Fixing corporations in SL

Here's a story about corporations scaling back on SL investment:
http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2008/04/11/frustrated-virtual-agencies-look-beyond-second-life/

edit: apologies for the length of this. but it's a quick read.

[If you feel that corporate money should stay out of SL altogether, I suggest you simply skip this thread. Because I want to talk about how to bring them in, hopefully in a less disruptive way than some here fear. (Other than by making SL more stable, lalala).]

Things like CSI:NY should be ideal applications for SL. But, looking at the article above as well as other blogs, it looks like SL's diversity and complexity are a problem for companies like ESC and MOU. On the other hand, SL's immersive quality is attractive for companies looking to make a more personal connection with and among customers.

Maybe we can take a page from RL to guide us as to how corporations could better use SL. In RL, corporations have office parks separate from the burgeoning chaos of their host cities. If they hold a convention, it is at a convention center which is somewhat separate from the host city. It helps, though, if the host city is an attractive one recreationally. (And, for recreation, there is not much that beats SL!).

Perhaps corporations should hold their events (and here I view CSI:NY as a corporate event) in places like IBM's new venture -- on a federated grid which may not be run with the same policies as SL. SL's current grid then becomes like Vegas or the French Quarter -- an exotic place that corporate guests can easily visit .. but need not if they don't have time.

Now, office parks are special places in RL, and should be in SL as well. Imho, LL should spawn an internal spinoff to create a specialized version of the platform, built from the main codebase but simplified, specifically for "office parks". (Yes, I said an internal spinoff for platform develpment). Over time, this spinoff could create a services group that could create small platform customizations for major accounts like IBM.

How would the "office park" platform differ from regular SL? Better media handling. Classic collaboration tools like whiteboarding. No retail! Tools for office park managers to create custom prestocked standard avatars and inventories for new members. Streamlined registration and optional RL naming. More scalable sims because office park visitors would have limited build capabilities ... the environment would be more static.

I could also say things about a new class of resident on the SL portion of the grid called a 'visitor' ... but no.

If we look at things this way, then just like RL New York, the creativity of SL's current population, it's own internal vital economy, it's various communities, become attractive elements to lure non-SL users to the corporate event. In this view, SL's residents are not a target market -- and realistically, they won't be a large or uniform enough group to bother with targeting for quite some time.

Doing this would probably require that LL get more money, hire a few people from a classic corporate background, get more platform development engineers, and create a strategic partners program to work with companies like CBS, Reuters, Universities, etc. If done right, it would be both fun and profitable for LL.

Acting like a startup again, woot!
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Corporations don't want "office parks" in SL. They want ad builds. They want to put out a big flashy "thing" and have people visit it and say "oh, corporation X is really great".

SL is not a terribly good environment for that; the unreliability is a problem, certainly, but also, builds have to compete with everything else. With a few exceptions - the people who are actually still around, mostly - none of the corporations coming in have any interest in interacting with the existing SL culture or paying any attention to SL beyond its use as some sort of 3D viewer that they don't have to pay for, and so they will fail, just like if they simply dumped simple TV ads onto YouTube and expected people to watch them again and again. Nobody _cares_. Who wants to see that sort of thing?

There is a lot of work going on to make systems which _are_ more reliable and which _are_ better suited to advertising builds, but I am going nowhere near them personally, because they are simply not the future. A giant 3D advertisement for Nestle built on There's platform that has perfect uptime is still going to be just as boring, and still represents the old "we tell you what to watch" paradigm. And I'm afraid that MDCs which think they can just move to a new platform to fix the "why the hell would I bother with this?" problem will be sorely disappointed.

SL was only ever good for one thing: A press release that generated positive buzz. Shortly after the buzz turned negative (starting the day the age play scandal hit) SL had no further usefulness for any corporation looking to expose their product to more than 40 people at a time.

I once had an interview with Geek Squad. I made a mistake of mentioning being at their Sim in SL.

The laughter that came forth gave me a pretty good idea what some companies are thinking about the place.

And no, I didnt get the job. I'd rather FIX your computer than try to sell you a new one with Vista.

The initial rush of corporations to SL can be best summed up, IMO, with a trip back in the web's history:

http://web.archive.org/web/19961110083459/http://www.mcdonalds.com/

(Use that as one URL, not two)

It's that initial, exciting "splash" where you get to say "Look, McDonalds is on the web!" or "Look, American Appearl is in Second Life!"

Were now in that second phase, best shown with the web by the failure of toysrus.com in '97 or so, and other early, disapponting RL web ventures. I suspect many companies are still interested, but wary. They need a return, and to get it they can't simply toss up a few prims with their logo on it. They need to understand the culture, and provide a location that people want to visit. Like, say, what The Weather Channel did in SL, in providing a five-sim build full of interesting things to do, and that encourages repeat visits.

The next step is really going to be handholding with the companies, and helping them to benefit the community while also getting their own needs met, IMO.

Mari

The whole idea of corporate sims as part of the main grid is fraught with challenges.

1) The SL population is world-wide. Over half the residents aren't even in the USA. So, corporations who want in on being a part of the SL community (by that, I mean interacting with the resident population, not having their own sims strictly for corporate use) need to be looking for a global audience of people who are IT savvy, early adopters, like spending $$ on gear and technology, and are fairly creative. Anybody who doesn't meet that criteria is probably wasting their money.

2) The natives are exhibitionists. Corporations who want to impact the resident population have to come to grips with the variety of people who will be on their sim. This can include avatars in significant state of undress, avatars that take a variety of shapes, political statements, professional provocateurs, people on leashes, etc...

