In an earlier post, Scott captured the perspective the wonderful team at Denuo shared with a bunch of us a couple of weeks ago: namely, that the marketing benefit to a presence in Second Life isn’t clear or obvious, at least to us. He also added some color with observations on his own lonely exploration.
As Scott points out, until there is a more sustained presence to the community aspect, the numbers aren’t compelling. I have to ask, can you call it community when there is only you and one other lonely soul visiting one our competitor’s islands? And the support desk is unstaffed, the front lobby is barren?
If the idea of Second Life is you get to play your alter-ego, why do the company experiences look, feel and behave like they do? If you’ve never visited, check this out to get a sense of the imagery. Are they are portraying themselves in the likeness of their own brands today – devoid of human presence – deliberately or is this alter-ego? Thanks for coming, sorry we’re not home, it’s all self service.
I wonder which companies will be brave enough to break the mold and show themselves either as a reflection of their aspirational selves or as a parody of how they are perceived? I vote for the latter. That would be fun, would it not? Maybe the traffic would pick up.
Our take is that Second Life isn’t for everyone, at least not right now, and that’s okay. We can't help but contrast the success of game-based virtual worlds versus Second Life's non-game based environment. For a great read on this topic, check this post on Valleywag.
I'd love to hear from you.
Posted
02-25-2007 4:14 PM
by
Scott Berg