2009 could be a difficult year

Why would I "want" to walk into a 3D version of my bank? I can do every banking transaction I need on a 2D Website. Same for shopping. Why would I want to push a virtual cart down a virtual aisle avoiding the virtual bimbo who isn't paying attention because she is talking on her virtual cellphone and is going to get my virtual cart up her virtual ass while looking for virtual bananas? What benefit would that be over current methods? Clothes? I need to see and feel the quality before I buy any clothing?

I guess this is all believeable if you are the type who thinks people will "Live" in 3d Virtual Worlds, but I'm not one of them.

/me chuckles

It boils down to the right tool for the right job. A virtual experience is not going to be applicable in all scenarios. It's still faster to pick up the phone and order a pizza for delivery than to jump through a website interface, unless it "remembers" you and your repetitious order.

Simply because a technology exists does not mean it should be used.

I tried grocery shopping on line, for instance, and it proved faster for me to jump in my car, go to the grocery store, tear down each aisle with my cart, load it up and bring it home than to check off a list, make notations, type in options if the item was out of stock etc.

And I would never buy clothes on line let alone in a virtual environment (until they have body suits where you can truly FEEL the quality of the fabric and try it on to see how it hangs).

But yes, I think it's a matter of exploiting the right technology for the right purpose. And that is why SL is a good little testing ground.

what if there was no physical shop and those groceries were delivered to you? and cheaper?

God, I hope the day never comes where there is "No physical shop". Online shopping is a nice convenience but I would never want to do everything through a computer all the time, never leave the house or see another human being.

Certain food items I would never buy on line anyway, meat and produce are two examples. I have to see the quality and ensure freshness myself. I need to see the item itself, not a 3d representation of it.

A virtual supermarket selling virtual food would be quite good in a virtual world where you need to obtain food and eat to keep your strength score up.

well i assume it would be a choice. drive to teh store or order it online.
as far as quality goes, every restaurant in the civilised world orders their foods in sight unseen. even wagyu or blue fin is ordered sight unseen. its all down to the reputation of those that you order from.
sure, a pair of shoes may be one thing, but... a carrot?

Plenty of people in Canada live in remote areas where conventional city-style grocery shopping is not practical. I am not sure the precise numbers, but there is demand.

3) More credit card companies blacklisting LL for fear of funding gambling.

I can see one big advantage to banking in SL.

No horrid client-side scripting that only works with Adobe Flash 9.1 and IE 7 on Windows XP SP2 or Vista SP1 set to "medium security" and a full tank of Java Googles. At least not until the never-to-be-sufficiently-deferred day when they get HTML on a prim and the horror of "web 2.0" arrives in SL.

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/slc/1052576173.html for the "Java Googles" story.

This.

My boss is a 60-something year old VP of Marketing in the company I work for. In a scenario like this he would probably look at his monitor, look at me, laugh and say something like, "your're kidding, right?" Unless it's something that's up and running flawlessly with one click I don't think most corpprate types would be willing to participate.

I never said there isn't demand or it isn't useful. I am just illustrating why *I* am not particularly interested in it.

Lots of people thought that. And started dozens of high-profile Online Groceries businesses.

And flopped, spectacularly. (#1 on this list of web failures: Webvan.com:




When people start in with the 'oh, those who oppose using SL for business meetings are just Luddites who resist progress and don't see that everything can be done profitably on the Internet!' spiel, it's useful to remind them of Pets.com and Webvan.com and all the other "everything can be done profitably on the Internet" claimants.

Saying 'this use of the Internet doesn't make sense' is =/= being Resistant to Progress.

(It's using your intelligence instead of your capacity for wishful thinking.)

oh, i dont have any pipedreams of any of this actually happening on a large scale anytime soon. that being said, i remember a time before cable tv and vcr's too.

Even the old-fashioned tools (such as a telephone with a speakerphone capacity) make more economic sense for the vast majority of companies.

Last year my company was bought by another. We routinely held teleconferences in which 25 people sat around a big table at my location, and 25 sat around another table in the other company's location.

Right there, SL can only say 'someday we will be able to have 50 avatars in one place without causing crashing, but for now we'll try to find you a 'corners of four sims' location and hope for the best.'

And even with that, my company couldn't afford a dedicated conference room with 25 high-speed, good-graphics-cards computers. We would have to have been scattered around the floor at our own desk computers (virtually none of which have those good graphics cards.) The same is true at the home of the company that took us over.

You'd have to have the company shell out many thousands of dollars for the good graphic cards, before anything could take place. And believe me, that wasn't in the budget.

