AvaStar - And Finally...(?)

I hope my tales of the travails of the AvaStar haven't left you snoring, because I have just one more update for you. Well actually, it's two updates - or rather, insights.

The first comes from blogger and Second Life entrepreneur, Ari Blackthorne, who left the following (slightly re-jigged by me) as a comment on my earlier post. I thought it rated promotion from the minor league of comments to the full blog itself!

The Avastar's first problems began when they moved away from a 'real' published eZine that looked and felt like a real tabloid off to the blog format. I paid big bucks for full-page ads in the eZine. Something to the tune of $200 worth of L$ a month.

When asked to renew my ads on their blog, I refused. I didn't like the blog format. I wanted my advertisements in-world and they wouldn't show the new demographics. There are too many other good blogs to advertise on. When they went blog, I suspect advertising dropped dramatically. No money income - drop the writers (who WERE paid back when it was an eZone if I remember correctly.)

No writers = no content = no readership = no demographics to show advertisers = no advertising = KAPUT. It's that simple.

The second insight comes from a former writer for the AvaStar, who would prefer to remain anonymous.

It seems that shortly after the changeover from PDF to blog, at one of their regular staff meetings, the writers were simply told that henceforth they would no longer be paid for their work. Of course, they could (and presumably should) continue to write, but for free. At this point all the writers, who had effectively been made redundant by this move, quit working.

No writers = no content.

Meanwhile, as already noted in the earlier post, the reader-generated content failed to materialise either.

Hence the death of the AvaStar - an interesting and, in my view at least, worthwhile experiment that ultimately failed. Do you have a different perspective?

AvaStar - Some More Thoughts

Following my last post, about the demise of the AvaStar I thought I would root a little further. So I took a look at the range of recent articles available at The AvaStar. I was a little surprised to find it was not the vibrant, information-packed newsfest I had been expecting. There was just a trickle of posts and comments - far fewer, as far as I could tell, than would be found on the average Second Life blog (like this one).

Supposedly, the most popular article is "Too many girls are really guys!", posted back in May, 2008. This also boasted the most recent comment - on September, 28th, 2008 - about 3 weeks ago. More worryingly, aside from the article announcing their demise, there have been just 3 articles posted in October. While September was busier, with over 20 articles, this can hardly be called vibrant.

Did their focus shift elsewhere, away from Second Life? The AvaStar did branch into other areas of the Metaverse - but articles on Kaneva, There and Entropia are very few and far between, accounting for maybe 3 or 4 a month, combined. No news about these worlds has been posted in October.

So to sum up... it seems that, while many of us had heard of the AvaStar, and enjoyed reading it, the actual content generation fell away over time. I don't think the move away from PDF helped, since that at least gave you the feel and 'heft' of a real newspaper - you could see the content, because it was all laid out before you. The website, by contrast, served to conceal the drop in content. I have to confess, I was approached to write for the Travel section of the website some time ago, but declined the invitation. While I obviously write this blog for free (I don't event take Google Ads), I would expect a small something for writing in a more 'professional' capacity. Perhaps others took the same view.

I would conclude, then, that at least a major contributory factor in its closure was simply "lack of content."

WebFlock or WebFlop?

Do you remember the Electric Sheep Company? Since you are one the small band of blogonauts who have washed up on the shores of Slambling, it is quite likely that you do. But if not, let me fill you in. In their own words: "The Electric Sheep Company creates Web-enabled social and virtual world experiences through strategy, design, production, and technology. Since 2005, ESC has worked with the world’s largest brands, media companies, and agencies to design and implement great consumer virtual experiences." And for Second Life that has meant that ESC has been responsible for some of the more interesting commercial builds. However, those days seem long ago as ESC, along with many other virtual world "experience designers", have branched out and moved on. I will leave you to discover for yourself what industry insiders may be saying about ESC, their Second Life experiences and their current prospects - you might find it an interesting exercise. As for me, I'm going to tell you about my experiences in WebFlock.

WebFlock, a Flash-based product announced earlier this year, is described by ESC as “an application for private-labeled, Web-based virtual experiences. It provides a visually immersive environment for social interaction, media consumption and game play." The first of these branded virtual experiences has been rolled out for the Showtime show, The L Word. Showtime is a subsidiary of CBS, who also have a substantial stake in ESC - and it was ESC who built The L Word's substantial and generally well-received presence in Second Life. It is perhaps not surprising then, that the show has become the first customer for an alternative virtual experience, based on WebFlock. I thought I would pop along to see what it was like.

