Last week ADWEEK ran this piece I wrote about Second Life …

and it ruffled a few feathers. The feathers it ruffled belonged to a couple folks who spend lots of time on Second Life. One admitted to up to 30-hours a week, and the other would only admit to “lots of time.” The comment I made was that I find SL intriguing, but there are other websites I’d prefer spending my time on. And, as cool as I find SL, my First Life is far more exciting. That really pissed off the 30-hour-a-week gal.

If you don’t yet know about SL, you may find my previous post “Second Life or Get a Life?” worth reading. If you do, check out this one. And, I’d love to know your thoughts, so don’t forget to leave your comment.

When I first stepped into Second Life I felt like Dorothy stepping out of her crashed home into Oz. I was blown away. The graphics, the architecture, the wild and sexy Avatars, the locations to visit, the flying… it was all cool and amazing and I looked forward to each future visit. “This could be addicting,” I even thought. Fast forward just a few short weeks and I’m pleased to report that I’m having no worries about the need for SL Addicts Anonymous.

Like many people, I’ve read all the positive press and seen the encouraging stats, and I agree that Second Life has incredible potential. But, as an online destination point for me, it’s got a long way to go. I’ll take YouTube or a podcast site any day over Second Life.

Yes, I know it’s jumped from 321,683 residents in June ’06 to 12.4 M this month, but what does that mean exactly? All it means is that those people have checked into Second Life. It doesn’t mean they’re staying there long or coming back. In fact, recent articles suggest that many are not. And, that doesn’t surprise me. I’m no Luddite, but in my opinion you need to be a gamer – and a pretty decent one — to really get off on Second Life. As cool as it may first appear it’s been documented that the Second Life learning curve is a pretty steep one. So, I seriously doubt that many non-gamers (like me) will have the desire or patience to fumble through the endless, hard-to-follow instructions. And, all my non-gamer friends support me on this one.

Here’s another thing I noticed. After visiting a few SL neighborhoods and observing the many Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter-esque Avatar choices — and their wacky behavior — I don’t think I’m going on a limb by suggesting that the residents who hang with Second Life are the same folks who trade PC games on eBay and have every word of the Star Wars Trilogy memorized.

So, what about Apple, and Sony, and BMW, and all the other sexy brands staking their claim in Second Life? Good question and I’m not sure the answers are clear yet. As a virtual place to experiment with store design, or gather market research, or trend spot, or product test, Second Life does provide a very cost-effective option. The question that I have is; how helpful is that collected data? (And that’s assuming that you can even collect it.) When the big attraction to Second Life is the ability to be someone (or something) you’re not, how willing will SL residents really be to offer up the kind of truthful, personal information needed for any kind of reliable quantitative or qualitative research? Of the two-dozen Avatar profiles I clicked on only one had any understandable information about their First life. And, who knows if that info was even true. About 90% hadn’t bothered to write a single word. So, as far as the sexy brands currently on Second Life, my guess is that many of them aren’t totally sure why they’re there — they just believe they need to be.

I have no idea which brand was first to enlist, but if it was Apple I bet some guy on the Second Life sales team then contacted somebody at Microsoft, Dell, Sony and IBM about ten minutes later with the Apple news. And, so on and so forth. I have no doubt the same will happen once we start colonizing the moon. But, if you’re a leading technology company — or want to be considered one — I think you pretty much have to be on Second Life even if you have no clue what to do once you’re there other than build a really cool sign and hope the press writes about it. I think the same is true if you’re a media or entertainment company, a pop-culture or youth-oriented fashion company, or an S&M novelty goods company. However, I’m still trying to figure out what Ben & Jerry’s is doing on Second Life. Maybe they just figure they never have to worry about their ice cream melting.

Who else should embrace Second Life? How about the Christian Right. After all, the more time that young folks spend online having fake sex, the less time they’ll be offline being tempted by real sex. They’ve also got to be pretty pleased about the fact that male Avatars don’t come with sex organs. (I still haven’t figured out the tutorial on that one.) Now that’s what I call very safe sex.

So, will Second Life go the way of the Segway? Maybe not. But it’s going to take a couple more years to know for sure.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 12:48 am and is filed under Second Life, Social Media, Web 2.0 Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.