Greg Verdino made his debut today over at MarketingProfs.com and he wrote a very thorough article about brand integration into Second Life. I do not want to spoil the article but will write up a few quotes below, but here is the link to the article.

The best—maybe the only—way to understand the metaverse, is to join as a resident before you join as a marketer.Â

Second Life residents are in control. Instead of spending your marketing dollars to bring them products to buy, think about how you can spend those same dollars to bring them value and earn their attention.Â

Hope these teasers got you interested - Greg and I are on the same page with much of this… feel free to comment!

While doing some work in the office today, I had the chance to listen to Greg Verdino and David Armano babble about advertising, beer, and Second Life. Both of these characters (I say that with a smile on my face as I consider Verdino a friend of mine!) recorded the podcast originally in an office, then as the cleaning woman came in, they had to move to a conference room. It’s a fairly raw podcast but nonetheless, has quite a bit of meat to it.

If you’ve ever worked with Greg, you know that he has the gift of gab. I love it. In this case, 30 minutes uncut.  He’s extremely knowledgeable in many different areas and brings the agency world a perspective on technology from having worked in startups… which is very valuable to any ad agency. In this case, it’s Digitas.

Verdino and Amano covered Second Life for the majority of the podcast and I’m pretty much in agreement with everything they touched upon. I guess the underlying thought that the three of us agree on is that there is no doubt that Second Life or any virtual world is extremely important, however, until there is a critical mass of a mainstream audience into the virtual world (or metaverse, used interchangeably), it just doesn’t have the numbers. Verdino talks about the Starwood A-Loft integration and says how it’s absolutely beautiful…. except it’s vacant. Every time he visits or shows a client, it’s a ghost town.

If you’ve got a spare 30 minutes and want to listen to two extremely well versed advertising executives, certainly check them out here. I have a dedicated area of this blog to Virtual Worlds and you can read about it here. There is a fairly relevant post here.

BTW:Â Miller Light… guys, come’on

Linden Lab has made the formal announcement that Second Life will be going open source within the next two years. This is a major stepping stone for the company as it realizes that in order for the virtual world to scale to its potential, they must open it up to the world as the infrastructure is just too large to host.
I have been watching this open source movement as I’m personally interested to see what new opportunities are created for business and commerce. The following links show viewpoints and news on the topic of an open source Second Life and if you have any other information, please feel free to share it with me.

Open Source Timline For Second Life:Â 1 to 2 Years

Taking Second Life to the next levelÂ

Looking forward to class 5

Ralph Koster is a virtual world guru. For those of you who do not know him, he is game designer based in San Diego and has worked on such games/persistant worlds such as Ultima Online. In a recent installment of VentureBeat, he talked about virtual worlds with a “caveat emptor” tone - buyer beware.

While I wont summarize the article as it can be found here, I will paraphrase something that Ralph nails on the head:

Microtransactions for digital assets and virtual goods is a rising, potentially multibillion dollar industry. To succeed, entrepreneurs who are building networked systems based on user content (be they citizens of Second Life or the makers of virtual worlds themselves) must realize that anything displayable is copyable; the value lies instead in service and in server-side functionality. Content is like songs around a campfire: destined to be enjoyed for free. Those who build businesses around hosting campfires would be wise to focus on making the campfire experience great, rather than charging listeners by the song.Â

I agree with Ralph 100%. Anything in the digital realm is copyable. If you can make it, it can be copied. Same thing applies to business models, ideas, and so forth. We are all worried about how to protect our ideas - but why dont we focus on creating a fantastic environment to share them?

The Wall Street Journal featured an article smack-dab in the middle of the first page of the Marketplace section titled Avatars at the Office (subscription required). Do not get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of Second Life and the metaverse but let me try and raise a few points.

The article discusses how different ad-agencies are moving into Second Life and setting up shop (Publicis Groupe, Omnicom, Interpublic) and even brands (American Apparrel, Intel, Sun, Toyota, Sony-BMG, etc). My question to everyone is: Have we really gotten that bored of communicating and conversing in the real-world so that we must communicate and converse in the virtual world?Â

What I mean by this is… if we’re going to setup shop in the virtual world and actively work and hold meetings, I cannot fathom how much time is wasted in a virtual world meeting by everyone going off and “tooling around” trying to figure things out. Most of the time, the people in the meeting are folks who haven’t played a video game, let alone inhabit the virtual world. Also, how much more productive are you in the virtual world than in the real-world? What happened to speakerphones, starfish, white boards, video conferencing (well, that never really worked), email, IM, etc.

I just don’t get it. I can see why the virtual world is so powerful and there are many reasons why I’m drawn to it. Heck - I’m in Second Life quite a bit under my avatar name Jay Prevost. I’m just very skeptical about how much actual “work” gets done in these virtual worlds and what ACTUAL value it brings to communicating within a large corporation. In theory, communicating in a virtual world is a fantastic idea for a company, but 99% of the world is not part of the “digirati” and thus, have a very hard time grasping the virtual world.