It is simplicity itself to get into WebFlock, chat and move about – and it is this simplicity that, in my view, makes it so disappointing. But more of this anon. Getting into The L Word environment is easy. Having navigated to the webpage, you are invited to select an avatar from a choice of six, give her a name and, well, that’s it – no customisation, not even a change of clothing. I say “her” because there are no gender options here. Am I also supposed to assume that all these avatars are gay? It seems a reasonable inference – and even if this is incorrect, if I infer it, then plenty of other people will too. And that may not sit comfortably with some would-be visitors, who may opt to pass this one by. I don’t believe it is compulsory to be a lesbian to enjoy watching the show.

The first time I attempted to load the environment it took an age. In fact, I ended up terminating my browser session and trying again. The retry, I have to say, was then very quick to load. And what did I find? I found my avatar standing in someone’s open plan breakfast room. The graphics were generally good quality. Moving my avatar, I could walk forwards, I could walk backwards and I could walk from side to side. That might seem OK, but as there are no transitions when switching from one direction to the other, the effect looks basic and amateurish in comparison with the movement available in other Flash-based environments, such as Google’s Lively. Another aspect of movement that I had expected was “camera controls.” Widely used in Second Life, controls that let you pan and tilt your view are also common in less powerful environments – again, I would cite Lively as an example here, but it is one of many. In WebFlock you are left with a single view, like static CCTV, over which you have no control. Sure, this makes the system easy to use – but that is because fundamentally there are so few functions that you can use. It was simple, but I simply did not get any sense of immersion.

What about chat? One of WebFlock’s main objectives is “social interaction” – and it certainly offers text-based chat. My friends had repeated problems with stability of the “chat” function, re-logging several times to reset it. I had no issues with it. You can also “emote” – selecting from a small menu of animated effects that you can give to your friends. These were nicely done, but not terribly expressive. The avatars themselves seem to remain aloof from the fun – having no animation effects other than “walking” and “standing still”. There is no Instant Messaging – or non-public communication.

I tried to get out of the room, which had rapidly started to get claustrophobic and which would fill to bursting point very quickly if more than perhaps 10 people wanted to use it. But there is no way out. What you see is what you get. You see that door behind you? In effect, it is just painted on.

What about the rest of the WebFlock experience? It describes itself, as you may recall, as designed for “media consumption and game play.” There is a TV screen in the room on which you can view episodes of the show, though without a zoom facility you will need a very large monitor to get the most from the experience. And clicking on various objects presented me with opportunities to buy DVDs. So that’s a tick in the box for “media consumption.”

I don’t know how much “game play” has been put into this particular environment, but it does have one really irritating feature. Periodically, like every 2 or 3 minutes, it asks you for your opinion about some aspect of the show, offering multiple choice answers. While it would be possible to use such a feature to obtain useful marketing data, these questions seem more like the puerile enquiries to be found in teen magazines aimed at the post-Barbie set. And the question will not go away, consuming a fair slice of your “screen real estate” until you answer it.

And that’s it. In summary, I found the experience far too lightweight to rate as a virtual environment. I didn’t feel immersed in the experience - it was more like chatting while looking at a picture of some women standing in a kitchen. While I understand why companies leave Second Life, I find it hard to understand why The L Word would bail out of Second Life to go with this instead. Future implementations of WebFlock may end up offering far more than this. I can only hope so, because if this is all there is, then it is a dull future indeed.

I'm Just Arguing About Semantics...

While many of my colleagues (and probably yours) remain dismissive of virtual worlds and the prospects for web3D (at least in my lifetime, which given current health constraints may not be as long as I might fancy), they get positively moist when they ponder the imponderables of web3.0. Much of this web3.0 mullarkey remains a mystery to me. In fact, it's taken me long enough to get some kind of handle on web2.0. But that hasn't stopped me staring into the middle distance and letting my mind free-wheel on the topic.

While a fair chunk of the web3.0 vision thang revolves around "ubiquity" and "distribution", a significant slice is taken up with the notion of the semantic web. In techie terms, the ambition is a web in which computers can perform their own analysis, do stuff and find stuff out. Because computers are still basically stupid, even the really really clever ones, they need lots of help if they are to do all of this. According to wikipedia: "The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web."

