SL as a business platform

i disagree completely Khamon. I can see compelling reasons why an RL corporate would want to be on the main grid, just as there are different compelling reasons for a separate company to want their own grid.



And whoever said that SL is too unreliable for business usage -- that is also an oversimplification. Not every business needs six-sigma before they wade into the pool. We will see a typical technology adoption curve as long as LL continues to advance forward. There are already innovative companies that aren't afraid of a little risk and a few bumps that are looking at SL's technology.



Granted however -- we are largely still at the toe-dipping stage rather than the wade stage because of the risk factors but that could change quickly if there are a few successful forerunners.

Yeah I'll grant that some businesses might want to maintain a presence on The Grid All Hail The Central Grid to employ the incredibly useful advertising tools as they market products to the vast resident population.

I've no idea. Who has said this?

Intelligencia verbiage compels me in quantitative ways that compare, though somewhat loosely, to accelerated brain activity induced by ancient Krell technology. Thank you for sharing your compelling points with us. My fervent hope is that the message falls on the willing ears of open-minded individuals compelled, in their own initiative, to embark on creative business partnerships with Linden Research focused on producing compelling local effects of grid computing in the everyday lives of users across both worlds.

*giggles* Wrong assumption! It wasn't you!

Could the businesses succeed without a consumer base?

Khamon, by now, everyone reading this thread will have realized that you think it would be a good idea to be able to use the SL software platform for grids separate from the main grid, maybe even with closed groups of users.

I consider this a nice idea, too.

But "I utterly fail to understand why" it is necessary to ridicule everyone who does not share this opinion.

Sure, this is one way to use the SL software "for business". There are others. And thats good. Different options available are allways a good thing.

There are business models which could succeed without (SLs current) consumer base. They depend on other "user bases"; where users might not even be categorized as "consumers".

Other business models won't succeed without this consumer base. There are many different ways to use SL "for business".

1. einsman made the comment about SL's reliability

2. snidely satirize that graph, sure, but while it presents pretty basic concepts, it was a simple visual reinforcement of my point about different businesses caring different levels about risk factors. But then a brilliant business mind like yours wouldn't need the help of such banal visual crutches, would you?


A business interested in the main grid isn't going to be there because of the tiny population, but because SL contains relevant members of niche markets they want to target (trendsetters and influencers), or because they believe in where this technology is going and think the population will grow, or simply because they like what being here might do to their corporate image.

Bravo, Forseti. I found that chart to be a fascinating representation of several concepts I'd taken for granted. It was a worthy contribution to the discussion and the response it garnered was simply idiotic.

I apologize for interpreting your rhetoric as sarcasm Forseti.

You can! (at least once )

I reacted too heatedly.

I happen to believe in what a 3D-web/metaverse/etc can be and accomplish, whether it's LL that pulls it off or another company.

I agree that SL needs privately run/hosted grids with the option of inter-connection. And LL may decide that they want to be a pure software/services company and get out of the hosting business... or they may maintain the main grid as a large server farm in a bigger ocean of metaverse components...

however, the topic at hand was business in SL. I do not believe that we need to arrive at an open-source, privately-hosted-sim state ... or even a levels-of-magnitude-greater level of technical stability for SL to be interesting and useful to businesses, schools and non-profits. SOME levels of performance and stability greater would certainly help the situation though

Depends on what they're using it for. For example, internal collaboration on their own intranet wouldn't require consumers.

I intentionaly posed the question as openly as I could. The questions are asked to create an open discussion based soley on those questions. The answers have been very interesting and I'm pleased that they vary based on personal opinions. I am not going to interject my own opinions here and sway the answers in one direction or another. I am very much enjoying the discussion, thanks to everyone who is participating. Makes for a very enjoyable read

Cat

After reading the above, I am curious. What do you mean by "3D-web/metaverse/etc can be and accomplish"?

heheh not a short answer. It's a good question and i'll try to blog something over the next few days.

And how would a mini-grid _disconnected from the Internet_ be useful for business meetings for your business, as everyone would all have to be in the same building _ANYWAY_? (all sitting at their little laptops chatting madly away with the guy down the hall)

A separate grid _could_ be built which allowed users to choose one-time avs from a pool, and then place the avs in a "meeting area" where all the interested parties could chat/IM each other -- using chat for open discussion and IM for private talk during the conference/negotiation/seminar. This could be useful as a way of staging corporate seminars and staff conferences when the RL people are scattered between various corporate offices and continents. However, as the av/sim limit appears to be about 40-50, depending on how many scripts are running in the particular sim, this may be a problem for large conferences.

However, the internet is the primary connectivity venue for such a project. Maybe a virtual intranet could be established by a particular host, but the licensing, installation and support for third-party use outside of LL would be a huge obstacle. So doing an SL-like grid/metaverse simply for your local business meeting is just a little asinine.

No - not the way accounts are set up now.

If LL were to allow for businesses to have accounts in our RL business names, then Yes.

But LL has made it clear they do not want to impliment that feature.

The two of you seem to be discussing two different things:
-- inworld businesses which deal in SL-specific "products" and "services"
-- RL business which could utilize a metaverse-like platform for various business meetings, conferences, seminars, etc... or as a platform by which clients could contact the business staff directly, without using phones/email.

No.
I think there is a place for business and a place for homes etc.
We need built-in zoning. Instead of player owned zoning laws.

I want to see realistic condensed areas. A city.
As it stands SL would be to laggy without using fake, low prim/non-habitable, buildings. But some day it may happen.
I think a real working city is possible if they would set it up between a 4 sim joint. Like the WA. To handle the amount of people.
That would be cool.

The company I work for has, as I was told last time I asked, around 9000 locations world-wide - all connected with their own wide-area network.

This is not unusual for large companies.

You can also use virtual private networks to establish secure connections to a corporate intranet over the Internet, without exposing privileged conversations to insecure facilities. Having to do this on a server at Linden Labs, even if they established a firewalled network and only allowed access via VPN, would significantly reduce the likelihood of getting this accepted.