do a reduced but effective campaign...and wouldn't cost that much. LL could use M.Linden's buddies at Organic Inc to develop that campaign for them...that's an area they specialise in.....maybe just a few Website Home pages like Yahoo or Facebook (if they have one)

I realise they couldn't go full on with their Marketing efforts, due to SL not scaling too well. At the moment peak logins are around 75k.....i'm pretty sure the platform could handle 100-120k

They have Facebook and Tweet, if you go to the silly dashboard (hey when are they going to allow us to customize the idiot thing?) and look on the left. You can follow them there.

Facebook is only so good for advertising, however. It's got a "clutter" issue as bad as XStreet's.

Yes, I could tell from your posts that you're well-informed on this topic, but since the scalability issue hadn't yet come up in this thread, I thought I'd bring it up for the benefit of readers who are new to the issues involved. (In retrospect, I should have labeled my post that way.)

I think many of us who think about this are convinced that SL could be experiencing well-paced growth in the base of paying customers---but that LL is so focused on the Corporations Will Pay Us Big Bucks pipedream that they are ignoring the more attainable revenues represented by individuals who would gladly fork over US$20, $50, $100, or more, each and every month. Or would do so if they knew SL existed and what fun they'd find it to be.

Targeted advertising such as you suggest could win LL those customers.

And there are also the issues (as we've discussed in other threads) of whether Facebook fans would enjoy the VERY different expernience of SL, and of whether they are willing to acquire the type of computer that would let them experience it in the first place.

That may be part of it. I think the issue though is SL has signed up so many before and had such a dismal retention rate that any marketing effort would, to an extent, be trying to sell the same product to people that didn't like it before. The product has to change first before trying to persuade people to sign up again. Seems like a reasonable strategy to me, execution sure seems slow though, and there is a lot riding on viewer 2.0.

Indeed. Perhaps 2.0 really will usher in a glorious era of happiness and joy and more Residents willing to pay LL copious cash and stability and the chance to gather in large numbers on a single sim and so forth and so on.

(I'll echew comments about odds and offers to sell Brooklyn Bridges in the spirit of hope and affirmation.)

*takes a deep breath* That is a whole other reason why attention is dismal. SL really does require higher end machines to keep from frying themselves. Many Facebook users probably surprised themselves that they could figure out how to turn their computers on.. let alone how some specs will effect the overall experience.

Facebook is an extremely different beast of social than SL. In Facebook, you aren't likely to run into a self-replicating spam object attack. Or have a guy with a non-matching freenis dry hump your leg. It's one thing to see pictures of this stuff, but it's a whole other form of ew to have it happen to what's supposed to represent YOU in a virtual world.

See, LL's finally realized, Second Life cannot be perfect with the residents cluttering it up and doing things that embarrass them

Maybe viewer 2.0 CAN be the trick. Send it out on disc to everyone in the world a la AOL...then a month later send out viewer 3.0, then a couple of months later viewer 4.0, and so on and so on.

I do need a new set of coasters.

Hmm.. new frisbees. I like that idea! My parents dogs would thank you forever LL!

They make awesome mobiles, too.

Seen in that light, it does make sense; it's understandable that some at LL would dream of Residents who don't know enough about tech stuff to keep filing those pesky JIRAs.

I think the problem with marketing is that too many of SL's features are social, and can't really be advertised. Ability to "be" something? Social. Ability to run a club, design fashion, role-play, etc? All social. It's just like a nightclub can't really advertise that you'll have a great time and meet new people there. It's perfectly possible that you will, but the managament can't stand up and guarantee it, because people can't be forced or depended on that way.

Unfortunately, the platform features of SL have been allowed to fall far too far behind the curve for it to be that marketable as a platform any more. ("Existing content" isn't that important to professional platform users, only to amateurs.)

Well, they apparently forgot the things they can advertise, like the ABILITY to be anything you want (within ToS), and the ABILITY to create content. That's something that Facebook, Myspace and Twitter don't have.