In truth, of course, the label of "web X.0" is simply a convenience, an attempt to convey a Big Picture view. In reality, there are no web generations, but rather the evolution of the web is a continuum in which it is not always possible - and certainly never actually necessary - to make such generational distinctions.

In this Big Picture view of the web, we could probably characterise web 1.0 as the Era of the Individual: you make your own way through the web, sharing information only by digital word-of-mouth, and responsible for discovering everything you need. Web 2.0 I would characterise as the Era of Sharing: you are all-but-permanently digitally connected with friends,acquaintances and groups with common interests, sharing with them your travels through the web in realtime, and benefitting from the wider range of experiences and knowledge available within the various groups to which you belong, giving you a more productive and more social web experience. In techie terms, we have the introduction of scores of social tools to help people share stuff, and the development of mashups to pull together diverse information sources to form common, shareable views.

At the moment I don't really know how to characterise web 3.0. Howzabout Era of the Bot? A web in which much of the drudgery involved in finding what you want is taken away by our shiny, digital, computer pals; a web with which you can have an intelligent interaction. It sounds ambitious - and I am curious as to how this will combine with the "Social Web" of web 2.0. web3.0 will also offer intelligent applications, with natural language processing... hmmm... "natural language processing" eh?

In my idle moments, I've been wondering about this semantic lark, and the underlying reasons for it. And concluding that web 2.0 already has a semantic web element and that - like Soylent Green - the semantic web element "is people."

The highly-connected, social mesh that we inhabit now is full of 'em, sharing their ideas and opinions, filling gaps in our knowledge, offering services, advice and support (and all the while, using 'natural language processing'). While noting that "folks is folks" and you don't always get a reliable, consistent service - it is also true to say that people are pretty adaptable and good at interpreting, interpolating and extrapolating stuff, something their machine counterparts will be struggling to achieve for years to come yet.

And for me this social mesh reaches its online apogee in the social, immersive, shared experience found in virtual worlds.

Hmmm... so in conclusion: where semantic web3.0 can be characterised by HAL, perhaps semantic web2.0 can be characterised by AL.

Some Thoughts on the Yammer Clamour

After it took top prize at TechCrunch50, earlier this month, an enterprising soul in the enterprise for which I work took it upon himself to get us into Yammer. Unless you've been living under a stone - or more likely, don't give a flying one about corporate stuff - you will be aware that Yammer is being touted by some as "Twitter for the enterprise." And the hype? Oh my... the hype! Even this post you are reading now is contributing to a level of hype that makes Twitter look like some shy, shrinking violet.

Yammer's website explains the proposition: "Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: 'What are you working on?'...Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address."

While I have been a Twitterer for 18months or so, I've only been using Yammer for about a fortnight. Nevertheless, I've now got enough thoughts about it rattling around in my head that I wish to extract and deposit in words. The thoughts fall into 2 streams, answering the following questions:

Is Yammer really a "twitter for the enterprise"?

In a word: No. Superficially, it looks similar. You have 140 a bunch of characters to record each micro-post. You can elect to follow people. You can reply to other people's posts. So far - so twittersome. But to use Yammer, you need a company email address. How is that an issue? Well, in Twitter I can set up an information "push" channel, using any old email address I care to create, and I can then use this channel to give you news, views and general info in an impersonal way. For your part, you elect to tune in or not. Yammer ties a user to a company email address and a Yammer profile - in effect, it is personal. So creating an impersonal "push channel", such as a "HR News" feed, would be cumbersome, and may even breach company email rules and policies. Thus a facility that is easily exploited in Twitter, and that would be of benefit in a corporate environment, is seemingly unavailable.

A major concern for any enterprise solution is security. I confess I've not looked at the detail of the "paid for" service from Yammer, which offers the ability to manage the security of one's network. However, it is clear that this remains a hosted service, and therefore the more security-minded are likely to conclude that it is not safe enough for company confidential communication. And if it's not safe enough for this level of communication, it is then of questionable value within the enterprise.

