Best Practices: Three Case Studies!
Consumer Products, Entertainment, B2B
Different company types often require different branding approaches in virtual marketing. Here are three CASE STUDIES to see how these types of companies exceeded expectations developing best practices in Second Life:
Click here for details
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Official site of the Second Life Fifth Birthday Activities
Speeches, exhibits & events
Getting Real About Virtual Worlds
Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers was in Second Life on Tuesday, June 24th at 2:00 PM Eastern for a Q&A session with the virtual community to discuss the power of collaboration in virtual worlds. View a recording via their blog
Cisco Exec: Second Life Will “Fade into the Sunset”
Join host Robert Bloomfield on Monday, June 30, at Noon PST (3PM EST), when he interviews Christian Renaud, Chief Architect of Networked Virtual Environments for the Cisco Technology Center. From the heart of Cisco's incubator for emerging virtual technologies, we'll explore Renaud's experience, and you'll find out why he believes that "Second Life and its walled/closed ilk will fade into the sunset in the next 24-36 months."
Which topics would you like to see us cover?
Have a question for our panel?
**End of new listings; recent postings >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Getting Real About Virtual Worlds
Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers will be in Second Life on Tuesday, June 24th at 2:00 PM Eastern for a Q&A session with the virtual community to discuss the power of collaboration in virtual worlds. See a glimpse in a brief video.. View via their blog or to attend the event in SL, you must have a SL account and go to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cisco%20Systems%204/65/35/22
Aviva USA Uses Second Life Island to Recruit Agents
June 16, 2008, US Insurance news: “Second Life provides Aviva with a rich environment for connecting with agents,” said Mark Heitz, president of sales and distribution for Aviva USA. “Aviva’s product innovations are aided by technology, and we think an island in Second Life is one way to use technology to help agents learn about Aviva and our products.”
it had to happen:
Real Exercise for a Virtual World
June 18, 2008 - A couple Dutch tinkerers, with the understanding that many of us already live in Second Life, spliced an exercise bike with a computer. The system now allows a user to control an avatar while getting some real life exercise at the same time.
Random House marketing activity on Second Life
Random House has launched a series of digital initiatives, including the launch of the 'browse and search' widget in April 2008; the creation of a digital warehouse which will store every book written by a Random House author and marketing activity on Second Life,
Executive recruitment in France arrives on Second Life
June 10, 2008 - Headhunters in France now look for real candidates in the virtual world to solve the needs of HR in France.
The goal of the Virtual Company Project is to build online tools to help groups create and implement governance rules necessary for successful collaboration. It is an effort of the Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School.
Mars Landing Simulated in Second Life
June 20, 2008 - Times Standard: On landing day, a virtual demonstration of the landing was created. It is now available as a YouTube video; search for “Phoenix landing” on Google or YouTube to find it. From Second Life, search for “NASA” to teleport to Explorer Island where you can learn more about all kinds of NASA missions, both manned and robotic.
June 11, 2008 - companies looking to involve the SL resident community can see a good example in a product design contest from the Tech Museum of Innovation.
June 9, 2008 - The Berkman Center at Harvard announces 2 jobs available for community development project in Boston using Second Life. Another good example of engaging the SL community.
Disability charity sets up virtual advice service
Government funding creates the digital office to support its work giving parents information and mutual support. Companies can sponsor such sites in Second Life as well. Contact us to discuss.
BRIEF BUSINESS VIDEOS ______________________
From the “Real Biz in SL” series hosted by Cybergrrl Oh
Okay, this is from a while ago. IBM is the most active F500 in Second Life. Why? What are they doing? We just came across this interview with Joanne Bald, IBM.com Program Director for Virtual Worlds Strategy
Joni West, President of This Second Marketing makes a return visit to Real Biz in SL to explain how her firm is working with brands to build better communities.
