I have a whole section on this blog dedicated to virtual worlds as I’m fascinated by what they stand for. When you look at them from a macro lense, they potentially are teasing us as to what the web will become in the next few years. Wow. That’s fairly powerful.

Linden Lab, the maker of the ever popular Second Life has just released some significant raw data about the virtual world. Most people would never find this data but I was tipped off by a friend within the organization and while I thumbed through it, it was hard to follow because of all the numbers. I quickly turned these numbers into charts and pictures - and created a document (SecondLifeStats.pdf) to share with the world.

Who should read this document?

• Any Second Life residents
• Any marketers looking to launch some form of campaign/brand within Second Life or any virtual world
• Futurists
• People with a lot of time to kill

On a regular schedule, Linden Lab updates their Economic Statistics page which keeps us all informed of the ongoings of their economy. The data below was taken from their 2/6/2007 extraction.

The PDF is located here as a free download (~3.9mb), and goes much more in depth and hopefully sheds some light as to the population, currency, demographics, residents, and more. Enjoy it. Feel free to spread the world as well- bloggers, press, and anyone else - but please comment and send me feedback. I really look forward to hearing from you.

Google’s getting smart…er. Not only have they nearly tripled their 4Q earnings, they are starting to add Local Business Advertisements into Google Earth as well, as, Google Maps. I received an email from them earlier today announcing this as I’m a customer of their AdWords product:

Advertise on Google Earth
If you’ve created Local Business Ads in your AdWords accounts, they’ll now appear on Google Earth in addition to Google Maps. Advertising a hotel in Lake Louise? A neighborhood cafe in Paris? Google Earth users across the globe can zoom in on your business. Don’t forget to add a customized icon to make your ad stand out.
» Learn More about Local Business Ads

I like this move by Google. Think of a visual Yellow Pages. Many people (including me) like to see things visually and this will help local advertisers such as pizza restaurants or a neighborhood cafe showcase themselves in the virtual world. I would love to know usage statistics of Google Maps and Google Earth to see how large an announcement this really is.

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

In one of the most interesting blog postings I’ve read in a while, Nicholas Carr talks about the math behind how much electricity an avatar uses in say, Second Life. I can’t do his blog justice, so you can click over and read it here. I’d love to know your thoughts! I’m not sure how much is factually true, but a great look into electricity consumption of a virtual avatar.

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

One of my buddies, Charlie O’Donnell, wrote an interesting post on his blog about shorting Second Life. While he quotes me in the posting about how I believe that there is a diminishing return for any publicity garnered by brands who enter the virtual world.

To recap Charlie’s post, his top 10 is:

1. Second Life is not, and probably will never be, mobile.
2. There are no microchunks of a virtual world.
3. Second Life is a benevolent dictatorship.
4. Second Life is a business.
5. Diminishing returns for brand participation.
6. Requires 100% attention.
7. Lack of context.
8. Digital world with an analog business model.
9. Reach.
10. Escapism vs. Reality

It’s an interesting post and a thought provoker - certainly go and check it out. Based on #5 (Diminishing returns for brand participation), I wrote a post on this blog back on 10/20 about the diminishing effects. While I believe Second Life is sustainable, I think there are many barriers that Linden Lab have to overcome. Also, a brands exploration of the virtual world is a lot more involved than just buying an island and building out virtual infrastructure.

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 bet you didn’t think you’d be able to watch Wimbledon within Second Life, did you? Ian Hughes has been developing a full Wimbledon environment within Second Life with the following:

• security gate is there to show you can detect things about peoples avatars
• RSS weather feed globe
• world tracking data for actual tennis matches
• The flying wimbledon towel. When anyone clicks the towel it act like a normal banner ad and directs them to the real wimbledon shop for the real towel
• advert watching posts
• and much more

Check out Ian’s blog to learn more.

Second Life. tennis, content