Solution Providers Update from Glenn Linden

Hi, this is Glenn Linden. I work on business programs at Linden Lab, and I’d like to talk with you about an aspect of Second Life that I work with, our Solution Providers.

We define Solution Providers as professional businesses and individuals who work in Second Life with real-world businesses, creating immersive experiences that aim to invite, engage, educate and entertain fellow Residents, as well as their employees and internal audiences.

Solution Providers have played an important role in the growth Second Life has enjoyed over the last few years. Two years ago, there were about 20 companies listed in Linden Lab's fledgling Solution Provider program; today I’m pleased to say that number has grown to over 200. They range from Resident-developed businesses to departments of major agencies and web development firms, and they work with a wide-range of clients.

Solution Providers’ projects range from fantastical to formal, including a popular promotional gift that requires exploring a giant’s home, to prosaic events, conventions, meeting spaces, recruiting and training locations, tech support provision, as well as brand marketing and promotions.

Some examples:

* IMAX Harry Potter - 'buzz agents' simply hung out in SL and talked to Residents, giving out coupons for free tickets (and they gave out more tickets than did the web site promotion.)

* 7Days Bread - an inworld factory where you play baker, making and sharing pastries.

* Cisco’s tour of router products.

* L'Oreal’s promotions include sponsorship of a beauty pageant, and gifts of skins and make-up in popular Resident-owned locations, linking the association of the brand to beautification of one’s avatar.

* Kelly, Manpower and TMP, who recruit for traditional, not-in-Second Life jobs, do so inside Second Life. Kelly and Manpower both offer in-SL job listings as well. Manpower offers help with preparation and even style tips on dressing the avatar’s human for that upcoming interview.
* Birmingham has a project in Second Life to engage her citizens to participate in urban planning.

* The World Bank, impressed by the savings on travel and carbon that can be gained by hosting presentations and events in Second Life, engaged a Solution Provider to create an inworld conference where they will launch an important report on the state of global work.

* Herman Miller has a location in Second Life where you can design your own office with their furniture, and when you're satisfied with the rearranging, easily place an order online for your real-world office.

* Global Condo Corp offers tours of their real-world condos, inworld, to curious homebuyers.

* Trend Micro employees get security training inside Second Life.

* Language Lab uses the immersive environment of Second Life as part of the learning experience for their unique language classes.

* Advertising Week had an inworld version of their real-life conference exhibit hall where attendees visited booths, viewed exhibits and talked with exhibitors.

* The Tech Museum of San Jose, a pro bono Solution Provider project, has a virtual exhibit program where anyone can create a museum exhibit. The most successful exhibits are then built outside of Second Life, in real-life.

* Geek Squad staffs real-time tech support, inside Second Life.

Quarterly surveys let us extrapolate that Solution Providers work on over 600 projects per quarter. We estimate that the Solution Provider ecosystem is roughly a US$70M business, engaging more than a thousand people.

Solution Providers are important to Linden Lab and Second Life, not only for the content development resource they provide in Second Life, but also for the enormous outreach and experience they provide to organizations and audiences that Linden Lab could never hope to reach.

We are developing extensions to the Solution Provider Program(link), to better support and recognize the work Solution Providers do, as well as to identify and promote applications developed for the Second Life Grid.

If you are interested in becoming a Solution Provider, we urge you to first explore a variety of inworld projects, and the Solution Provider Directory, to learn more about the different aspects of the business. The Second Life Wiki, is also a valuable resource, also including the marketing information we've put together for Solution Providers and the entire Second Life community.

Key links:
Solution Provider Program info
http://secondlifegrid.net/technology-programs/join-solution-provider-program

Second Life Wiki - Marketing your business in SL
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Marketing

Solution Provider Success Studies
http://secondlife.com/solution_providers/success/listings.php

-Glenn Will Comment during the Evening, Pacific Time-

Please note that Glenn will be reading and commenting to posts in this thread during the early evening (Pacific time) after a day of meetings today and tomorrow.

Thanks!

The only one of these I've heard of is 7days bread, and that's solely because a friend works there.

Might you look into making a "what's happening now" lookup that isn't filled with ads for clothing stores or escort services? Honestly, as much as I like SL, it is very hard to find anything to do within it.

Thanks Shockwave, have you looked at the Showcase?

http://secondlife.com/showcase/

The Showcase features a variety of different great experiences and locations inside Second Life.

Pleasantly surprised at the directory listing.

Do feel that the list mentioned is probably too short to cover everything, but these are only a few listings of the hundreds of projects out there.

Highlighting service providers for companies interested in creating a presence in SL is a positive step - the most positive I've seen from LL in a very long time.

Thank you.

I'm happy that so many "solution providers" (newSpeak for "companies" have found a use for SL.

Nevertheless, I continue to maintain that SL is not a good communications solution for most business purposes. It has a number of inherent weaknesses for that type of application, including:

- instability and unreliability
- inability to insure the privacy of sensitive information
- the anonymity of SL avatars works against you in this environment, where Real Life identities often need to be known to others.
- high bandwidth requirements and high PC requirements, compared to other communications media
- poor integration with other communication tools such as PowerPoint and web video
- inability to assemble large groups of people in a single location
- harder for customers to find and get information on products, compared to a webpage/online catalog.
- inability to protect public meetings and sites from malicious mischief (griefers).

Second Life is not primarily a corporate communication or marketing tool. It is primarily an ENTERTAINMENT platform. LL's continued emphasis on the corporate side of the market is going to lose you your primary customers.