MARKETING______________________
AdWeek: Sequoia VC discusses engagement, virtual goods
June 2, 2008 - from the Electric Sheep blog: In the near future, advertisers will go from valuing whether their messages show up in front of people to enticing some sort of engagement, he said...
TECHNOLOGY ______________________
Limited Interoperability Achieved for OpenSim and Second Life
June 9, 2008 - users take common logins, though not their avatars or inventories, from Second Life to OpenSim.
A member of the IBM in-world team discusses his discovery (with a video) of this new technology feature in Second Life
Virtual Worlds Projected to Mushroom to Nearly One Billion Users
May 29, 2008 - While many companies are using virtual worlds specialized for secure collaboration, we urge you not to fall behind in Second Life, the only virtual world with access to its residents for professional consumer research through our First Opinions Panel with 10,000 members studied by 33 "real" and Second Life attributes. Read details on virtual world growth projections here....
TRAINING______________________
The first trade association to offer CPE credits for SL conference!
June, 2008 - Journal of Accountancy: CPA Island is a way to attract the next generation of young professionals to careers in public accounting, continuing education and more.
Related stories...
June 5, 2008: Exploring the possibilities of CPAs in Second Life and building a community of people interested in the CPA profession.
May 2, 2008, BusinessWeek: Moving beyond Second Life marketing, many companies are infiltrating virtual worlds for employee meetings, mixers, and recruiting
IBM adopts mentoring program in virtual worlds
The company has begun a mentoring program that encourages people who are retired or are about to retire to share knowledge with newer employees. Many in the program are using virtual worlds to meet, mentor, and make presentations. Click the title and scroll down to the section (fourth paragraph) "What will it look like?"
MARKETING______________________
How to reach real people in a virtual world
May 30, 2008 - the CEO of the first professional focus group facility speaks out. Using real life research, this article will take a look at how the role of identity changes when people step into virtual spaces, and how marketers can learn to deal with the uncertainty inherent in marketing to consumers in virtual spaces.
If you (virtually) build it, they will come
Architect Jon Brouchoud has used Second Life for about two years to help clients of his small Madison (Wis.) firm, Crescendo Design, visualize what their homes might look like. Click the title and scroll down to the resulting page to the paragraph "What will it look like?"
Second Life can now be accessed from mobile devices
For the first time, Residents can explore the entire virtual world from their handsets via a free beta application
SIMULATION & PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT______________________
Second Life Utilized to Design a Personal Mass Transit System
May 31, 2008 - building the SkyTran system in Second Life highlighted several human-machine interface issues that would otherwise have only been identified after the system was actually constructed.
May 27, 2008: Linden Lab's new CEO talks about.. you guessed it...
A look back at the Sun Second Life event
..and how we got executives to participate!
Friday, May 23, 2008: we had a good turnout - with an average of 185 avatars in the Sun theatre at any one time and about 1,751 people accessing the webstream throughout the day.
Click here for the full story...
Metaverse08 predicts bright future
Second Life has a bright future, according to delegates at the Metaverse08 conference this week
May 30, 2008 - Around 50 experts gathered for the event at Karlsruhe, Germany's first RL conference for virtual worlds which was organised by Bokowsky + Laymann. The clearest conclusion held by the delegates afterwards was that Second Life's future looks very positive.
Computer giant Sun Microsystems demonstrated that the bad coverage in the RL media about companies entering SL was not entirely justified. Fiona Gallagher said that Sun will continue using SL for research and development, marketing and in-house meetings.
Virtual worlds venue for real R&D
May 27, 2008 -EDD Hifeng barely merits a second glance in Second Life. A steel-grey robot with lanky limbs and footballer's shoulders, he looks like a typical avatar in the popular virtual world. His actions are animated not by a person at a keyboard but by a computer. Edd is a creation of artificial intelligence researchers at New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who endowed him with a limited
Rumors of the death of virtual world marketing are greatly exaggerated, says Second Life expert and author Au. Here, several ideas to resuscitate revenue.
