You’ve probably already heard of Second Life. After all, it was the Business Week cover story last May, which makes Second Life an official mainstream phenomenon. For those of you who’ve been busy with your “first life,” Second Life (SL) is an online, three-dimensional world, populated by avatars, 3-D representations of the real people who participate in the SL world. You can walk around, fly, teleport and engage in conversation or commerce. Moreover, SL has a thriving economy built around “Linden dollars” (Linden Labs of San Francisco is the creator of SL), which have a value in real dollars (currently, one U.S. dollar equates to a shade less than 300 Linden dollars). You can buy clothes, objects, services—even land—using Linden dollars.
Second Life, however, isn’t a game. Just like your first life, there’s no externally defined goal like retrieving the magic Amulet of Yendor, or even becoming the richest person in SL. Like real life, SL is what you make it. So, what’s the attraction for businesses? Should your business be considering a presence in the Second Life universe?
Another way of asking that question is, “Does SL contain potential customers for my business?” And, of course, the answer is, “It depends.” First of all, SL is theoretically restricted to users who are 18 and older. So, you have an adult audience. Linden Labs says that the male/female demographics are about 60/40, making SL less of a bastion of maleness than you might expect. Users are primarily in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Although there is some disagreement about how to measure the population of Second Life, Linden Labs reports that more than two million people have created a Second Life avatar. The real question is: How many of those two million avatars are active participants, since you can create an avatar for free (at www.secondlife.com), which many people do to see what all the fuss is about. A fair number never return. Regardless, SL almost certainly has 50,000 regular users.
There are several examples of real-world businesses using the SL environment. IBM, Sun and other companies have made major press announcements in SL venues. If nothing else, using SL creates a certain curiosity about an otherwise unremarkable press release. For example, Sun touted its announcement as the first in-world press conference by a Fortune 500 company. Starwood Hotels created an SL version of its new “Aloft” hotel concept as a sneak preview, to good effect (visit www.virtualaloft.com for more details). American Apparel lets you buy American Apparel clothing for your avatar and gives you a discount on real world American Apparel purchases when you do.
This sort of thing is all well and good for larger companies with recognized brands. But what about more ordinary (even stodgy) businesses? For that answer, I turned to 30-year-old Josh Hermsmeyer of Santa Rosa, the well-regarded writer behind www.pinotblogger.com. Josh is also the president and co-owner of nascent Capozzi Winery, under development in both the Russian River Valley and (virtually) in Second Life. Ironically, I’m not agile enough in the Second Life universe to conduct an interview there (plus, unlike email, you have to be present in SL at the same time), so I interviewed Josh via email.
How did you get introduced to Second Life? I heard about SL when it first launched around three years ago, but didn’t see much that interested me at the time. The overall look and feel of the platform was raw and not user friendly, so I didn’t spend much time or effort exploring it. It wasn’t until earlier this year, [when] I ran across a few news articles about American Apparel’s island in SL. I was intrigued by the idea of using SL for branding purposes and started to think about how we might use it to spread the word about Capozzi.
Can people drink wine in SL? Yes and no. Inasmuch as you actually walk or talk or do anything virtually, yes your “avatar” or online representation can drink wine. The wine isn’t consumed in any meaningful way, however. For instance, one bottle of Capozzi will last a lifetime.
What made you think that SL would be useful to your business? When I stumbled across American Apparel’s island, SL was just starting to get more mainstream press attention. So there was certainly a lot of hype surrounding what some people are calling the 3-D Web. Couple that with the PR benefits of being the first to do anything in an industry as mature as wine, and I felt confident that building a presence in SL would help us garner some exposure for our new winery.
What sorts of businesses/activities are best suited for SL? I think the answer depends on how creative you are. It would be easy to say that selling rugs in SL would be a bad fit, but if you marketed it correctly and made the process interesting and informative, I think you could be successful. In fact, I think the farther removed you are from the tech industry, the more remarkable you’ll be and the more exposure you’re likely to get.
Last question. What should I have asked you about that I didn’t? You might have asked if this is just a big waste of time! Honestly, I’m not sure I’m convinced that SL will live up to the hype surrounding it, but I do think the 3-D Internet is inevitable. Imagine that instead of surfing to your friend’s MySpace page and seeing a flat, two-dimensional page, a 3-D environment of their creation will load that you can explore and interact with.
Capozzi owns an island in SL, where it’ll soon open a scale model of the real-world winery it’s building near Forestville. Visitors will be able to craft a virtual bottle of Capozzi wine that, in a clever nod to Robert Parker, will receive a “Farker score” based on the decisions that went into making it. The best scoring wines will get online recognition (and perhaps some real world benefits at Capozzi).
Second Life shows how open-minded entrepreneurs like Josh are taking calculated risks with new technology. I hope you’ll spend an hour checking out Second Life (it’s free) to see for yourself what a new technology might offer. Let me know what you think.
