Pixel Labs and the “Book”

Imagine a device that would make reading a book within Second Life quicker, or perform Google searches and other things from the Internet within SL? A new virtual tablet called the "book" allows you to do these and more. We take a look at this handy tool and the people behind them: Pixel Labs.

For more, go to Extra Extra

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BREAKING NEWS: Second Life Sold by Linden Labs to Chinese Corporation

(**Update** - April Fool ;-) )

Today in a stunning development, Linden Lab announced they had sold Second Life to China’s Baidu Corporation. In a brief printed statement released to the press, CEO Mark Kingdom stated the deal was reached after several weeks of secret negotiations.

Baidu Inc. is a major communications company in China, owning the top search engine there. It made a profit of over $600 million in 2007. It made the news recently as the company most likely to profit from Google’s troubles with the Chinese government.

On it’s blog, Mark Linden stated, “Letting Second Life go was not an easy decision. But Linden Labs has always prided itself on being on the forefront on the development of the technologies of virtual worlds. With Second Life becoming increasingly complex, we came to the conclusion we could not continue to both continue to be so and run our grand experiment. While we shall continue to improve Second Life, it will be through business deals with Baidu as new technologies become available.”

Baidu also had a statement on the Linden blog, “We welcome Second Life into Baidu ... As we have helped bring the Internet to China, so we hope to guide the virtual residents into a righteous harmonious band. ... We should remind that our company operates under a set of rules that require reverence and respect to the wise and honored statesmen of our government. Those whom run about in virtual reality in their boxers using their words as fists with no regard for the respect of their betters are asked to cease such behavior so we will not need to take actions all will regret.”

One of the Lindens supposedly stated that following the sale, Linden Lab will be cooperating with Facebook to make a sequel to the "Farmvile" game, but this is unconfirmed.

Details are still coming in about what is clearly a turning point in Second Life.

To go to the Linden blog post and comments, Click Here.

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SL Enterprise Sounds Very Promising

It has been great news for Second Life when, on November 4, Linden Lab announced that they would bring a SL Enterprise product. This product that will replicate the virtual world behind a firewall will be comparable, for corporations, to having an internal Internet system without granting access to the outside world.

This is great news and an inevitable step that LL had to take to build its credibility in the business world. A 3D environment such as SL brings incredible potential for companies to organize meetings and other collaboration activities between people who work in different countries or even continents, at a fraction of the cost.

Let's make a quick comparison: you pay the $55,000 entry price to set up 8 regions with the possibility of having 800 users, 700 of them online at the same time. Add some costs to maintain the system available and you have a pretty decent "live meeting" solution. To this you can add the possibility of storing documentation and scripted learning tools that allow employees to learn and perfect their skills, without having to organize classes.

The price may be hefty for small and medium-sized businesses. The product that LL offers in beta clearly is targeting larger corporations.

The comparison with live videoconferencing systems is still funny to make. A telepresence solution from Cisco to hold meetings for 18 people will cost… $340,000. For companies, such telepresence solutions have already been cost cutters.

Although different in nature, you can compare both products and see that what you would sacrifice in real-life visual experience by using SL Enterprise, you would save. That's without even considering the potential for interaction other than plain conferencing.

This also makes me think that SL may do with virtual worlds what the Internet did with online activity. If businesses adopt SL Enterprise quickly, it will be hard for a competitor to displace SL as a "virtual world with a firewall" solution.

This Enterprise product is promising because using it with the security of a firewall will make 3D more tempting to organizations. Let's hope LL customizes it for other needs, too.

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Outrageous Merchandising Ideas Considered at Linden Lab

If you are considered a merchant by Linden Lab, you may have had the terrible surprise of filling a Second Life Merchant Survey sent to you by Pink Linden this week.

While Pink says "none of these concepts are currently on our development roadmap, they’re just hypothetical scenarios that we’d appreciate your thoughts on", there is room to worry.

Let me give you a quick run-down on the ideas thrown around.

1- Second Life-Certified Vending Machines

This would create a unified store management, provide premium merchant support and a guarantee for deliveries. Features would include automatic listing on XStreet SL's Web platform and metrics to see how business is performing. The catch? A surcharge of 10 or 15% on all sales.

