Lessons from Second Life

While blogs have been poking away at some of the inherent flaws of the Second Life hype (eg - they don't really have a million users, really bad churn, and grey goo) the mainstream media has been posting every new Second Life brand launch like it is the Second Coming. So it's nice to see a Business Week offer some real insight into what is going on right now with brands in Second Life.

Like, what kind of money are brands paying?

Millions of Us charges between $20,000 and $400,000. "We spend about four to eight weeks developing a campaign," says Reuben Steiger, founder of Millions of Us, whose clients include Toyota and Intel. "Then we usually produce a high-profile launch event and help with 12 weeks of managed campaigns with regular events."

And what hurdles are they seeing?

• Second Life was not built like a modern day MMO -- meaning, it can't support more than 60-90 people in one location due limited capacity inherent in the design. Makes it hard to draw a crowd to an event.
• Hackers and protesters have often rally against brands because of the anti-corporate nature of Second Life's culture, often vandalizing or destroying virtual "property" that was paid for. Try doing that to a television commercial.
  
• The audience, at the end of the day, is ridiculously small. "a recent Sunday afternoon, 13,000 people or 1% of the total residents were actually "in-world." That means most brands were doing this for the press announcement in the NY Times, not the residents.
  
• Without a base audience, eventually the press story dries up, "It's no longer enough to be the first in an industry to launch a presence in Second Life."

The story's final piece of advice, in the accompanying tip sheet, is a good one -- keep an eye on the other players in the virtual world space (Habbo, Active Worlds, CyWorld, and others).

Read: Business Week's Second Life Lessons

Technorati Tags: second life, virtual worlds

Comments

[Jason Ratchet]

People are writing about Second Life becuase it is clearly the beginning of something amazing. I think much like SixDegrees, Linden will probably end up taking a wrong step and going by the wayside (you mention some of the reasons)--but it's still a pioneering story.

[Taran Rampersad (aka Nobody Fugazi)]

People are writing about SecondLife for a variety of reasons. The trick is - as you implicitly point out - knowing which ones to read.

SecondLife has changed. It will continue to. And that's what makes it worth writing about.