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One useful way of using Second Life is for “business process rehearsal”, she says. It can avert expensive mistakes or reveal cost savings in the real world. “It gives you an inexpensive ability to visualise. An airline company could create a place where they could look at the process of turning round a plane in 18 minutes.”
In a “real” example, California’s health department has already created a simulation that trains staff in how to set up emergency medical clinics in the event of a biological warfare attack.
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Virtual mirror on the real world
By Chris Nuttall
Published: December 14 2006 17:23 | Last updated: December 14 2006 17:23
Reuben Steiger’s far-flung design team sounds like a Fantastic Four of superheroes able to reshape their world in the blink of an eye.
There is Neil Protagonist, recognised as one of the world’s greatest builders and urban designers; Green Fate, an early inventor of fire and flying kites in the wind; Francis Chung, the world’s most famous car designer; and Versu Richelieu, renowned for her speed of construction.
“You watch her building in real time and it looks like time lapse,” says Mr Steiger, co-founder and chief executive of Millions Of Us.
His workforce, however, is only famous in the world of Second Life, a rapidly expanding virtual universe where some of the world’s biggest companies are now promoting their brands and experimenting with business processes.
Mr Steiger formed his virtual design company earlier this year when Second Life inhabitants numbered 200,000. In the next few days, the population is expected to exceed 2m.
From the garage of his co-founder Christian Lassonde, he moved the company to a shared office in the San Francisco Bay Area. Speaking in a beach caf� in Sausalito on Monday, he had spent the weekend putting together Ikea office furniture for new premises next door.
He now has nine full-time staff and 40 full and part-time contractors as he translates his virtual world company with its skilled avatars into the real world to meet the needs of clients such as General Motors, Toyota, Intel, Sun, Diageo, 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers.
In Second Life, construction by his workers’ characters is continuous, with offices, conference centres, concert arenas, car dealerships, apartment complexes, night clubs and surreal cities and islands all being developed.
The growth of Millions Of Us and other virtual design companies such as Electric Sheep and London-based Rivers Run Red amounts to a 3D re-run of the early days of the world wide web, when web services companies sprung up to develop websites for corporations eager to create an online presence.
Second Life is at a similar stage of development. Its graphics can be wooden and cartoonish compared with the latest games, the service can be slow, difficult to navigate and often crashes and its users are technology’s highly literate early adopters.
“What’s being created is a new platform. We’re maybe at the 1994/1995 stage and the release of Netscape in terms of its immaturity,” says Mr Steiger of a world that is seen by some as the model for a next-generation 3D web.
As with the web, IBM is one of the first companies to explore the possibilities. This week, it was launching IBM Land, a network of 12 islands leased from Second Life’s creator, San Francisco-based Linden Lab.
Linden restricts itself to providing the land and tools for residents and businesses to create whatever worlds they can imagine and construct themselves. It also provides a currency exchange for converting virtual Linden dollars earned in-world to real dollars.
Sandy Kearney, IBM director of emerging 3D internet and virtual business, says Second Life’s advanced state and unique components made it a natural choice among the numerous virtual worlds being developed.
IBM is using the islands to test new forms of internal communications, new applications and business models and services it might provide to companies setting up in Second Life.
“It’s a continuation of our business. We’re using the emotive network approach – we have everything from business meetings with customers and conferences to training sessions and a ‘sandbox’ island where people can work out the bugs on a translation tool,” says Ms Kearney.
One useful way of using Second Life is for “business process rehearsal”, she says. It can avert expensive mistakes or reveal cost savings in the real world. “It gives you an inexpensive ability to visualise. An airline company could create a place where they could look at the process of turning round a plane in 18 minutes.”
In a “real” example, California’s health department has already created a simulation that trains staff in how to set up emergency medical clinics in the event of a biological warfare attack.
But most of the activity by business in Second Life to date has been focused on marketing.
“It’s very experimental for a lot of our clients. They are looking at how they continue to progress from web 1.0 to 2.0 in building a long-term relationship with customers,” says John Squire, head of product strategy at Coremetrics, a provider of online marketing analysis.
Smaller, lesser-known brands are achieving some of the best results at the moment, he says, such as an environmentally friendly outdoor clothing company that has attracted a lot of interest in its mission statement through a Second Life presence.
On a much larger scale, Motorati Island is an ambitious attempt by GM to promote its Pontiac brand.
Stretched across six 16-acre islands, the Pontiac brand is promoted on one with the building of a car dealership and places for people to socialise, such as a night club and concert arena.
The other 80 acres are being reserved for Second Life residents who can earn land for free if they suggest viable car-related projects – one has already built a go-kart track there.
“Motorati is a partnership with people who love cars and the people who are building there are establishing a relationship with Pontiac, as are those who drive go-karts, come to their clubs and attend concerts,” says Steve Wax, a founding partner of Campfire Media, which has advised on the project.
Campfire, which specialises in viral marketing campaigns, grew out of its founders’ experience of making The Blair Witch Project, a horror movie that was given an aura of being reality-based through an internet campaign.
Mr Wax says there are plans, yet to be unveiled, for bringing Motorati Island to the real world.
“We want to bridge that wall to real-world events.”
Mr Steiger says the reflection of Second Life in real-world reporting of it and online discussions can provide companies with a return on their investment.
“If the project is set up correctly, it explodes out of Second Life and we see page impressions of 10m to 20m in the blogosphere and similar numbers in the mainstream media – that’s where the return on investment lives.”
Second Life do’s and don’ts
Businesses making a wrong move in Second Life may earn quick condemnation from its inhabitants and even a ban from the virtual world.
Dreamland, the largest resident community, recently added “false claims of inventorship and fake pioneering” to a list of civil crimes that could be punished by exile.
It was responding to fake “first-isms” such as a public relations firm claiming to be the first to launch as a company in Second Life and the publisher Axel Springer’s claim of creating the first tabloid newspaper for the “metaverse”.
“You don’t create a community in Second Life, you join it, you have to come to it in terms of building a relationship,” says Mike Monello, co-founder of Campfire Media.
Second Life is a demanding environment and its hard core of residents are tech-savvy early adopters, highly skilled and imaginative in creating their own version of the world and sensitive to corporate intruders.
Reuben Steiger, chief executive of Millions Of Us, believes Pontiac’s Motorati Island has got the mix right in giving residents their own space to riff on cars, even if this presents a risk to the brand.
“I think that’s ultimately going to be the predominant model going forward. You may get a Daimler Chrysler ‘spy’ planting a Mercedes there, but you have to be brave and allow a little chaos.”
Transactional businesses will not work well in Second Life at present, he says. “I don’t think there’s scale or value in that and the process of buying a book or computer seems much clunkier than using the web.
“You would also have to figure out how you recognise those virtual revenues.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
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