Despite downbeat reports in Wired magazine and elsewhere, more than a dozen metaverse agencies are still developing virtual ad campaigns for major real-world clients, often returning impressive results. Last year, for example, a tiny San Francisco agency called This Second Marketing rolled out an avatar-driven promotional effort for the IMAX screening of the latest Harry Potter movie. "A huge proportion of our opening weekend tickets came from advance Internet purchases, and a large number of those people came from interacting on Second Life," one IMAX executive told the Hollywood Reporter. So what kind of virtual world advertising campaigns are working? (Click the headline for full story)
Community is the key to success
May 28, 2008, from the Avastar: Companies looking to expand into Second Life should avoid development agencies and instead connect directly with the community, according to a leading industry figure, who says:
"To have a long term presence takes hard work, content needs to be refreshed regularly,
you need to bring your presence to life and you need to constantly
think about your customer."
-Fiona Gallagher, Brand and Program Manager
-Sun Microsystems
TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT
Hospital Replica in Second Life
May 31, 2008, from my-slnews.com: Play2Train , a virtual company that boasts a town and two hospitals over three sims in Second Life , facilitates training exercises through interactive roleplaying. In this machinima showing off one of the hospitals, they use Google Earth to show exactly where it's at in real life, then quickly switches over to Second Life to highlight the facility itself. One of the particularly meta aspects of this video is the computer monitor in the virtual hospital that was at the desktop, with a Quicktime video open playing video of the real life hospital!
Second Life Loyalist College Canadian Border Simulation
Loyalist College Border Service students participate in a simulated Canadian border crossing using Second Life - created by the Virtual World Design Centre, Loyalist College, Belleville, Ontario.
Virtual Worlds and the New Frontiers of Learning
May 14, 2008 - The impact and use of virtual worlds such as Second Life was discussed. Second Life creator Cory Ondrejka provided insight on the aspirations of the platform for learning. This one-hour video has useful insights for corporate training and corporate-sponsored educational programs as well.
Apfelland Airport Takes Off in Second Life - 3 minute video
May 29, 2008: A new German airport opens in SL with Dresdner Bank participating.
Gartner’s Latest View on Virtual Worlds
May 23, 2008: An excellent summary of recent comments from Steve Prentice of Gartner Reseach on business strategies in virtual worlds, from the Ambling in Second Life blog. Scroll down to the third item on the page.
April 30, 2008: from Adam Sarner, Principal Analyst at Gartner, Inc., published in Forbes.com: In 10 years, the largest influence on all purchases will be the virtual experiences associated with them, and, therefore, more money will be spent marketing and selling to multiple online personae than marketing and selling offline...read the full article.
Virtual reality version of "Heroes Happen Here" is launched
By William F. Zachmann, President, Canopus Research Inc.
Despite the inevitable minor hitches that come from pushing at the edges of a still-evolving technology, the event was a big success. And it was a clear advance over prior SL-hosted events by Microsoft. The company has lagged behind major IT firms like Cisco, Sun, Oracle and IBM in leveraging SL as a platform for reaching out to customers and developers. The SL version was better...
The SL event also enabled folks in the audience to talk with each other during the presentation, both collectively in the Local Chat window and individually using the SL instant messenger (IM) windows. It was great to read comments and observations from others in Local Chat and to carry on one-on-one or small-group conversations in IM. These facilities also gave the presenters some great instant feedback from the audience.
The result of all this is a much more information-rich experience for attendees in the virtual-reality version than in the real-world version. The ability for presenters and attendees to type or paste Web URLs furthered that effect, making it easy to visit Web pages cited during a presentation, for example. One could also directly follow the link to the Microsoft virtual labs. Read full article.
BDO enters virtual world to win clients and new recruits
Its launch of an 'island' on the world will enable the firm to holding meetings online, presentations and events for staff and enhance recruitment options by engaging with a broader, international audience. Three films focusing on tax investigations were premiered in Second Life by BDO as part of the launch.
