Thought of the Day

"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."
~Bruce Nussbaum

Comments

[Natasha Robinson]

DA,

Yesterday I blogged about the topic of Marketers in SecondLife - http://thatgirlfrommarketing.com/second-life-optimization-from-a-user-online-media-and-consumer-electronic-purchases-30-of-myspace-users-create-content-yapr-about-second-life.htm.

Here are some links from that post that you may want to check out:

There’s Gold In Them There Virtual Hills? - http://sense.psfk.com/2006/10/theres_gold_in_.html

Immersionist vs. Augmentationist in Virtual Worlds - http://slcreativity.org/wiki/index.php?title=Augmentation_vs_Immersion

Iiya Vedrashko’s (80 page Thesis - PDF) Advertising in Computer Games - http://gamesbrandsplay.com/files/vedrashko_advertising_in_games.pdf

Natasha

[Doug Meacham]

Hi David,

First let me say that I love your blog and reference your ideas and graphics frequently in my day job.

Second, I couldn't agree more with Bruce's "realization". I am involved with innovation efforts at a major US retailer and have been following the trend of real world businesses entering SL for a while now. Most people that I interact with professionally don't get SL in general and think that real world businesses setting up shop there are doing so for some cheap advertising. The real opportunity as I see it (and I believe is a driver for many of these businesses) is the ability prototype, test, and innovate. If a product design needs tweaking or you want to test market an optional feature, you do it virtually to see what "sells" before bringing it to the "real world". This approach is low cost, low risk, and provides a reasonable model for real world results.

I've blogged about this a number of times over the past year:
http://nextup.wordpress.com/tag/secondlife/

Doug Meacham

[DA]

Natasha,

Thanks for the links! Those will come in handy.

Doug. Thanks! And I agree about the product testing angle. It's why I liked Bruce's quote. He succinctly captured the key benefit of SL. Full disclosure I have yet to experience it for myself (I plan to) but from what I can tell, testing products and experiences seems like the key benefit to businesses.