2- Listing and Promotional Program

For a 5 to 10 US dollars fee for each item listed, Linden Lab will cross-promote your virtual goods on XStreetSL and Premium Classified Listings.

3- Merchant Marketing Program

To spur growth, Linden Lab thinks out loud about bringing new tools such as branding systems, customized store systems such as a Web storefront, and automatic consideration for large scale promotions. Other tools such as tracking purchases in real-time would also be offered.

The price? 10 to 100 US dollars per month, depending on sales volume.

4- I kept the most outrageous for the last point: The Mall of Second Life.

Land would be offered for "free" to merchants. LL would offer promotions along with it… while taking a 30% surcharge on their sales.

What should we make of all this? Linden Lab is CRAVING for your sales money. It wants, with programs such as the Mall of Second Life, to create a real-life income tax on each of your sales.

With fixed land costs, any increase in sales means more revenue and profits for your business. If you use any or all of these potential initiatives, you basically hand Linden Lab a larger chunk of your revenues rather than fixed costs. With the costly listings, you also take much bigger risks by increasing your startup costs, even before you make a sale.

These ideas are also dangerous for small stores. Imagine that there are enough big merchants that make this transition because the costs mean almost nothing to them. It would make those merchandising programs central to shopping in Second Life.

Being a merchant in SL has meant working a whole lot for little money for a large majority of business owners. Many are gaining managing experience but are not getting large amounts for it. Now, if LL manages to implement the measures and make them inevitable, merchants will stand to lose… again.

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Slapt.Me the alternative to Xstreet?

Since the Lindens bought Xstreet I have heard many whispers and many people unhappy with the monopoly that it has created for the Lindens and now, with the new rules, many more will be looking for that alternative.
Let me introduce Slapt.Me run by residents that have actually listened to what the customers want and tried to create it for you.
Constanza Amsterdam, Lord Sullivan, Kosta Cela and Bykoff Sontse, long term SL residents launched the Xstreet alternative in April and, although still having a few teething troubles when I tried it out, I found it as easy to set up as Xstreet but very different.
Slapt.Me offers featured listings and split profit enhancement, which works on percentage instead of prices. You will also find its own Forums where you can read what others have thought of it and place your own suggestions. There is also a WIKI to help you understand the site although as an XStreet merchant I found it very easy to set up.
You can request a terminal to put on your own land and there is also a place where you can store your first Slapt.me box for free if you do not own any land.
Is this a viable alternative to Xstreet? The speed at which its growing says just maybe it is.
Visit for yourselves and feel free to leave your comments and experience below.
Dana Vanmoer

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Cisco Live 2009

Knowledge is power.
This familiar adage has never been truer than it is today: in difficult economic times, it is knowledge that sets individuals and organizations apart. Knowledge is the differentiator that enables survival during the economic downturn and positions you for success when the economy rebounds.
Late Tuesday afternoon/evening I had the pleasure from a dear friend to be invited an event a first of its kind I had the pleasure of coming across in Second Life. The event was held at the Cisco Live Sim.
The name 'Cisco' is a company is real life company ( California based) one of the leaders in the information tech fields worldwide.
Cisco Live 2009 is a real life event that current runs from 6/27-7/2 this year being held in San Francisco Califonia. In addition to the real life events ongoing at the conference this year alongside the conference a virtual world aspect was introduced and brought into Second Life. After speaking with Tawni Ciscosystem, who works in the marketing department, here are some key points that have been introduced this year to the Cisco Live 2009 event.
The keynote speeches during the day are currently being streamed into Second Life to the Cisco Live Sim, there are various tech sessions held within Second Life with for various programmers and engineers and system admin specialists during the business day with various events to relax at the end of the work day.
If you work in the IT field you have the option to attend the conference in person In San Fran or the option to take part via Second Life Cisco Live 2009.
This event gives an employee a chance to make friends and enhance their skills, share and exchange information addressing problems that may arise in a real world setting.
For a major fortune 100 company to embrace Second Life as a business platform is a very creative move on their part, dont be surprised when you see more and business start to take roots and grow within Second Life.
If you have any knowledge of computers and networking and various equipment the name Cisco should ring a bell to you.

Taryn Gartner reporting from CISCO live in secondife

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Schadenfreude, hotshots!

What a striking contrast. If you look for keywords such as "financial", "bank" and "stock exchange", you now have a hard time finding many interesting results. Barely two years ago, a large number of "companies" were competing for a market of financial services and stock exchange listings.