The CW films Gossip Girl “machinisodes” in Second Life
SECOND LIFE, May 20 (Reuters) - Second Life has been touted as a place to market real-world brands, as a teleconferencing tool, and as the future of social networking. But increasingly, Hollywood has been eying the virtual world’s potential as an inexpensive film studio.
My 24, 2008 by Tateru Nino: Orange Island (home of French global telecommunications franchise, Orange) is hosting a week of gaming and game-related events and discussions in Second Life this coming week, including (of course) some games. Starting Monday, 26 May on Orange Island, there's a packed schedule of events.
With telecommuting more common, a new book explores ways to help corporate teams overcome the psychological hurdles of remote electronic communications. Email the author!
How many many avatars can dance on the head of a prim?
May 23, 2008: Intense processing demands mean market-leading virtualities like Second Life can handle just 100 visitors in one area at the same time, but Lamity quadruples that to 400 powered by nothing more than a standard handset. SLBB Editor’s note: we know of at least one company that can program Second Life to handle over 1000 avatars simultaneously.
Second Life: A blip or a business opportunity?
May 21, 2008: A good discussion (make sure to read the Comments section)
May 24, 2008 from the Second Life blog (scroll down to third item)
Second Life provides virtual classrooms
May 22, 2008: The University of Queensland has commissioned a builder to construct a virtual Great Hall on the three-dimensional online virtual world Second Life - where millions of "residents" from across the world build their own homes, go shopping, go on holiday and interact with each other.
It would join QUT Island, from where Queensland University of Technology course material is already being taught.
UQ Studies in Religion lecturer Dr Helen Farley today said one of the first projects planned for UQ's hall was a series of places of worship, including a mosque, synagogue, church, wicca circle and Freemasons Lodge that UQ Study of Religion students could visit.
IBM Opens New 3D Virtual Healthcare Island on Second Life
The IBM Virtual Healthcare Island is designed with a futuristic atmosphere and provides visitors with an interactive demonstration of IBM's open-standards-based Health Information Exchange (HIE) architecture.
Click here for details and to see a video presentation.
Starting from the patient's home, avatars create their own Personal Health Records (PHRs) in a secure and private environment and watch as it is incorporated into an array of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems that can be used at various medical facilities.
As they move from one island station to the next, they experience how the development of a totally integrated and interoperable longitudinal Electronic Health Record (EHR) is used within a highly secured network that allows access only by patient-authorized health systems and family members.
A Second Life for corporate America
Sun Microsystems Inc., a Silicon
Valley tech company, has only one rule:
Employees should show up looking like humans.
Cinemax documentary asks: Why Second Life?
May 14, 2008 by Eric Reuters: Does a Second Life avatar need a kitchen if it never eats, or a roof over its head if it never rains? If you can be anything and build anything, how does an avatar find happiness? These questions are difficult for even seasoned Second Life veterans to answer, much less explain to someone who’s never been in a virtual world. But the new documentary film “Molotov Alva and His Search For His Creator: A Second Life Odyssey” seeks to tackle the issues of virtual identity head-on.
May 16, 2008, Mail Tribune: Companies bring workers together for meetings, training and fun in Second Life
From The Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2008: Young people are pursuing money-making opportunities in virtual worlds!
RIVERS RUN RED WINS WEBBY AWARD
Branded Content Category Winner 2008
Rivers Run Red, who also received two official honoree distinctions for other works, produced the entire project, from concept to machinima, in Second Life...
Click here to see a video of the Coca-Cola Happiness Factory II – Virtual Premiere.
Click here to see the full announcement.
Not Much Life in China's Virtual Worlds
May 5, 2008, BusinessWeek report: Chinese entrepreneurs' answers to Second Life are early stage, but they see potential for brand-building, worker training, and e-commerce...