Sure, they can't promise that you'll make new friends and there are limits to what you can be, because of the law, but that doesn't mean that you can't advertise the place as "where you have the ability to."

It's not the steak you're selling in that ad.. it's the sizzle.

The problem is that "where you have the ability to" in that context is heavily nuanced in a way that only somebody who's actually gotten used to and understood SL will appreciate.

Most naive users, on seeing an ad promising that you "can be" something, will be thinking in terms of WoW-like games where everything that you can be is hardcoded into the game and defined by its intrinsic features. And I think for many people that's actually more satisfactory: knowing that if they are a knight, they can wear armor that others can't and swing swords that others can't and that the game is manipulated so that there will always be assorted gribblies for them to swing those swords at, and others will value the destruction of said gribblies.

What SL offers, which is simply the abliity to buy armor and a sword, but anyone can buy the same, there isn't really any guaranteed interaction related to them and nobody really needs to care, is more similar to what a naive user would call "dressing up as" a knight. And SL doesn't want to advertise that because IMVU, etc, advertise that; but IMVU, unlike SL, is quite open about being just a fancy talker. For SL to advertise the same properties would expose it to that categorization too - which, for SL, would be a bad thing.

The truth is that to really play any role generally in SL, other than "someone who just fits in with everything", requires the real player to have a great deal of social skill. The number of people who have that level of skill and yet are still interested in virtual worlds as purely social venues is probably relatively low.

I have gotten the feeling that Second Life has taken a major change of direction since Kingdon took over. Prior to Kingdon, Second Life was pushed primarily as a virtual world, a social platform. The business part was an effect of having a virtual world. Since Kingdon took over, the focus has become that Second Life is primarily a business platform, to the extent that the social elements are almost considered an embarassment.

It's not necessarily a terrible shift in strategy, if Linden Lab thinks that Second Life has failed to be a successful virtual community, and is concerned about losing ground to other virtual communities (such as IMVU). The strategy is to re-define themselves not as the biggest, but as the high-end or elite; Second Life is for "serious" users, as opposed to something like IMVU which is just for play.

And though that shift in strategy may be good business sense, it does mean that they are no longer committed to the social users here for a virtual community, a category in to which most of us using these forums probably fall. We are at best low on the priority list, or at worst, considered leeches. (I think Kingdon probably considers a social, hobbyist user like me to be a leech.)

Rosedale did that a fair bit, too, especially just before he was leaving. And I think the reason for that is nothing to do with particular bias against the social aspects of the world, but simply that they're a very rocky foundation for a business. You can't guarantee anything to customers, and (as I mentioned before) someone might decide to abandon their sim because they fell out with their boyfriend - no amount of customer service or platform design can rectify that. LL know that could, potentially, find 50% or even 100% of their social customers gone tomorrow even though they (LL) did nothing wrong and had no warning. Now yes, Sony/Coke etc are fickle, but if traffic to their adversims is dwindling then that's at least something LL can notice and make a business response to.

The other problem with unregulated social environments is that people can quite easily fail at goals they set themselves - this sounds a silly thing to point out, but it's not so true in other online games. If the failure is subjective - ie, that in order for one person to succeed it's necessary for X to fail - then this is a lethal fault which makes the world into a kind of ponzi scheme played with social "kudos" instead of money.

Excellent analysis. You make a trenchant distinction between SL and other virtual worlds, and rightly point out that for those roleplay enthusiasts who want to just 'go along for the ride' of being slotted into a pre-set role, SL falls short.

So, yes, SL would do well to tread carefully in marketing SL to roleplayers (assuming a LL regime that was actually willing to market SL).

Don't forget, though, that there are plenty of other groups to whom to market SL.



....Too bad a marketing campaign can't emphasize that SL is a place to find Smart People and Creative People, because this is undoubtedly true. There are certainly potential customers who'd be glad to know there was this place in which they could encounter other smart people---but any such campaign would inevitably be perceived as elitist.

And...how COULD he have thought this?

I don't mean to be snarky or unkind. But surely ordinary common sense, combined with actual experience of SL, would have brought him to the conclusion that 'business platform' was a non-starter.*

Possibly one of those factors was missing.