A final point for consideration is scale. I work for an enterprise with around 60,000 employees, worldwide (in fact, Wikipedia tells me it has risen to over 86,000 in 2008). An enterprise solution needs the ability to reach everyone within the enterprise - but an individual grunt in the field, like me, does not want to be deluged by the idle ponderings of all of these folk, all of the time. Yet the filter offered by the "follow" facility strikes me as inadequate within this enterprise context. At work, I am actually part of many different networks: some overlapping, some not. I have personal networks, profession-based networks and managerial networks. In short, the corporate world is a complicated place in which each of us has his/her own network needs. A simple "follow" does not come close to addressing this. Yammer is better suited to the Small-to-Medium end of the Enterprise world, where one's networks are fewer and smaller.

So to reiterate my answer to my first question: No.

What would I want in such a tool for the enterprise?

I am a dedicated (some might say, obsessive) Twitterer and I do believe that a Twitter-like tool, restricted to just the company, would be very useful. However, it would need a few tweaks (or major surgery!):

First, it would need to support push channels. Whether it is your Networks Department telling you of planned outages, the arrival of the Sandwich Lady at your office or the CEO telling you where to find the company's annual results - there are many push channels that are of value within the enterprise. Of course, such channels are useless unless you know about them - so a search or browse facility would be a "must have" too.

Second, it would need to support groups - the return of the SIG (if it ever went away). I like Chatterous - a tool still in beta release - as it offers me the opportunity to exchange messages within cliques or groups. I would like to see something similar for corporate use. Given I work in a projects-based organisation, working with teams scattered around the globe, having project group chat/micro-blogging would be very useful. I can see that too many groups would be cumbersome and could rapidly become ineffective - but I'd be willing to test that theory!

Finally: security. I would want to know that I can bring the solution within my firewalls and keep all traces and logs on our own servers.

+++

I am not claiming this ramble makes much sense and it should not be taken as representing the position of my company on Yammer, Twitter or anything else, really. I'm just sayin'...

An Avatar, By Any Other Name...

.. might be a lot happier with Second Life.

Most of us who came into Second Life out of curiosity, and have stayed ever since, are probably happy with our avatars. We instinctively associate our avatar name with ourselves - regardless of where we sit in the 'Spectrum of Involvement' that goes from the fully-immersed digital beings at one end, to the augmented reality users at the other. Incidentally, if these terms mean nothing to you, then I'm afraid you will have to Google them if you want to know more. The subsequent romp across the blogosphere makes for a long and interesting diversion!

For the more prosaic purposes of this post, I want to consider names. It hadn't really occurred to me just how out-of-step Second Life is, compared with other virtual worlds. Everywhere else - as far as I know - you are pretty much free to select your own avatar name. OK, it may need to be unique in the World, which can be a challenge. But in principle, you have carte blanche. For example, I am used to a semi-digital existence thru' my avatar, Aleister Kronos. Therefore, in all the virtual worlds I am signed up to - and there are many - I am happy to use this name, or variants that may be forced by a local naming constraint (like no spaces in the name). Importantly though, I could instead have opted to use the name I was given in the atomic world, Tim Kelly (again, subject to some basic constraints). I'm hardly blowing away any great atomic/digital divide here, since anyone who was remotely interested could have garnered this information in about... ooh... one Google hit.

So where am I going with this? Oh yeah...

Second Life marches to a different tune. It forces you down a path of pseudo-anonymity by compelling you to select a surname from a predefined list, rather than allowing you to elect for anonymity or openness. And what a bunch of surnames you get! If your aim in Second Life is to have a laugh, muck about and generally use it as a purely social environment then the disproportionately high ratio of "wacky, zany" surnames may be just the ticket. It means you don't have to employ too much brainpower of your own in order to appear interesting, when you can get instant charisma, off-the-peg, just by choosing a suitable surname. Maybe most Second Life regulars are happy with this arrangement. Personally, as a resident, I'm perfectly happy with my avatar name.

But it is as a corporate resident that issues arise. I have recently been hosting or assisting with a number of internal presentations for various company folk. The aim of such presentations is to show that you don't need to waste time and money travelling to meetings when they can be done, at least adequately, in a virtual environment. And virtual meetings are far better than the other alternatives: video and teleconferences. Most of the attendees are not out-and-out Second Lifers, but rather casual visitors, looking at the potential for using the environment as a work tool.