I cannot resist schadenfreude (a German word that means "unexpected delight at somebody else's misfortunes") when seeing how most of the hotshots who drove that industry are gone from SL or at least quiet.

Let me say this up front: I do understand that the investors among you are disappointed with the many failures you witnessed and probably lost money in. And you are right. On the other hand, I am rather happy reality brought the "moguls" back to Earth.

I won't name names here but there was a time when I got in touch with a few of them. With one, I had a deal to display art for sale at his place. The whole time, the best attitude I saw was one of light arrogance instead of consideration as an equal human being.

Another one gave interviews to the SL media, telling them how he racked up millions of Linden dollars per month in revenue, but was crossed by the first guy mentioned above. Another one simply took his stock exchange and ran with it, without leaving anything to the people who trusted him.

Today, the rare players who are surviving, such as the Ancapistan Capital Exchange, have been serious and well-grounded.

While we shouldn't shed a tear for the people who cannot run ventures in SL anymore, it is sad that they took an industry down with them. When Linden Lab banned interest payments, any honest and conservative banking model went down with it. So did credibility of SL financiers when the World Stock Exchange vanished.

At the heart of the problem you find privacy. Of course, individuals who use SL need to be protected but for investment to be worth more than a leap of faith, real disclosure of information is needed. This is what many failed ventures used as a shield to take money without being accountable to the market. Real trust will be earned by those who disclose.

I leave the final word to the founder of Ginko, a "bank" that crumbled because of a bank run in 2007. His post on the ACE forums is delicious if you can read with a smirk.

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Landcutting will be too timid

No matter what Linden Lab makes of its landcutting, I can already tell you that the move will be too timid. No matter what the policy is, there is something important to add in order for Second Life to have a comprehensive property rights system in place.

The missing key element will now be zoning on the Mainland. SL needs to have a policy that separates commercial zones from residential ones, on whole sims. It is too important an issue to avoid it, at least for the longer term.

I see two major advantages if zoning ever becomes a reality.

The first one is obvious for home owners: having more uniform sims where clubs and stores are not located a few meters away from a nice house. Not only would sims be less noisy, but the design of the sims would naturally fit better with their purpose. A great inspiration for this should be private estates. Hundreds of estates are cleverly designed and divided. Even a sim filled with small squares of beach beats the current disorganization that prevails on Mainland.

I also see another motivation to implement zoning, and that's smoother exploration for users. Right now, flying around sims is an almost fruitless activity. You can stumble on the nicest and oddest locations at the same time. Some sims are totally deprived of interesting places to discover. Now, a nice commercial sim (such as Shoes) will allow you to find interesting stores, but Mainland suffers from a lack of those. Please, don't tell me that malls fulfill that need.

When will LL adopt such zoning policy to make our second lives better? Better sooner than later.

Of course, I welcome the idea that landcutting will be limited. It will help regulate land prices. This is a better deal for land buyers. It will also favor the real estate businesses that are serious about striking deals on nice pieces of land.

Don't underestimate the importance of property rights in Second Life when you read this. In any world, real or virtual, proper management of property is the most important role that regulators can play, security aside. It is the most basic, most crucial form of organization in civilization. If property is a mess, the quality of life goes down.

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The swallowing of Xstreet and OnRez, a bittersweet move

So, Linden Lab has finally seen the light about the advantages of World Wide Web integration with Second Life as a complement for information and transactions. Buying Xstreet and OnRez definitely is in their interest.

Now, what should we make of it? There is a fairly large number of issues raised by this. Forget the basic questions such as the timing of integration. There are more important things at stake.

The first one is clear: technological integration and the merger of accounts with the Second Life grid will make business simpler. No need to sign up for an account on a different site and to manage it separately in order to have a Web presence. Doing away with the time wasted to deal with a non-integrated platform could mean less hassle for merchants.

If LL handles this properly, there also is great potential to overhaul the clunky Web presentation in Xstreet and slap better options for Web storefronts. The example of more refined OnRez storefronts should be a good source of inspiration. More flexibility could even make this better. Also, Xstreet's terrible search engine could also be upgraded or replaced for better shopping experience.