I’m not sure if it’s the weather, or something else, but in one of my circles of friends, I’ve been fortunate to be within, avatars are the hot topic of late. Again, a key issue that comes up repeatedly is the standardization of avatars which will allow them to become portable. Once they are portable, then the avatar industry can really take off…. inclusion of avatars in websites, video games, virtual worlds, your credit card, clothing, log-in screens, etc. We are just cracking the surface of where we can take avatars.

Mark Wallace has posted some similar thoughts on the subject. I happen to really agree with his quote below:

I can’t tell you which 3D technology is going to become dominant, whether its AW’s, SL’s, There’s, Multiverse’s or one that’s yet to emerge. But whatever it is (or whatever set of such technologies, more likely), we’ll want a way to navigate between them more seamlessly than we can navigate between even 2D Web sites today.

What is an avatar? According to Acad.org, an avatar is a graphical image of a user, such as used in graphical real-time chat applications, or, a graphical personification of a computer or a computer process, intended to make the computing or network environment a more friendly place.Â

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Today, lots of different applications are using avatars. However, 95% of applications make the user select an avatar from a list. The point of an avatar is to make the person playing the game create a personal presence within the game, not a faceless impersonal existence within the game. By selecting an avatar from a pre-determined list, how can a user create a personal and original presence?

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In the past few years, we’ve had a couple of companies emerge into the custom avatar space. These companies were highlighted in yesterday’s posting. Meez, IMVU, Comverse Technology and Oddcast (as well as many others) are allowing users to custom create their own avatar. In under 10 minutes last night, I created my Meez character that resembled pretty much who I am.

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While defining and creating my Meez character, it was a fun and “cute� process. It got addicting and I could see why kids and teens have a good time doing this. Though, when it came time to take my character and export it to my blog/website or a picture, it lost the true feeling of becoming “alive.� It went from a 3D character with behavior to a 2D static image. A bit less impressive.

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Now, there is no doubt that Meez and their team of developers/designers are going to innovate and create a file format or transport layer that will allow Meez characters to stay alive. I don’t question that at all. If these avatars are going to take off, this will need to happen as we’re tired of 2D images. Isn’t this Web 2.0? Where are the 3D images?

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I was talking with a friend in the venture capital community today at the Tuscan Square Restaurant here in

New York

and we were talking about the recent investments into the avatar space. We got into thinking about how avatars can be used in different types of applications and what it would take to make it happen… and one word emerged: standards.

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Lets say that game developer THQ was developing a MMO game that utilized personalized avatars. They also had an XBOX 360 game that used avatars as well. Then, a casual game network such as WorldWinner allows for external avatars to be used. Factor in MySpace, AOL, and Typepad and you’ve got lots of integration needed to occur. In order for all of this to happen- the creation, distribution, and aggregation of avatars, there needs to be open standards of the file formats and the sizes. For the avatar industry to really take off, publishers and developers must adopt these standards and give another 1-2 years after the fact so that enough games, virtual worlds, and other applications exist for them to be used.

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Nevertheless, it’s still a fascinating industry emerging. I’ve always said that the web isn’t very friendly. If I walked into a store that treated me the same way that Amazon.com or Prada.com treated me, I’d probably walk right out. The retail business is about service; even Walmart has greeters. Service with a smile. When was the last time a website smiled back at you? It’s going to be nice to see expressions online now – something that has been non-existant. I’m looking forward to following this all – and one day, maybe our avatars will meet up in a mass multiplayer game.

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Tags:Â avatar, Meez, virtual worlds, IMVU, and standards

I spent some time tonight exploring Meeze. I’m interested to see the progress of the company over the next 6 months, but they are onto something promising. I’ve attached “myself”

Tags:Â Meez, avatar, and Virtual World

The web is finally coming alive. It’s not that this is new, but consumers are finally adopting this moreso in the past and we’re seeing some great new startups emerge into the avatar & virtual world space.Â

Meez is the latest startup that has landed funding ($4.3mm) and was recently in Forbes Magazine (March 28, 2006). Sean Ryan, formerly CEO of Rhapsody is at the helm and is positioning Meez well wihtin the marketplace by striking some business development deals with major sports leagues and other brands. The whole point of Meez is to make your 3D ID (identification). The avatar can be customized pretty robustly to look like you, or whatever your mind conceptualizes. It than integrates into Myspace, Live Journal, AIM, and coming soon…casual games.

This is the first service that I’ve heard of (I can be 100% mistaken) where an avatar that exists out of a game can be brought into. This is fascinating - as gamers can now play multiple games with the same avatar (granted, they are participating in the Meez program - or they’re standards setup within the avatar industry).

There are some competitors within the avatar industry - but not really a direct competitor to Meez. IMVU has created an instant messenger that uses 3D avatars. Comverse Technologies has created Klonies, which are avatars for the mobile world. Sitepal….What’s coming next?

These are exciting times within the virtual worlds and games industry. Lines are blurring as to what a game is and what a virtual world is, in some cases. Is Second Life a game? It’s a virtual world with a real economy. There are games within Second Life - but I’d argue it’s more of a world… These avatars will help us bridge the gap between external and internal characteristics.

Tags:Â Meez, LiveJournal, Sean Ryan, IMVU, Virtual Worlds, and avatar