Now then - in proper Blah 2.0 fashion I have been eliciting feedback, to understand their experiences and see how I can help to improve them. Oddly, the recurring concern was not the awkwardness of the user interface, or the lag, or indeed any of the technical issues that I had anticipated. Instead, it was the avatar naming constraints. The general view was that the absence of real names lead to confusion and lack of clarity, while the names that were used could not really be characterised as 'professional'. When you have large numbers of colleagues using virtual worlds on an occasional basis, for specific activities or events, they are not likely to know each other's avatar names - leading to confusion and lack of effective communication. While this will change over time, the process is unnecessarily slow, when all you ever wanted was to use your own name in the first place.

There are cumbersome ways around this, usually involving a dumb-ass surname but putting your full name (without spaces!) as your avatar's first name. Don't get me started on the ludicrous costs associated with having a user-defined (in this case, corporate) surname. The point is, it should not be necessary to go to these lengths.

Second Life is coming across as somewhat antediluvian, a primitive throwback to a time when happy-clappy early adopters wanted to look funny and have hilarious names. While I accept that many, more recent residents also share these aims - it is time for Second Life to grow up, grow out and make better provision for those who don't share these aims. I am sure that it is not just business users who have this frustration.

So a note for Linden Lab: if you are still trying to be taken seriously by the business world then changing the naming system would be a small, but non-trivial step in the right direction.

(And God knows... it seems that right now Second Life could do with all the help it can get)

What's in a Job Title?

I have recently been pondering the question: "What's in a job title?"

I've been prompted into this line of pondering by the role of Chris Collins. I am not referring to the well-known virtual worlds educationalist, whose avatar name reminds me of Nip/Tuck. I am actually thinking of the one who works for Linden Lab.

If you do some choice Googling you will most likely encounter Chris being described as "the Technical Assistant to the CEO at Linden Lab". While this may conjure up images of a geek whose role in life is to switch on the CEO's PC and make sure he knows when Outlook has a message for him, I suspect the role may be larger than that. For example, most techie button-pushers are unlikely to be interviewed by Tech Crunch. The article, dating from November last year, gives us more insight: "recently he took up the Technical Assistant to the CEO role, an interesting position in that it’s essentially an executive in training position. Collins shadows Linden Lab CEO Phillip Rosedale at all meetings and functions, and is also directly responsible for Lindex Exchange, the Linden Dollar to US Dollar currency service for Second Life. At the end of the position (6-9mths) he will then take up an executive role with Linden Lab."

In more recent articles (such as this from Reuters) it is clear that he has now taken up that executive role, as Director of Enterprise Business Systems. To residents of Second Life who have no interest whatsoever in the enterprise use of the environment, this job title might sound as vacuous as Homer Simpson's classic 'Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence'. However, for me, given that the thrust of this blog - and indeed much of what I do in Second Life - is directed to the business use of virtual worlds, this job role resonates strongly.

I would therefore be very interested to know what the heck this role entails. I can see that there is a recurring piece of blurb that appears in recent articles: "For more information about the Second Life Grid visit www.secondlifegrid.net/, or contact Chris Collins, Director of Enterprise Business Systems at business@lindenlab.com." But frankly, that tells me sweet F.A.

Is this job title as meaningless and confusing as his earlier "Technical Assistant" role? Or does it mean that Linden Lab are really going to provide some proper focus on enterprises wanting to use the environment. While some residents whinge and moan about the arrival of enterprises, there is no reason to believe that this needs to be to their detriment. Indeed, the size and strength of enterprises should be better at applying pressure to obtain the necessary improvements in grid performance, stability and capacity.

Right now I am not getting a strong sense of "Enterprise Business Systems" forming part of the Second Life ecosystem. I would therefore be interested to know how the new CEO (with or without someone to switch on his PC) and the Director of Enterprise Business Systems are going to address the shortcomings of their company's engagement with the business world.

Does Lively Look Lively?

Yesterday Google joined the virtual world party with the launch of Lively. There have been dark mutterings and rumours for a long time that Google would shortly turn their gaze on this part of the Future Web and hose it down with a mega-product of their own. Well this prediction remains in force, since Lively does not - at least on first acquaintance - fit the bill.

I have to say that my stance is somewhat jaundiced owing to the number of issues I have had trying to get the damned thing running on my PC. It still doesn't work properly, despite several re-installs, careful checking of my security settings and even an unnecessary re-install of Adobe Flash. Did I mention it is Flash-based? It is.

