More on the Second Life conference that took place on Friday:
- A transcript of the complete discussion has been posted, which includes panelists’ and participants’ commentaries
- Joseph Jaffe has a PowerPoint deck with some terrific annotated screenshots
- Mitch Joel’s latest podcast includes the 9-minute discussion via Skype between Mitch, Joseph and me when we were all together virtually in Second Life
The transcript is very much worth reading to get a good sense of the thinking about the potential of a virtual place like Second Life from a business and marketing point of view.
American Apparel – the retailer who opened a store in Second Life a week or so ago – is offering a 15% discount on their products during the next few days if you visit their online store (in the real world) and enter a special discount code. Details here. That should appeal to Jeremy Pepper in particular. There’s also another discount offer: “AA will do a discount in July off any item purchased SL… on that same item in RL.”
(SL=Second Life. RL=real life. New acronyms to get to know.)
One very good discussion point that happened at the end of the session, after I’d logged out, is on how do you explain the potential of Second Life to someone who has no real idea of what it is.
Suggestions included showing people screenshots and videos. All good tools and undoubtedly helpful. A better way, though, is if you don’t know what Second Life is about, just sign up and try it out. Explore, look around to get a sense of the virtual world. Chat to people, engage, see what’s going on. (If you would like, I’d be happy to join you there and take a tour with you. Just let me know.)
That’s what I did when I first signed up last February. I’m still basically in explore mode although I’ve made my first foray into establishing a physical, er, virtual, presence in Second Life.
AA’s Raz Schionning has a good take on it:
What a potential customer really wants to see and hear is a group of users around the computer who have never seen it before. The excitement it produces is amazing. As I sit here people have been gathering around with slack-jaws.
That was my reaction on Friday, too.
[Technorati: Berkman, Second Life]
8 responses to “How to understand Second Life’s potential”
[…] One of the podcasts I was listening to mentioned in my earlier post is “For Immediate Release“. One of the hosts of the podcast was involved in a second life conference and links to the transcript of the event. […]
I left an audio comment on the FIR comment line a few moments ago regarding the implications of PR versus what we’re seeing for marketing in Second Life. I hope you’ll get a chance to respond.
My guess is this sort of stuff will open up much more acronyms – well beyond just SL and RL :) and even more debate.
Got the audio comment, Mitch, thanks. We’ll be talking about this in today’s FIR (including playing your comment).
Organisations have a digital presence that is in part, their making and in part the making of Internet technologies, other web sites and social media extending well beyond just blogs (I give some idea of the Madonna eFootprint in my online lecture ePR here). This means that the online persona of many companies is in virtual world and the virtual world is affecting companies and what they do. Companies already have one foot in a form of virtual world.
Your experiments in Second Life are an extension and should be part of what we experiment with now.
Rock on
[…] A peek at understanding Second Life’s potential (Neville Hobson) […]
Thanks, Neville.
I actually am doing a follow-up post on how other companies can learn from American Apparel. They were very proactive and reached out to me, after I wrote my post.
[…] A good example of a toe in the water is American Apparel (and there are others, too) who discussed their Second Life experiment and what they’re hoping to achieve from it during the virtual meeting last week organized by the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School. […]
[…] How to understand Second Life’s potential […]