Web 2.0 Expo 11 - Second Life gets a second life

We probably all remember the short but brightly burning burst of hype surrounding Second Life. Finally the web had become something that looked like the futuristic vision by authors such as William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. Companies, organizations and individuals scrambled to the new virtual worlds for diverse reasons spanning from profit-making, branding and pure curiosity.

Personally I always found the hype somewhat strange. First of all there wasn’t really anything conceptually new about Second Life. Virtual worlds had been around for almost 20 years – although in more primitive shapes, and in many ways Second Life reminded me more of Teledanmark’s failed Opasia initiative than the brave new future of the Internet. Secondly Second Life re-introduced spatiality and bodily presence on the Internet, which in many ways was a medium which has gained success exactly because it transcended spatiality and bodily presence.

Well, not surprisingly the Second Life (virtual worlds) hype did not last long. In a matter of about six months it turned out that there weren’t that many citizens living a second life and companies started to realize that they had created abandoned ghost towns in stead of shining brand castles.

But virtual worlds are not completely dead. In a presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo, Wagner James Au talked about the post hype state of virtual worlds and pointed out that there is still a heart beating in virtual worlds and more specifically in Second Life.

First of all James Au pointed to three different reasons why the hype around virtual worlds never became more than hype:

1. The citizen statistics were heavily over-inflated. Many one-time visitors or non-active citizens in Second Life were counted as active citizens.
2. Companies misunderstood the culture of user creation within Second Life. They didn’t understand that this was a new world with new rules – and these rules were mostly defined by the susers.
3. Companies mistook virtual simulated locations for geographic reality, which is not a super cool thin in a world of instant teleportation and flying avatars.

Overall companies never really understood how Second Life was unique in comparison with good old physical life. Companies and old school advertising executives simply for the first time thought that they understood the Internet because it looked like something they already knew. But basically they did not understand anything. They did not understand that in a virtual world like Second Life you need to leverage the worlds’ unique strengths and characteristics. For example Second Life is about transgressing gravity and physical laws and therefore it makes sense to create applications that address this.

Companies need to understand that you can’t use traditional in-your-face branding techniques in virtual worlds. Companies trying to force-feed their messages to the citizens of virtual worlds will soon experience how teleportation and flying avartars mean that customers are even harder to fixate and engage than in a physical world. Just like in the world of web 2.0 user generated communities companies must learn that branding and communication with customers grows through conversations and through offering the users truly useful applications, services and information which serves their needs in the specific virtual world. It also means that you need to see your brand with new eyes. Nissan may give away free Nissans in Second Life, but who would like to drive a free Nissan when you can buy a reasonably priced but supercool Masserati in the (virtually) next door Second Life neighbourhood?

Just like in the world of web 2.0 companies must also learn that they must passe over control over the branding experience to the users in exchange for genuine user passion and creativity. James Au mentioned the example of Paramount which gave away free Iron Man costumes in Second Life and encouraged users to take pictures and make movies of themselves wearing the Iron Man costume. Of course some of these users behaved wildly inappropriate in their Iron Man costome – almost as bad as Robert Downey Junior in his pre rehab period… But the fact was that the users interacted with the brand in a way which created a strong brand presence and a lot of awareness of the Iron Man movie.

Finally James Au talked about the enterprise level possibilities of virtual worlds. In many ways virtual worlds are actually more suited to things like meetings between business partners and job fairs than direct to consumer marketing.