To access Lively you will need to run a client-side installer and create yourself a Google account (if you don't have one already). Once you have done this you are ready to visit the virtual rooms. In Lively, the "world" is reduced to a number of 'rooms' - tiny handkerchief-sized pieces of virtual real estate. Some are pre-built, but you can create your own. In creating a room you can select from one of a variety of templates. I rather like the classic "tropical island".

I've explored a few rooms as best I could - and noted that it does integrate smoothly with, say, YouTube - allowing the owner to stream videos into the room. There is a small but growing catalog of avatars, clothing, furniture and fixtures for users to grab and employ. It is also very easy to embed links to your room(s) in web pages, including (I understand) MySpace and other social sites.

And that is basically where my experience with Lively runs out. When I run the software I should see a toolbar on the screen that would allow me to select and configure an avatar, add friends, view my inventory and so forth. Or at least, that is what I have read. On my machine there's no toolbar - so no avatar, no inventory, nothing. I also lack the "chat" feature. Instead I simply see the display "Joining room..." My Lively is not so lively, then. I've checked the related discussion forum and can confirm that I am not alone in experiencing this - but also, at the time of writing, as far as I can tell, no-one from Google has actually posted any replies to the many, many queries that are building up there.

So my views are somewhat soured by these frustrations. That said, Lively is far from being Google's virtual world "killer app" and I am mystified why the computerworld blog thinks this inflexible, buggy, room-based world represents a great leap forward for teleworking. Perhaps, as Chris Carella puts it on Twitter, Google's involvement provides validation (or even, benediction) of virtual worlds, and therefore stuff we've been discussing for years now becomes mainstream "news". But this is not really a virtual world in the style of, say, Second Life, Entropia or Active Worlds. Rather it is positioned to be used alongside existing social networking to add... well... what exactly? An increased sense of connectedness maybe? You tell me.

To sum up, Lively may prove popular because (a) it is coming out of Google and (b) it can be embedded in just about any web page to "extend" the page's reach and capability. But it isn't the virtual world we still suspect lurks somewhere behind Google's closed doors.

Are You Going to ExitReality?

Naming a product must be hellishly difficult, mustn't it? So many factors to take into account. Consider, for example, those infamous automobiles where the name sounded fine in one language but meant things like "tiny male member" or "fecal matter" in others. I occasionally wonder whether Young Mr Rosedale and the Gang down at Linden Lab ever wake up sweating when they recall the naming of 'Second Life'. It must have seemed so simple and innocent at the time, little realising the millstone they were placing around their collective neck.

There must be scarcely any resident of Second Life who has not, at some time or another - and probably much more frequently than that - been confronted with the same sad litany of witticisms by non-believers, revolving around the name of the virtual world. The witticism usually hinges on the word "Second", contrasting it with "First" (or, for the less witty, "Real") Life. Thus, with depressing frequency, you encounter such rib-ticklers as: "You should get yourself a First Life" and "I'm too busy having a Real Life". Meanwhile Linden Lab, bless 'em, have staunchly refused to kowtow to this perpetual torrent of piss-taking, and have instead had the sheer brass neck to create a branding centre that actually celebrates this misbegotten name.

Now here's a little tale that may be enlightening. As a Brit, I am theoretically ruled by Queen Elizabeth II, of the royal House of Windsor. But the House has not always been so named. It started out as the distinctly Germanic House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. However, with the outbreak of World War 1, anything German (not surprisingly) became somewhat suspect. Even so it took until 1917 (for my American readers WW1 began in 1914, not 1917 - when the USA joined in) before the royals twigged that maybe their household name sounded a tad foreign. So in July 1917 George V officially declared that "all descendents in the male line of Queen Victoria, who are subjects of these realms, other than female descendents who marry or who have married, shall bear the name Windsor." And the British royals have been Windsors ever since. The Queen's hubby is Greek, but his Mum was Princess Alice of Battenberg. In order to sound neither Greek nor German, but perhaps exotically English, he adopted the name Mountbatten.

So the British royal family, in effect, rebranded themselves, and largely removed the stigma of their old names.

While I don't expect the agile, business-savvy brains at Linden Lab to follow this example, it is something they might wish to consider if they want to be the powerhouse for web 3D. OpenSim does not have this baggage to contend with, although those Tribal Net folks really ought to re-think their brand position too.

