Second Life primer
Posted by Brent Dixon on October 30th, 2006
I had an interesting conversation with Jim Bruene (who’s blog you should definitely be reading) last week about Second Life, a “3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.” Second Life was opened to the public in 2003, so it’s not exactly new. However, its business implications have made for some explosive hype/conversation recently.
And for all of you who are thinking “what a bunch of nerds”...touche. I thought the same thing. But I’ve gathered some stats that show the degree to which Second Life has broken out of the “dork-in-his-mom’s-basement” demographic:
(some numbers will have changed after the posting of this article)
- There are currently 1,192,576 residents, and growing.
- $567,793, that’s real-live US dollars, spent in the last 24 hours.
- Wells Fargo was in SL over a year ago. They’ve since uprooted their “Stagecoach Island” presence to be its own world, independent from Second Life (a lame move, if you ask me).
- There are at least 3,000 entrepreneurs making $20,000 or more a year on SL businesses.
- Reuters has embedded a reporter, Adam Pasick, in SL. They also have an office.
- Mammoth ad agency Leo Burnett (clients include McDonald’s, Kellog’s, and Wrigley’s) has set up a SL idea hub, where its creatives can come collaborate. BBH, another hugely successful agency (clients include AXE, Smirnoff, and Levi’s), is also in SL.
- Crayon is a new marketing firm made up of impressive players located globally. They launched the company with Coca-Cola as a client. Their main office is in SL.
- Harvard Law has a class in SL, called CyberOne – Law in the Court of Public Opinion.
- Harvard Business Review moderated a marketing conference that happened in SL in June.
- SL has its own newspaper, called The Second Life Herald.
- SL has its own travel agency that will show you the hottest hot-spots for a price.
- A few companies with a commercial SL presence include:
- Nissan
- American Apparel
- Reebok
- Coca-Cola
- GSD&M
- Starwood Hotels
- Vioxx gives you free in-SL phone minutes. You can call your mom from inside SL.
- IBM ran a live Wimbleton simulator on SL.
- SL has its own business magazine.
- The American Cancer Society raised over $30,000 in SL.
BusinessWeek writer Bruce Nussbaum made one great point on his blog about using Second Life as a reflection of consumer intentionality:
The more I see in Second Life, the more I realize that one of the most important business opportunities there is mining intentionality. This is a phrase my brilliant colleague Frank Comes came up with to describe what’s going in in that space.
People in SL are expressing what they would LIKE to do in reality. For example, it’s easy to pimp your car in second life and clearly lots of people want to customize their transport there. All the major auto companies are piling into SL to learn about this—and build their big after-market customizing business in the real world.
I’m not saying to run out and start a Second Life credit union, but then again maybe someone should. Either way, this is another interaction tool that everyone should be keeping an eye on.
ps: The picture above is Matt’s Second Life avatar, “Trabian Pro.” It looks way too much like the thing.
I feel kinda strange mentioning my own blog, but check out what Loren wrote about a few weeks back on “Virtual Economies” here: http://cuemployee.blogspot.com/2006/10/reality-of-virtual-economies.html
I didn’t know that Wells was already in the mix!
Wow, I hadn’t heard about Ginko. That’s scary leap that I don’t know that I’d be ready to make. But if the ROI ends up being legit and non-Ponzi-fied…that’s pretty unreal.
Thanks for sending that link, Robbie. You should never feel weird linking to your own goods. That’s what it’s all about.
Just a clarification on Wells Fargo. Its Second Life presence began in Sept 2005 and ran for three or four months. In January this year, the bank pulled Stagecoach Island outside of Second Life and now runs it on a dedicated website, www.stagecoachisland.com
My guess is they wanted to use it with a broader audience than just SL players, which numbered just a couple hundred thousand at the beginning of the year. There was also a cost to join SL, until recently.
Oops. I thought they had just privatized the island. Thanks for the call-out, Jim. I’ll correct the post.
And on a sidenote, I think that’s fairly lame of Wells Fargo. By alienating their product they’re going to reduce the appeal. People are a lot less likely to log in just to hang out in their financially-oriented island than they would be to swing by while checking out what else Second Life has to offer. It kills the long-term appeal, and flips it into a once or twice novelty shot.
SL isn’t just for nerds. they may not make the top billing, because they’re not (purely) geeks and they’re not in world real estate developers, but tucked in here and there around SL are some really excellent artists.
check out a story about one of them, at
Hi Jan,
You have a strong name, thanks for your comment. I’m not sure what you mean by “make the top billing,” but I very much agree that Second Life isn’t just for nerds. That’s what I’m trying to tell our good friends here.
SecondLife isn’t about nerds, or technology, or marketing. It’s about people. When you focus on that, everything stands a better chance of making sense. ;-)
Taran,
I think you’ve just pointed out what causes the irritating corporatization of a lot of pure slices of the social media space. Second Life, just like MySpace and blogging and on and on, can’t become another receptacle for spam and pushy brand maneuvering. If a business can’t add value to these communities, it has absolutely no business plugging itself in. Bottom line.
It’s about people. Any person or group who doesn’t understand that before getting involved is killing it for the rest of us.
Thanks so much for the comment.
MySpace is So Last Year http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/28/AR2006102800803.html
Its so ugly too.
Wow – now I need to get a Second Life!
SL is a genuiine phenomenon, and thanks for summarising the list of “corporate” participants. Aside from whether it evolves into more or not, it certainly could be a fabulous test bed for how things can be, because inhabitants won’t accept anything they don’t want.