There are 30,000 sims and LL "showcases" a couple dozen locations; that's hardly representative, nor is the Showcase exhaustive. Not to mention the type of locations talked about in Glenn's post aren't even included in the Showcase's listings unless you already know about them being Solution Providers, in which case why would you need to search for them? As Shockwave so eloquently suggested, whats needed is a more useful "what's happening now" function.

By the way, have you Lindens noticed the bot surveys conducted by one of your residents? (see recent threads in the Resident Answers forum) It seems that 40 to 50% of the grid's population is bots and AFK campers...not the much smaller 10% "official" Linden Lab estimate.

I'm not sure what your solution providers would think of that. Those looking for privacy would probably approve. Those looking for customers would most likely frown.

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Thanks for the tip. I need to get myself over to one of those prozac events.

Let's see Ive heard of 2 of them, the harry potter one, which I have never come in contact with and the geek squad, which I wouldnt trust with a transistor radio. This is in now way aan attack, katt, but just what has this to do with the great unwashed of SL?

Just yesterday, I rezzed a 0.500x0.500x0.500 small one-prim box, made of finest plywood, wrote a simple 2 lines short script wich is able to open URLs on click, droped the script into the box and passed the box over to my land-partner for free. Can I call myself now a solution provider?

*giggles*

Why isn't there a similar initiative for content creators who don't directly work with "outside companies?" Solution Providers get special access to Linden Lab, not the least of which are closed-door meetings with Lindens (such as the ones they held for solution providers regarding the Openspace policy.)

I submitted my application as a consultant to the Solution Providers, on September 11.

I have not heard anything yet, and am anxious to become a part of this team.

Would you please check on the status for me?

Thank you

Was wondering whether there is a directory of solution providers, and also looking at definition, we seem to be still in showcase mode, but will leave that bye the bye.

I work closely with The virtual London sim, and so far have done our own thing setting about the inevitable, collision of the organic, and virtual world, example here http://www.l4l.co.uk/?p=117, and facilitating meetings using secondlife as platform, would we be considered as service providers ?

Some have mentioned anonymity, of avatars as holding back clients, which I agree with, but that is entirely a business choice of those who want to do business on this platform, We on the London sim, due to the nature of the projects we run do not, and indeed cannot due to the fact we are joined to the hip to the organic world.

Julius Sowu AKA "Kwame Oh"

Sounds more like a selfless promotion then enhancing dialogue...

Oh well I've heard of nearly all of them, good examples I guess but as others have said, we don't hear about this unless it's in the press. I've heard of one of these projects because of the local press.

Linden Lab need to be offering solution providers more exposure, showcase should have a place for such ventures.

Personally I wouldn't reccomend Second Life professionally because of the way Linden Lab treat their own bread and butter customers, but to outsiders you need to offer them a feeling they belong. This blog post is good exposure, you need to provide more of it.

I visited the Cisco sim, and the Sun sim. I enjoyed the Sun one more because I could "Take Copy" models of the particular sun products I was interested in, though most of them were restricted permissions. It would be nice to be able to do that with 1:1 scale models of Cisco equipment as well... being able to lay out a rack or machine room in VR space, and maybe even instrument it, would be useful. Taking photographs of all the hardware myself and uploading it would be a pain.

Cisco, Sun, Dell, whoever... opportunity's a-knocking.

As Jessicka so eloquently, put it and I wrote it so I know it is, yes self promotional, "spam"

But does that not go to the point that as was pointed out before, searches would have to be made for solution providers?

Love Julius

Ahhhhkkkkk! First Life Advertising! There is no escape. Anywhere.

When I think of first life companies in SL, I think of those RL websites that create hokey little games that they think will entertain you and imprint their brand on your brain.

Curiousity might get me once, but it usually never gets me twice.

Almost! you first need the 3 days in a sandbox requirement.

Is there any scrutiny for these service providers? I have seen some woefully bad promotions for RL companies that may be lovely builds but completely ineffective at marketing the company. If most of the people in SL have not even heard of these builds, it seems to me that there are some specially selected folks garnering HUGE incomes by wowing these companies and delivering next to nothing in the way of exposure.

I have even encountered RL markerting companies that come into SL professing to provide marketing services who are completely clueless and direct their RL clients in completely wrong directions. While it may be cute to have a Ben and Jerry's sim where you pick up cow poop muffins, it does nothing to make we want to go out and eat their ice cream. In fact, the association between cow poop and ice cream is one i still wonder about. LOL

Seems to me that there are better in world folks with better ideas than some of these companies who are all flash and no substance. Just my two cents....

The problem is that SL is becoming corporative, all the snowcrash thingie and cyberpunk culture is gone.

I would hate to see SL becoming a corporative virtual world. It would be a very boring world. No creativity, just copy cat products made by big enterprises.

Imagine, if all the corporations met in SL for their conferences. Didn't have to pay for airfare, or stay in hotel rooms, or eat meals on there trip. All they did was turn on there computer and sign on to SL and go to the meeting. I think its just around the corner. And Ladies and Gentlemen, It's us little guys that are paying for the servers and the technology to supply it for Linden ( the Open Space issues, the first lowered prices, now raised prices). Then we will be removed and SL cleaned of our so called abuse of resourses. and the corporate world moves on. Our RL becomes SL. Our entertainment and our creativity will be removed. Just once I would love to see the little guy either have an even playing field or be remembered by giving them the respect they have so greatly worked hard to gain. What do you think?

Well....I dont know how you respond to big customers, but I wrote an email 2 months ago for the exchange risk API, didnt get any response.

Meanwhile I wrote yesterday for the 3rd time....still no response...

This is great, wonderful, and swell...except for the fact that security of information is lacking and I wouldn't trust highly sensitive information exchange (such as that involving the World Back) over SL's network. The risk of interception by any outside agency is too great.