As you can see, Linden Lab has a golden opportunity to provide much-needed change. If they aim for greatness and make their e-commerce platform amazing, this might even eliminate the need for external Web sites that many of us currently have.

On the other hand, better integration with the grid can come with a huge tradeoff. Will the new Web platform inherit Second Life's stability problems? Even if you couldn't make a purchase at Xstreet when the grid was down, you could at least surf there in “just looking” mode.

What about culture? There were a few differences between management of SL and Xstreet. If Linden Lab has angered many of us with a variety of bad decisions in the past, Xstreet has been more user-friendly. Will mismanagement show its ugly head on the integrated Xstreet?

Another large question is money.

With the buyout, Linden Lab has conflicting fee policies. At the moment, doing a transaction in Second Life costs nothing but holding land is the main source of spending. In Xstreet, you pay 5 Linden dollars for each 100 of sales. Will LL abolish the Web fees to make business easier, leave it as is, or increase them? The first solution would be the only right one. We already pay enough money on tier and accounts for mainland owners, shouldn't we given a break at some point?

If LL abolishes the currency exchange on Xstreet, it will be a bittersweet move, too. Its PayPal mass pay was much appreciated for instant money transfers. At the same time, a savvy user can squeeze more net money out selling Linden dollars on the official Lindex. Trying to find a matching buying order at specific rates on Xstreet can take much more time... if it happens.

My last note is a bit cynical: did Linden Lab have defensive motives when acquiring Xstreet? When its bosses rebranded SL Exchange into Xstreet, they stated that this was an occasion for them to look beyond SL, should other virtual worlds become more interesting or complementary in the future. Was this buyout a way to make sure that we are all tied to Linden Lab?

That's food for thought, my friends.

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YellowLanes.net relaunched

YellowLanes.net relaunched

YellowLanes.NET is the (unofficial) Yellow Pages for Second Life® and was founded on May, 2007. On the 15th December 2008, the new YellowLanes version 2 was launched.

On YellowLanes you can find websites, businesses, shopping places, services and beautiful places from Second Life and if you are looking for a job, you can find one. You can teleport from YellowLanes directly to Second Life®! At the moment, we have 300 activated entries and about thousand accounts. Each entry can have:

• a logo
• a description (in English and German)
• some keywords
• Link to online markets (e. g. SLX, Onrez..)
• Up to four Screenshots of each location
• A SLURL
• link to website
• a voting
  

The entries are sorted default by the actual voting, so you will first see the best SLURLs / websites!

For residents:

You can also manage your favourite entries. And if you found a SLURL, which is for example not actual, in our directory you can report it and we will pay you 50 L$! Please write a short report description. This is not the only way to making money with our website: With our affiliate system you get for every attracted customer a 20 % commission.

For business owners

You can add your entry for free. 2 screenshots, SLURL or website, description or logo is free for each entry. You don’t have any limits, which mean that you can create how many entries as you want. If you want more advertise on YellowLanes.NET, you can buy advertising space (banners) or he can buy a subscription. Also you can setup a voting station in Second Life, where users can vote for his entry each day once. You can order the entry while you create the entry. The voting station will automatically send after activating your entry.

If you have any question about the project, please contact us at our support page.

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Offer for SL-newspaper readers

It's the time of year for giving and we at sl-newspaper are no different. For the month of December if you wish to become a sponsor, or renew your sponsorship with us, you could SAVE 10%

You can find our pricelist HERE

We advertise in a totally different way from most in that we actually provide you with webspace, a page for you to show your products and services, with links to any and all your inworld locations, plus press releases and articles when you have something new to promote.
Not only that remember our advertising packages are for 3 months!

Contact Dana Vanmoer or James T Juno for more information

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Linden Lab rated 'unsatisfactory' with Better Business Bureau

The Better Business Bureau gives consumers and companies an idea of a companies performance in areas of customer complaints and resolutions of said issues.
Companies can pay a subscription to become BBB accreditted:

'If a business has been accredited by BBB, it means BBB has determined that the business meets BBB accreditation standards, which include a commitment to make a good faith effort to resolve any consumer complaints. BBB Accredited Businesses pay a fee for accreditation review/monitoring and for support of BBB services to the public.'

Linden lab are NOT accreditted, this does not stop the BB from rating them though and the results are interesting:
In the last 36 months BBB have processed 40 complaints about Linden Lab from consumers of these 40 complaints 28 were in the last year!