3) You need to provide something for people to DO. 99% of the corporate efforts so far have been deadly dull. If I were a global megacorp looking to get in front of an SL audience I would set up a 4 sim estate of the biggest, baddest amusement park in SL. Make one whole sim a waterpark. One sim a space adventure. Brand the thing carefully so that there was no doubt who was behind it, but do it in a creative way so it isn't just more lame advertising.

The place would be packed, I guarantee it.

I disagree. Certainly there were some early adopters corporations who were after advertising. Not only is SL unsuited for this sort of thing, but the target market just isn't there.

Take a look at what companies like IBM, Sun, and all the major universities who are in SL for the longer haul are doing. They are not doing anything like advertising; it's about online events for product introductions, meetings, classes, and collaboration.
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I agree completely. SL, or some offshoot, corporate-access-only virtual world within SL, makes sense for a company. For internal communication. For training. For product development and testing. I believe some of the early adopters of OpenLife have got applications like this in mind. So do some developers who are experimenting with Croquet.

SL does NOT make sense for corporate advertising to the masses, because of the limit on avatars per sim, and the overall small size of the user base compared to the internet as a whole.

The state sl is in is because LL wanted corps in here.. ya like THATS a good idea lol

Second Life is too unreliable to warrant any serious capital risks.

That's why you don't see corporate investment in Second Life.

A few corporations took a risk, found it was a money pit, and pulled out.

And every other corporation learns from the other risk-takers' mistakes.

It's been argued that corporations have not exercised much creativity in utilizing Second Life. But they aren't going to throw down money to develop ideas as long as Second Life remains a huge money pit.

I think it's pretty clear that the main grid is a complete waste of time for corporations trying to do mass-market advertising, at least until it has concurrency of QQ proportions (10,000,000+). For very select RL markets (SL-related hardware, for example) there could well be targeted marketing and sales that would pay off. But I really don't think the main grid market is very appealing.

So, yeah, if corporations are going to make profitable use of SL, it will be for something else. And if we imagine what corporations could do in-world that can't be done as efficiently in RL, it's really all about 3D collaboration of one form or another.

Simple collaboration--like meetings--aren't the same virtually as in RL, but I do think something about 3D presence elevates them above the conference call, and possibly above videoconferencing. The barriers are too high right now (too much to learn, too much bandwidth, too much viewer hardware), at least for simple meetings and conferences, but in theory, there could be value there. Especially considering the currently skyrocketing transportation prices and other costs for travel. (And, really, the time saved from not sitting in an airport and on a plane could go a long way toward learning the SL interface.)

Training is where I think the big win is right now. Corporations spend truly astonishing sums on training their employees, and there's a subset of that which really involves manipulation of 3D objects. Again, travel savings. And some things are really probably better learned through lots of virtual practice and simulation than a little RL exposure.

Such training may be offered internally to a corporation's own employees, or conceivably to its customers. Indeed, in some possible future universe, using SL as a 3D help system could be very useful. (Beats a bunch of cryptic technical drawings of how to assemble a rack full of blade servers, say.)

So, yeah, whatever those sinister corporations get up to, they'll be doing it in something like "office parks." The thing is, though, those corporate subgrids have to be *vastly* more reliable than the main grid. They don't actually have to be very "available"--most of them will sit empty most of the time and during predictable hours, during which scheduled maintenance would be fine. But when they have to be up, they have to be up--one missed CEO presentation and it's over forever. So, to cater to this crowd, LL simply *must* find a way to deliver some version of a grid that just won't ever crap out at the wrong moment.

I don't see what advantage a virtual world has over video conferencing.

Especially considering that the virtual world in question- Second Life- is so unreliable. So the grid is down when your meeting is scheduled, what do you do, just cancel the meeting, oh well?

Well, I'm currently playing with qwaq.com

In some ways it is way behind SL e.g. no customisation of avatars and avatars look like giant jelly babies, graphics look poor even compared to SL pre windlight etc.

In other areas, it is way ahead of SL in that you can drag and drop office documents onto notice boards in world, and allow multiple people to view and edit them in real time.

But, even so, when compared to a video conference app with app/desktop sharing it is not apparent what the advantages are...

Matthew

You can be a Neko talking to a dragon?

Croquet (qwaq's technology) is interesting, I've always wondered if it could be integrated into SL, never took the time to really look into it. I saw a person or two from Qwaq in office hours, tho not recently -- they seemed amiable and low-key there.

Videoconferencing advantages? In a nutshell, virtual conferencing is more friendly to distributed workforces. There are two types of videoconference, room-based and desktop. Here's a few differences:

A. Desktop videoconferences among more than 3 separated parties are unwieldy, you have to go to room-based. Which requires physical proximity.

B. If you work at home, you do not have to allow your home surroundings or bathrobe-clad self to be photographed -- you can be visibly present in the same virtual conference room with others, dressed to match.

C. You are not on camera, you can actually multitask.

D. Easy camera control --- YOU completely control the camera, so if a 3D model is being looked at, you can examine it from any angle.

E. The conference "host" can easily set up their own sim(s) that are permanent, so that branding, corporate 'feel', even resemblance to existing RL buildings, is simple.

In short: it's more immersive than an audioconference and less invasive than video.
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I remember reading an interview with someone at IBM who said that their people treated virtual meetings much like RL meetings, such as chatting before and after the meeting about their personal lives ("How are the kids?" and freely interacting during the meeting. But with video conferencing, that kind of interaction occurs far less often.

As for the reliability for meetings: I came to SL primarily to learn how universities have used it and to determine whether it was feasible for me to use in conjunction with a new online course I taught last year. In my first day, I tried to attend a class in SL, but after a few minutes the instructor canceled it because SL was having a very bad day. Unreliability doesn't mean SL cannot be used for meetings and classes, but until LL substantially improves reliability, its use will be quite limited.