IRS Rules Electric Sheep's Second Life Greeters as Part-Time Employees
May 12 Virtual Worlds News - When The Electric Sheep Company launched its major CSI event in Second Life last year (and continued it through to this year), one of the nods towards bringing new users in easily to the virtual world was a posse of staffed greeter avatars. Although it seemed like they might be considered contractors, the IRS has now ruled that they're part-time employees...
Researchers teach Second Life avatar to think
May 16, 2008: TROY, N.Y.–Edd Hifeng barely merits a second glance in ``Second Life." A steel-gray robot with lanky limbs and linebacker shoulders, he looks like a typical avatar in the popular virtual world. But Edd is different. His actions are animated not by a person at a keyboard but by a computer. Edd is a creation of artificial intelligence, or AI, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who endowed him with a limited ability to converse and reason. It turns out ``Second Life" is more than a place where pixelated avatars chat, interact and fly about. It's also a frontier in AI research because it's a controllable environment where testing intelligent creations is easier...
May 8, 2008, from Electric Sheep blog: While traditional wisdom has focused on customer identification for one-to-one targeted marketing campaigns, cross-selling and so on, the reality of Generation V members using multiple personae (e.g., Amazon reviewer, eBay seller, Second Life avatar “World of Warcraft” blood elf, digger, blogger, YouTuber)…
…business intelligence and analytics markets will shift from collecting demographic information to psychographic information to better understand these various personae and their behaviors…Companies will create multiple interactive, virtual environments as a way to orchestrate customer exploration toward purchases.
If you need to understand the Second Life market...
The key to Second Life’s success is the residents can generate their own content. This supports the SL “economy” which is over a million dollars a day in sales. How do they do it? How can you benefit? Here are two resources:
•Wired Magazine article “Making a Living in Second Life”
•New e-book, “Making Real Money in an Unreal World”
...and on that note...
What Happened to Age Verification in Second Life?
From the blog of Wagner James Au: It was about a year ago when Linden Lab announced a new initiative in this area. Some companies, e.g. alcoholic beverages, need this before their corporate attorneys will let them in to SL. Currently, some legislators are considering new laws to address porn in virtual worlds, mentioning Second Life specifically. As one commentator on this wrote:
“Isn't going to work on a global basis and will be unfair overall. People will game the system easily anyway so it serves no purpose. Google serves as the number one purveyor of porn on the planet by way of directing people to porn and providing thumbnails yet Google was not required to use some fancy system that costs money and fails anyway. LL needed to do nothing more than all the other service providers do.”
Using Robotic Avatars in Second Life Simulations and Training
Smart robots developed by AHG interact with trainees during training sessions. They look and act like regular avatars controlled by real people but in fact are operated by computer software.
Every time a trainee logs in to complete an assigned task or to perform self-training, the system logs the process for future self-assessment by trainee and review by their instructor. Detailed reports on specific tasks and progress reports are available.
Online Community Membership Swells
MAY 8, 2008 (emarketer.com) Web meeting places draw ad dollars.
Large numbers of US Internet users joined online communities last year, and membership in such groups is now a mainstream activity. Nearly half of US Internet users surveyed for the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future's "2008 Digital Future Project" report said they belonged to a hobby-oriented online community. A full 41% of respondents belonged to an online social community, and one-third belonged to an online professional community.
Hexagon 3D modeling software exports to Second Life
May 2, 2008 - New to the 2.5 release is the ability to export primitive objects to TGA format, which can be read by Linden Labs' virtual world software Second Life. The developers say that this lets Second Life users create more complex and organic shapes than they can in Second Life itself.
Read more at the Macworld blog.
