Turns out that building a business in Second Life is a lot like building one in the first–at least when it comes to failure rate. According to new research from Gartner (IT), nine out of 10 businesses launched in the so-called metaverse fail within 18 months or less.
“Businesses have learned some hard lessons,” said Gartner analyst Steve Prentice. “They need to realize that virtual worlds mark the transition from Web pages to Web places and a successful virtual presence starts with people, not physics. Realistic graphics and physical behavior count for little unless the presence is valued by and engaging to a large audience.”
A bit of a truism, that. A collaborative virtual world isn’t much of a world at all without, you know, collaborators. That said, Gartner is quite bullish on the potential of virtual worlds in the years ahead. By 2012, it estimates that 70% of organizations will have established their own private virtual worlds. “Companies need to start thinking what their virtual-world strategy is, incorporate it into their Internet strategy, and merge their two-dimensional Web pages to support a 3-D Web place,” Prentice said. “Virtual world presence is not to replace the 2-D world but to supplement it.”
Make the right impression. Your avatar’s appearance should be reasonable and fitting for the activities in which you engage (especially if conducting IBM business). If you are engaged in a virtual world primarily for IBM business purposes, we strongly encourage you to identify your avatar as affiliated with IBM. If you are engaged primarily for personal uses, consider using a different avatar.
- IBM Virtual World Guidelines
A pioneer, that IBM (IBM). A trend-setter. It was the first company to publish a code of conduct for workers enamoured of virtual environments. And soon it will be the first to create a virtual world of its own in Second Life. This morning, Big Blue announced a partnership with Second Life producer Linden Lab to create a secure, enterprise-class version of the popular Internet-based virtual world. By running a Second Life installation on servers inside IBM’s firewall, the two will homestead a sort of corporate gated community for security-conscious companies–one in which companies can conduct business without being set upon by a horde of animated flying phalli. A savvy way to drive adoption of virtual worlds in enterprise. And if all goes as planned, a host of other companies will be running Second Life inside their own firewalls by year’s end. “There has been so much hype and puffery around virtual worlds,” Ginsu Yoon, Linden’s vice president of business affairs told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s really important to Linden Lab to be able to demonstrate that it is able and willing to meet the requirements of companies like IBM.”
Once you put in several hours flailing around learning how to function in Second Life, there isn’t much to do. That may explain why more than 85% of the avatars created have been abandoned. Linden’s in-world traffic tally, which factors in both the number of visitors and time spent, shows that the big draws for those who do return are free money and kinky sex. On a random day in June, the most popular location was Money Island (where Linden dollars, the official currency, are given away gratis), with a score of 136,000. Sexy Beach, one of several regions that offer virtual sex shops, dancing and no-strings hookups, came in at 133,000. The Sears store on IBM’s Innovation Island had a traffic score of 281; Coke’s Virtual Thirst pavilion, a mere 27. And even when corporate destinations actually draw people, the PR can be less than ideal. Last winter, CNET’s in-world correspondent was conducting a live interview with Anshe Chung, an avatar said to have earned more than $1 million on virtual real-estate deals, when Chung was assaulted by flying penises in a griefer attack.
–Frank Rose, Wired 07.24.07
You think that maybe corporate America is taking virtual worlds like Second Life a bit too seriously? Advertising in the “metaverse” is one thing; building a virtual complex in which to host employee meetings another. But issuing corporate guidelines governing the appearance and behavior of employee avatars (the metaverse term for “losers”)? Well, that seems a bit much, doesn’t it?
Yet, that’s what IBM has done. On Friday, IBM issued its Virtual Worlds Guidelines, a code of conduct by which it expects its workers to abide as they muck about in Second Life and other virtual environments. Here’s a quick selection:
- Protect your–and IBM’s–good name. At this point in time, assume that activities in virtual worlds and/or the 3D Internet are public–much as is participation in public chat rooms or blogs. Be mindful that your actions may be visible for a long time. If you conduct business for IBM in a virtual world or if you are or may appear to be speaking for or on behalf of IBM, make sure you are explicitly authorized to do so by your management.
- Protect others’ privacy. It is inappropriate to disclose or use IBM’s or our clients’ confidential or proprietary information–or any personal information of any other person or company (including their real name)–within a virtual world.