'Customer Experience
Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the BBB due to unanswered complaints. The company has resolved some complaints presented by the BBB, however, the BBB did not receive a response to other complaints.'

The complaints against Linden Lab range from advertising issues, billing/collection issues to service and refund/exchange issues

'BBB Reliability Reports are provided solely to assist you in exercising your own best judgment. Information in this BBB Reliability Report is believed reliable, but not guaranteed as to accuracy.'

"Basically buyer beware!"

Sources: BBB, ACE-exchange.com

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Finally, common sense is coming back!

Did you ever go over a long period of darkness and gloom to see the end of the tunnel? I believe that Second Life just did this.

Over the months, developments around the grid and Linden Lab finally bring hope that Second Life has a brighter future.

After much waffling, LL has finally understood the importance of not rolling out new land gratuitously, without considering the interests of established users who already own it on the various continents. Supporting the prices is a welcome idea, especially after the destructive introduction of new continents, European sales tax and the wiping of many SL real estate dealers. A serious land strategy is the only way to make sure that those of us who build around here will stay around for the long haul. It is a key for growth and strategic positioning of this 3D world.

My favorite change is a measure that should have been introduced from the start: zoning. LL intends to introduce and actively enforce residential and commercial zones in the future, which only makes sense. It is incredible to think that you can set up a house and see a strip club appearing on neighbouring land on the next day. Having zones will make Mainland ownership more attractive for current estate owners.

Seriousness to manage the business and enhance customer service are also starting to pay off. The efforts of M and Katt Linden are encouraging. Choosing a real CEO to replace Philip Rosedale was an important move on the part of Linden Lab since great founders and engineers are not always the most skilled managers. Having a communications manager like Katt Linden, who takes the time to listen to the community, also is reassuring.

Disastrous management and communications have done much harm to SL in the last 18 months. It is not too late to reverse the trend but LL cannot afford to waste much time since competitors are surely know that 3D worlds will be important in the future. SL has to keep its stranglehold on the market leader position if it is to survive.

Anyone who has been around the grid of late has noticed that it is becoming much more stable. The unplanned outages have been spectacularly reduced and the planned ones have been very reasonable. This is another key factor to the survival of SL.

A few questions remain, however. How will LL handle finance in the future? Can you have a virtual world without better policy on finance and banking? Is the land supply control only temporary?There is enough land set for sale on the grid to think that holding back on new land should be considered for a long time to come.

More importantly, however: how will Second Life become friendlier to newcomers? We have yet to see decisive moves to make SL more accessible for newbies. In the last months, the growth in time spent online has been attributed mainly to "veteran" users. If SL self-destructs one day, we may look at this issue as the straw that broke the camel's back.

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Are we less human here?

Time to get on my soapbox again. I am getting more and more irritated with people's behavior when they are shopping around. People seem to think that for a handful of Lindens, shop owners should drop on their knees and do just anything they want.

Let's look at a few issues that boil down to respect.

The first would be the "upgrades for life" scheme. Too many stores offer free upgrades to their products to make sure that customers buy them, even for major new versions. This creates entitlement. Whenever someone flies around the grid to shop, they feel that once they cough up L$500, they should get future versions for free.

This is an insult to content creators who take a lot of time to create products with skills that most SL users do not have. How many freebies do people think they are entitled to when they spent only a couple of dollars on something that took hours or days to create?

Then, there is a problem with too many shoppers who expect services-based business owners to be available for them at all times. In a photo studio, such people need their picture taken "right f---ing" now and won't take an appointment for tomorrow as an acceptable answer. We, people who do photography, should stand in for 12 hours in case they show up, and be ready to spend an hour to shoot with them. Then, we should deliver the pics the same day, at L$500 for a package of several pictures, of course. Otherwise, we are too expensive and not available enough to meet their demand.

One more problem that nags me is how shop owners are treated. If a content creator is around and trying to help you, it might be polite to thank them for their time before teleporting elsewhere. I find it to be the understatement of the day when saying that politeness never is a problem!

This brings me to ask you, dear readers, a question. Why do people lack respect towards others around this grid? Would they treat anyone like that in RL? Would they ask them to work hours on retail or artistic creations for $2 when we know that teens flip burgers at McDonald's for more money? How much would they appreciate it if they faced the same behavior themselves?