Virtual world new marketplace for cars
Owings Mills entrepreneur and iMagicLab CEO Richard Keith Latman is obviously tickled by last month's opening of his company's newest venture -- a multi-brand automobile dealership..."For a while there, I thought there was no commercial value there, that it was simply a video game," he said. "Then I started to realize that the United Nations teaches kids about famine on Second Life and there are universities throughout the country with satellite campuses on Second Life." Second Life's rapidly swelling population conducted $24 million to $36 million of "in world" transactions each month in 2007, according to the operators of Second Life.
Forrester Predictions on Web3D
April 18, 2008 - Forrester, publishers of business and technology research, recently published “Web3D: The Next Major Internet Wave.”
Major Business Event Held in Second Life
Sponsored by Kelly Services, the four-day event featured major presentations from IBM, Sun Microsystems, academics and educators.
It also included a simulcast with a live meeting taking place in Washington, DC with government officials.
See details in this brief video. Click the image or here.
Recruitment in Second Life
April 24 from the CNN blog
TheSLAgency launches an innovative job recruitment program for a government client in Second Life.
Job hunters will interact with a unique career recruitment experience in Second Life as potential firefighters, medical technicians and others can virtually hone their skills before interviewing for Public Service jobs.
Princeton University in Second Life
April 24 from the CNN blog
Princeton University in Second Life announces “Diversity” on the Princeton Groups sim. Princeton Groups island is intended as a social gathering place for Princeton University student groups and organizations. The commission stipulated a warm and friendly location where students could meet, chat, and organize events in Second Life. The resulting sim is a thoughtful contrast of Second Life resources with real world concerns.
London School of Journalism to offer lectures in Second Life
April 23, 2008 - The London School of Journalism has launched a college in Second Life to offer free lectures on journalism to the virtual world.
"We've already had an enormous response on Second Life, with between 500 and 1,000 people visiting our area each day," LSJ director Michael Winckworth told Journalism.co.uk.
"I know of no-one else on Second Life offering open lectures - perhaps we'll find out why on Saturday."
In the real world the LSJ offers a mix of traditional test-based classroom and online study.
Winckworth said the school was looking beyond theses simple tutoring methods to explore the possibilities Second Life could offer students.
Lessons from L’Oreal’s successful SL promotion
April 25, 2008 - Surprise! It was not done with an expensive island, the conventional route taken by many companis. Insightful comments from the Electric Sheep Company
Game on for Second Life
GLOBAL consulting firm McKinsey & Company has released a report for the business community arguing that Second Life and other virtual worlds are vital in reaching the video game generation.
Paramount Pictures International (PPI) and Marvel Studios invites Second Life residents to compete for L$100,000 by creating Iron Man fant art.
The fan art can take the form of still artwork or moving image – the only restriction is that each entry must make use of an official Iron Man avatar that has been created to promote the movie Iron Man, set to premier on Friday 2nd May.
The avatar flight-suit is free at Silverscreen.
Entries must be emailed to silverscreen@theppc.com by 7.00 p.m. SLT on Wednesday 7th May. Finalists will be announced on the Silverscreen blog http://www.theppc.com/silverscreen the next day.
SL posts strong economic growth on dwindling enrollments
By Eric Reuters
April 15 (Reuters) - Fewer new users are signing up for Second Life, but the faithful are spending more time and money than ever inside Linden Lab’s virtual world.
MAJOR SECOND LIFE TECHNICAL UPGRADE
(March 27, Reuters) Insiders call the long-awaited feature “HTML on a prim,” for the ability to display
the language web pages are written in (HTML) on the basic building blocks of Second Life objects (prims)...
HANDS-FREE 3D MOVEMENT IS COMING TO SL?
Mitch Kapor (Linden Lab Chairman) and Philippe Bossut designed a prototypical interface that demonstrates the possibilities for operating Second Life "hands free" without a mouse or keyboard.
This demonstrates the long-term commitment of SL’s major funder to this virtual world.
Click the image to see the 5-minute video demonstration
IN THE NEWS & JUST FOR FUN
THE DAILY SHOW REPORTS ABOUT SECOND LIFE!