*The shortfalls in both security and information dissemination that are inherent in virtual worlds are merely two of the stumbling blocks to using SL as 'a business platform'. And even beyond the security issue, the unlikelihood that executives of most businesses would be willing to put in the time necessary to make their avatar look less-than-comically-inept completely blasts 'companies will rush to hold virtual meetings in SL!!' pipedreams.

By 'information dissemination', I mean that the possibilities for advertising are diminished by the nature of SL. For example, when I log on, do I know that Toyota or Coke or Proctor & Gamble have island installations, promoting their products? No. [I don't know that they do or did---I'm just speaking hypothetically.] How might I find out, other than by merest chance? Am I likely to punch names of corporations into Search at random? No, I am not. And who is?

Of course the purchase and maintenance of an estate, filled with some elements that marketers hope will attract avatars so that those avatars can be exposed to advertising logos and slogans, is not the only avenue for advertising. The company could pay avatars to wear clothing with "Toyota" emblazoned all over it (a la a RL racecar driver). I guess.

But...to be honest, who among us would socialize with someone wearing a corporate logo jumpsuit? Or even jacket or t-shirt or button? Wouldn't we tend to characterize them as tools and avoid them?


...I'm trying to envision M.K's thought processes...wouldn't he have realized these things? And if not, why not?

It's not a case of wanting to "go along for the ride"; many people on MMOs dislike that too. They grudgingly go along with it because the tradeoff - the avoidance of the possibility of total failure - is worth it for them.

Other groups? You're right, but the difficulty is how to Market to those groups without corrupting the sales message to the corporations. Remember, the key is LL's control of their own destiny. They can't pay "smart people" to hang out at WAs to meet new people, if they find their product is not delivering on that promise.

If by that you mean that LL would prefer not to have to court customers (whether individual or corporate), but instead would obtain contracts by which they'd have a steady stream of income, guaranteed for years...

...well, what company WOULDN'T want that?

But...how many get it?

I can't think of any in businesses that might be considered to be roughly analogous to SL. (It's not as though LL could be paid royalties for the content it's created...what entity would pay such royalties?)

The fact that nothing LL does is likely to result in the attainment of guaranteed income, doesn't mean that LL shouldn't market SL.

In connection with the idea of marketing SL as 'a place where smart people spend time' or such:





There would be no need to market with a message such as "we guarantee you'll meet smart people". All they'd need to do would be to showcase genuine testimonials from genuine Residents who happen to be smart.

Many entertainment dollars are spent because the spender hopes to encounter like-minded people at the venue in question. Someone who hopes to meet unconventional people who enjoy exhibitionism is going to buy a ticket to a midnight showing of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"---NOT to a concert of chamber music. Someone who hopes to meet Christian fundamentalists is going to attend a revival meeting---NOT a comics/sci-fi convention. (And so on.)



In all this, of course, I'm assuming that LL will ultimately realize that there's no need to worry about corrupting the sales message to corporations----because corporations will have figured out by now that SL is of, essentially, no use whatsoever to them----for advertising or internal-communications (virtual meetings) purposes, which are the major claims LL has made.

(I admit that for a handful of industries there may be some applications of SL to training. But whether or not these applications are actually cheaper or more effective than other options, is unproven in any broad or general sense.)

Remember that when Kindgon was hired, he had no personal experience with Second Life. When Rosedale announced that Linden Lab would be looking for a new CEO, Rosedale's top priority was to find someone who was already using Second Life. Apparently, among the world of Second Life users, there were absolutely zero qualified candidates, because Kingdon was choosen despite the fact that he had never used Second Life before being vetted for CEO. (Remember those homey blogs he Kingdon wrote when he first took over, writing about his experiences in learning what Second Life is all about?)

Kingdon has no actual experience in SL.

That's what worries me most. He's never really had to curse at the tools, nor deal with the inventory issues. He's never really sat down and figured out all these things we take for granted.

In short, he doesn't have a clue about what draws the residents to SL in the first place.