Then you'd have 50 people scattered around two buildings. None of the casual interactions that take place when people are around one table could occur. It would all have to be people trying to keep up with reading a chat log while IMing others privately while trying to keep straight who's talking....(is Jennifer Magic actually Jennifer Stanton or Jennifer Maccelli or Jennifer Baker?...I can't remember....)

And of course, there would be no PowerPoints or whiteboards or handing round a set of tables or graphs that have just come in or.....any of the things that make for an efficient meeting.


And even all this could take place only if you make the very, very, very, very, VERY shaky assumption that all these executives would agree to be represented by an avatar. Yes, even if you offer them ready-made avatars, they are going to resist looking as ridiculous as they will inevitably look....walking into the table and onto it, accidentally detaching their clothes, wearing boxes on their heads....


Those who gloss over the very real fear of looking ridiculous that's felt by the 98% of business executives who DON'T work for cutting edge tech or creative companies, are demonstrating their complete lack of understanding of human psychology.

There are plenty of real problems with "corporate SL", we don't need to invent new ones:
SL has been able to have well over 50 avatars in a single sim without crashing since Class 5 sims were introduced. The first time I teleported to the Brazilian infohub and was able to actually fly around on my Mehve with 75 avatars in the sim I was amazed.

Consistently?

I have not seen any Class 5 sims brought down simply because they had 60 or 70 avatars. I have seen them crash for any number of reasons, and pushing the avatars all the way to 100 is asking for a visit from the FU fairy, but 50 avatars is not a problem. Particularly not in the controlled environment of a grid-in-the-box setup behind a firewall that any real-life corporation is going to expect.

Okay, good to know.

What about the other reasons I gave for believing the 'LL will make soon be making major profits from business meetings' concept is bunkum?

You know I've given this quite a bit of thought and I honestly don't know what LL's is thinking when they try to attract business to SL.

What in the world does SL offer a business that they can't get somewhere else, cheaper and without all the distractions and lag?

Nothing.

It seems like a gimmick to me. Some companies have been interested from a curiosity factor, or a wow factor but from what I can tell they haven't really stuck around.

Seriously, having meetings in-world? with IM's going around and slx shopping and animations screwing up, and people shouting over each other in voice, not to mention the the one idiot who forgets to turn his voice off and starts snoring... its just a mess to even think about!

LL's in my opinion should drop the business side of this completely and work on making SL the best entertainement/social networking site out there.

Again, all my opinion and sometimes I'm quite uninformed so feel free to correct me I take it well.

Handy man

Oh, well, about that...


Like I said, there's more than enough reasons to doubt the wisdom of this cunning plan, without making up new ones.

I don't think they're made up. I think they're real.

Your point (in the other forum) about the necessity of providing security is excellent. And Meta Linden's point that many potential users are put off by the thought of being confronted with sights they find offensive, is certainly valid, too.

But what's being lost in all this is that even if the security issues and 'adult content' issues WERE to be resolved....LL is STILL not going to be making huge profits from business meetings.

And that's because of issues beyond Security and Prudishness. (Namely, the cost involved [upgraded computers and training, primarily] and the psychological reality that few corporate types will tolerate looking silly.)

The problem with ignoring these realities is that LL is making decisions based on the idea that these realities....don't exist.

They problem with ignoring them is that LL is losing genuine profit-making opportunities, while chasing this chimera of 'if only we solve the Adult-Content and Security issues, companies will flock to us to hold their meetings!'

It's real head-in-the-sand stuff.

Well said!

Handy man

I meant to respond to that one, Argent...did you see the blog post about "Second Life Behind the Firewall"? LL is on the verge of fielding a secure SL product.

Which makes the whole Adult Content thing even more puzzling.

1. I don't think meetings are the market for commercial use of SL. Is lookng at each other's avi's important? Not really. I work with large corporatons who use video conferencng, and for smaller groups after 1 or 2 meetings everyone would rather use Netmeeting and PowerPoint or whatever other software can show what needs to be shown. The key thing in a meeting is reading other's body language, and you can't do that with avi's.

2. A market exists for what SL does best -- vrtual reality. A car company can try out new loks, fashion designers new styles.

3. Similarly, it offers performers a chance to sing, play insturments, tell jokes, or whatever to a live audience and get feedback. Taking this further, things like stage plays can and are done.

4. SL could be a simulation tool.

5. Anoother way can think of now is to allow people to do things they could not do in RL. The simple version of this would be to do things like take a walk through an engine, experience flight, see DNA up close, or build models of things.

6. The usual idea of a meeting is to get people together for a face to face. SL can't do that, but, if you wanted to take people to see something (a tour) it might be closer. Problem is buidling the things peple need.

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood what you wanted me to clarify.

I didn't make any claims about whether any of your other points were real or not. I was ONLY commenting on the specific one I quoted.