United Nations Citizens virtual world - scam or real?

Glad we're getting this all squared away. Now, if you would just post a link to your Facebook account, on your SL profile....so that I can send you some complimentary flower seeds and a doggy sweater....and some massive marketing spam.

lol

Well I think if this vision was a reality these companies would probably prefer to have there own private sims anyway, much like the corps that have/had a presence in SL already. Other then that I don't really see an issue with having rl business doing rl business in SL. The problem of course would be the potential for fraud unless LL established a business registry and licensing system specifically for conducting rl business in SL. Though this would be easier to regulate if all non-private corporate sim businesses had there own continent or something.

Two things killed corporates in SL. 1) the platform was even less usable when they set-up following all the hype. 2) They bought private sims.

The biggest problem was, and still is, that LL think only in terms of sim-sales when it comes to corporates and organisations. Those RL customers pay big in SL terms and consider it small in RL terms. Then they wonder why they're so lonely. Simple answer is there's not much to look at in their mega-stores and what there is is probably built by people with RL design skills, not SL ones anyway (remember the Nike shoes anyone?). Finally, as Brenda says, people in SL are not here to shop for RL.

Corporates could have handled the "where's the customer?" question by doing what the rest of us do - try to get shops where people want to be. That seems to have been a bit too much like work though. Hell, they may even have had to get involved with this wierd online community instead of just showing the boss their shiny private building. This is the high-street store vs out-of-town mall issue, except that hardly any of SL's business customers could see that the mall doesn't work if you're the only retailer there and no-one ever has a reason to drive past.

Another way to handle things is to build a decent mall with lots of retailers. That way the neighbours' customers get a chance to be yours too, just the way a mall is meant to work. SL pretty much blew its chance for that back in 2006/7 by bring too restricted and unreliable a platform but everything else is in place - the economy, web-links, etc. UNC, if it ever turns out to be for real, might have a good chance of working. People would log-in to move around 3d a mall, just as they log in to the 2d internet to shop now. Odd choice of name though since it appears from their website that they're incapable of thinking of non-US citizens at all (bit like LL).

And thanks for explaining 'passion point programming'. I had my scripter's hat on too tight and was thinking of all the naughty things that could be programmed