- Make the right impression. Your avatar’s appearance should be reasonable and fitting for the activities in which you engage (especially if conducting IBM business). If you are engaged in a virtual world primarily for IBM business purposes, we strongly encourage you to identify your avatar as affiliated with IBM. If you are engaged primarily for personal uses, consider using a different avatar.
Sounds like mostly common sense, right? Observe nondisclosure agreements, don’t behave like an idiot and don’t dress your avatar up like one either. Unlike Vegas, whatever happens in Second Life probably doesn’t necessarily stay there.
Still, why bother codifying such conduct? “I’m just not sure it’s necessary,” said Reuben Steiger, founder of Millions of Us, a consulting firm based in Sausalito, Calif. “Companies that don’t bother with guidelines aren’t flying blind–the regular rules automatically extend to virtual worlds.”
With millions of dollars in virtual currency changing hands each month in simulated worlds like EverQuest and Second Life, there are increasing reports of virtual-world moguls amassing real-world riches and scholars warning that these online worlds could be the “21st century’s equivalent of hiding funds offshore.” So it may be only a matter of time before tax authorities open a virtual office or two. And in the not-too-distant future, they may.
Congress’ Joint Economic Committee is expected to issue a report on the potential taxation of virtual goods by the end of July. No word yet on what it might say, although a JEC director has suggested that “as long as virtual activity stays within the virtual economy, it shouldn’t be taxable.” So is that to say that there are tax consequences for activity that extends beyond it? Sounds like it. “Any time someone wins a tangible prize or award, the value is reportable as taxable income,” an Internal Revenue Service rep told CNN earlier this year. “An accumulation of ‘points’ would not result in tax consequences, but redeeming or selling them for money, goods, or services would.”
ABC has bombed again. This time, however, it’s not the American network in a Nielsen cave, but the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that has fallen prey to Second Life vandals who trashed ABC Island, leaving a vast crater where the company’s virtual oasis once stood. ABC Amphitheatre, the Ecohouse, Dreamtime Cove and the Island’s favorite destination, the Sandbox–all of them destroyed. “It looks like we’ve had some enormous cyber-bomb set off on our site,” Craig Preston, head of technology for ABC Innovation, told the Australian. “Somebody has nuked us in some way, shape or form, and they’ve obliterated almost every object on the site.”
ABC, which reportedly spent a fair sum of money on the island’s creation, plans to spend a bit more recreating it–and securing against future attacks. “When we opened ABC Island we knew that many challenges would present themselves and that by being the first Australian media organization to venture into the world, we were entering uncharted territory,” said Abigail Thomas, head of strategic development at ABC Innovation. “We will now be looking closely at security measures, investigating how the hackers breached the existing security and, of course, making changes to protect the island’s future development.”
“What sort of man reads Playboy?” Playboy has long posed that vaguely rhetorical question in the pages of its monthly magazine. Well, now we finally have the answer. He’s a Second Life entrepreneur, an established man of experience and poise, comfortable in his furry avatar with the taste, talent and unrelenting drive to make it in a virtual world where conflicts are resolved with exploding pigs. Oh yeah, and he loves hot avatar-on-avatar action!
Linden Lab’s Second Life, the metaverse’s premier destination for folks missing a first, is getting a new tenant: Playboy. The world’s largest-selling men’s magazine will open shop in the Internet-based virtual world sometime in June. What sort of form it will take remains to be seen. A metaverse mansion and grotto? A retail outlet peddling Playboy Bunny avatar skins? Or perhaps a simple casting call for the girls of the next “cultural zeitgeist”?
One thing to remember if you’re going spend any time at all in an Internet-based virtual world like Second Life is that it’s important to get a life first. Otherwise you might end up frequenting genital shopping malls … or become the subject of a virtual child-pornography investigation like the one going on now in Germany. The BBC reports that Second Life is being investigated by German police following allegations that members have been paying for sex with virtual children and trading kiddie porn–virtual and real.
So-called age play isn’t exactly a new phenomenon in Second Life. Linden Lab, the virtual world’s creator, has been dealing with it for some time now. “There are people in (Second Life) who are role-playing (as) children engaged in sexual activities,” Robin Harper, Linden Lab vice president of community development wrote in a recent post to the official Second Life forum. “While not a terms-of-service violation–no illegal activity–it could be argued that this behavior is broadly offensive and therefore violates the community standards.”
It sure could–especially when it sparks a real-world police investigation.