Do expectations have to be deprived of realism because there are avatars and a virtual world between people? Are we less human in here?

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Introducing Redd OConnell....................

Redd is well known within the financial and business community of SL and has accepted the challenge of the weekly business roundup while Connie is on sabatical.
As well as running Verve Financial Services, the first truly full service investment management and business consulting firm in Second Life,

you will be able to keep up to date with Redd in our FINANCE section ..........

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OMG! a little bit of difference goes a long way

This week I was looking around our office at Ian Bernard, just to see what was nearby and decided to explore OMG! Inc which is right next door to our main office.I had been here before to their first ever fashion show and quite liked what I saw. So i went to see what was new.................

Find out more about this company and the brains behind it in our DESIGN section.

Dana

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Bots shot themselves in the foot

Finally. It sounds like Linden Lab is getting its act together to tackle important issues that make the SL experience frustrating. After announcing that they have a Linden devoted to listening to the SL community, they are tackling the immense traffic numbers problem.

Taking the content of their Showcase site to the 1.21 version of the viewer soon, the Lindens are telling us that they truly want us to discover the top SL creations. At least without being gamed by camping or hours of travelling around the grid just to find anything

According to the Reuters news agency, the camping bots that look for empty camping spots drove down the value of time spent camping. They also sucked good money out of camping spot owners by being there at all times. This made the practice of camping even useless as a revenue source for users who cannot inject funds in their SL account.

By overtricking the system, they got even camping spot owners and the Lindens wary.

There is just one weakness with Showcase. The content selection is great, but whenever I look at it, I often feel that there is less space for great individual projects than "big" organizational ones. Don't get me wrong. I prefer editorial choice to traffic numbers. Relevance is what I like. But I also hope that "up and coming" creators get their space in that Showcase feature. Still, this worry is healthy in comparison to the concerns many of us had about the quality of search results and the impact of camping and bots.

The avatar rendering cost

The avatar rendering cost, which the Lindens introduced in the latest version of the Release Candidate software, is also interesting. Based on a number of criteria, it gives us an indication of how much lag we cause when our avatars are rendered. Multiple flexible prims with plenty of textures or particle emitters always cause more lag than a naked avatar.

Once I got past the shock that my lag count is over 3000, I realized that this count gives us only a part of the big picture. Anyone who knows lag knows that the multiple sources of lag vary on avatars and sims.

On an avatar, wearing scripts with "listening" features - you type something, the script takes the command and does something in return - cause a elephantesque amount of lag. Imagine a club where everybody dances with the Chimera dance machine attached to their butts. Dozens of listening scripts like that will help slow down the place.

Now, on a sim, any "physical" object that reproduces dynamics such as gravity, collisions and movement adds to the lag. Combine all the above factors and lag has a more complex face than just the hair and clothing you wear.

This feature can make people feel guilty about the way they tailor their style. But that guilt isn't fully justified when scripts and physical objects can smash a sim's performance all by themselves.

Besides, I felt less guilty when I did business with a customer whose lag count is almost 15000 :-)

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Falling land prices are always bad news

So, the Lindens took down the prices for islands by 40%. A frustrating move for those who purchased islands recently at "full price" but great news for wannabe land owners who feel that ordering will be cheap from now on.

I congratulate you on your future purchase if you are part of the latter group. The only issue is that falling land prices never are good, in any economy.

The situation of Second Life can not be directly compared with RL economies. The level of development is not the same. But it has something in common with RL: when prices fall down, it indicates that owners are getting poorer and demand is weaker. When prices go up, land owners get richer with the perspective of reselling assets that are worth more.

There is a broader way to look at the situation, too. When a company has the ability to raise prices without meeting a hostile reaction, we call that "pricing power". If Linden Lab had the ability to raise prices for its islands, it would mean that demand would be so strong that they could afford it. Under normal circumstances, pricing power is a great indicator of a healthy market.

It actually sounds like Linden Lab is rather under "pricing pressure". It doesn't matter much whether they think that businesses are shying away from Second Life and looking for competitors. Or that a 40% price drop will create instant demand. Stable or rising prices are better news, as long as they are not on a bubble.

At least, SL generally escape the realities of RL. In RL, people who borrowed to buy a house can face foreclosure if the value of their home is worth less than the amount they owe. In SL, once you have mainland, you have it!

Yet, add the 40% price drop to an unstable grid and concerns over Second Life's long-term perspective... and one starts to think twice about investing.

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How can organizations use virtual worlds?

One cannot say that he or she has figured out the way that large organizations will be able to use Second Life on a broad basis. Using it as a tool to reach ordinary people or simply do internal activities has yet to develop comprehensively.

A few examples such as Sun Microsystems and IBM have been widely cited in the media for having virtual offices or meetings. We sometimes hear that there are companies who recruit on the grid. But all of this is rather experimental. There isn't clear a "virtual world presence" model for everyone. Even for retail businesses, which may not have been fully using the potential of SL.

Without being an oracle, I have a bit of a vision on all of this.

Let's start with the retailers. I believe that in the long run, 3D worlds have all the potential to be a replacement for traditional Web sites. Today's Web sites have their limitations when you want to shop. Imagine going to your favorite electronics or housewares store's Web site. You do not get the same shopping experience than you get at the RL location.

Second Life can be an answer to this. With an island, sculpties and a bit of work, even a luxury shop from 5th Avenue in New York could recreate its unique in-store experience. Even for the curious such as me who don't go to NYC very often! You would go to virtual stores and look at the virtual replica of this LG television, Canon photo camera or GE fridge that you are thinking of buying. You could read about it from a notecard. You would get, on your screen, the environment that you would later see when visiting the RL location. Or order in-world if you want.

In such a model, the virtual world doesn't have to replace the real world... just replace the limited potential of the Web site.

As for large organizations that want to use virtual worlds, IBM's answer might prove to be right. They want organizations to use SL as they use the Internet. They would have a firewall that allows them to step outside as much as they want while protecting their internal islands. That would be a brilliant step towards a more secure environment.

But there's still a major problem, as The Economist points out wisely in its March 19 edition. You can't take something you created in Second Life and take it to another virtual world. The same goes with your avatar. They are wrong about moving information in, which is rather easy. But being unable to move it out easily is an issue. And they rightly point out that more open standards might do to SL just what they did to AOL's gated online services. Once we discover a universal, open virtual world, we may all abandon SL to avoid its limits.

Scary for the Lindens, eh? But it could be a long-term reality.

Related Link: Break down these walls (The Economist)

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RL businesses in SL

Recently James and I set out to look at the real businesses in our virtual world, mainly looking at the car industry.

We are all aware of the hype surrounding a new RL business coming into SL, and lately, more often pulling out of Second Life, Mercedes are the latest to announce their departure after Pontiac.

My honest opinion? Considering I am a non driver in RL I had a great deal of fun! Zipping around the tracks trying out the huge loop-the-loop on Nissan island, finding the code to get your own free car or answering the challenge of Mazda, jump the gap and keep the car :) (It took James 3 tries LOL)

From what we saw Nissan have certainly got the right idea of how to show their product to its best advantage with plenty of information and a lot of fun activities which had kept people coming to the sim even though there were no staff on hand at any time we visited, there were still avatars having fun. The only disappointment was the boxy look of the virtual model, with sculpties nowadays a better model could be constructed although the internal detail was good. Mazda also was populated and set in beautiful surroundings too. The Mazda Hakaze was also one of the best built representations we saw, although, only having a simple drive script it may have limited real drivers enjoyment.
Peugeot disappointingly were actually selling their models rather than giving them away and we were quickly bored, very much set out as a RL showroom - yes there was a road but if you wanted to see it you had to get a bike since you couldn't Rez your car to get around. All in all a disappointment they obviously had spent no time in SL and had no idea how to best use it to sell their product.

How should Real businesses set about using Second Life? Well I am no marketing expert but if you don't make it fun and give people something to do then you are unlikely to succeed. You need to provide the information in a fun and interesting way, I believe Nissan have seen the possibilities the best out of the ones we visited, closely followed by Mazda.

To an extent it's the same as browsing the Internet for information on cars, BUT its much more fun and relaxed, Why go to a stuffy showroom if you can walk on a tropical beach and and enjoy the looks of your new car at sunset?

Can Second Life be used to sell real products? I believe it can if it is done in the right way. Just don't take us all for suckers and give us some real info to go with the free models!

Dana

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