But actually, all of the above is just a rambling preamble to this:

Yesterday, after reading this post at Virtual Worlds News ("all the virtual worlds news that is fit to print"), I signed up for a new, browser-based virtual world service called ExitReality. I ask you! 'Exit Reality'!!

I'm sorry... but to me this makes Linden's selection of 'Second Life' seem like a work of marketing genius. Perhaps it's just me... but the first impression that crossed my mind was 'assisted suicide'. I recall a lot of fuss some years ago about a pressure group called Exit, and while researching this post I encountered the Final Exit website. Even without this connotation, why would I wish to be 'exiting reality'? And why would I be using a website to do so, rather than chemicals??

What are the people behind ExitReality trying to tell me about their product? Apparently they are trying to tell me it "is an exciting new social media platform that aims to improve your online experience with an enhanced 3D, multi-user, immersive messaging environment. Photo albums that become virtual galleries where you can walk through, admire and even comment on the photos that decorate the wall. Video clips that transform into 3D flat-screen TVs that you can enjoy watching with friends... hey, even fight over the remote. Immersive Messaging where you are able to see and interact with all your friends while chatting with them at millions of locations online." And it "works with leading global social media sites Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Hi5, Orkut and Bebo and is launching soon." Sounds great - but sorry chaps, your product name sucks - and as with Second Life before it, if it has any success it will be mercilessly teased.

I like the idea though! Oh.. and when I tried it, it seemed happiest on Firefox 2.

PS: Linden Lab might want to consider adding their new CEO on this page.

Gartner's Latest View on Virtual Worlds

Last week Steve Prentice of Gartner came up with his latest view of businesses in Virtual Worlds. Steve, you are probably aware, is the chap behind some rip-snorting headlines. Last year, for Gartner Emerging Trends Symposium/ITxpo 2007, Steve came out with the view that "by the end of 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a 'second life', but not necessarily in Second Life." That one caused much debate, and not a little ridicule.

For Gartner Emerging Trends Symposium/ITxpo 2008, held last week in Barcelona, Steve's headline-grabbing headline was: "90 Per Cent of Corporate Virtual World Projects Fail Within 18 Months." Quite where this statistic come from, I really don't know. However, I can't say I have an issue with it. In fact, if you go on to read the rest of the announcement, you might conclude (as I did) that the outlook is far from bleak for virtual worlds. There is a fair amount of what I would describe as 'TBO' - The Bleedin' Obvious. A case in point is the sub-heading for the piece: "Success requires clear objectives, focus on users and realistic expectations." However, no matter how self-evident this is, Gartner rightly point out that too many have failed to follow it.

The piece then goes on to list a number of ways in which Virtual Worlds can deliver dividends for businesses. I cannot see that any of these would come as a surprise to a Virtual Worlder, but for those with no experience - or have given no thought to the subject - then these might prove interesting:

• Rich real-time collaboration environment, far better than web-based tools
• The cost to experiment is miniscule - a small outlay, with maybe big gains
• Reduce the cost of travel by hosting virtual meetings
• Know who your market is, and address their needs
• Immersive scenario-based learning - particularly for hazardous occupations
• Persistent virtual workplaces

It concludes with the advice to organisations "to experiment with virtual world projects on a small, internal scale initially and pace their development to enhance the chances of success and minimise costs." I am quite pleased with this concluding observation, since this is the approach we defined for ourselves 9 months ago.

So there you have it. Read the headline - and it's all Doom & Gloom. However, delve into the article and you will find this is a very positive piece about the corporate / organisational use of environments like Second Life.

Oh... they also slipped in another prediction, that by 2012 an estimated 70% of organisations will be running private virtual worlds, the 3D intranet. So you might now want to get hold of OpenSim, Multiverse, Wonderland, Qwaq or whatever else floats your boat.

Clever Zebra - is it all Black and White?

Now here's the thing. I've been reading Iyan Writer's well-reasoned piece about Clever Zebra in which he makes a strong case that for the view that, basically, they've got their business model screwed. However, while I agree with a lot of what he says, I think he's missing some nuances.

Clever Zebra have been giving away free, Open Source starter packs for a ferw months now, aimed at businesses wanting to build a virtual presence. The latest pack - Zebra Corporate - has just launched, and includes auditoria, offices, presentation areas and various handy tools and landscaping bits and bobs.

Clearly, on its own, just giving stuff away is no way to make money. So CZ actually have 2 offers: free edition (just the pack) and enterprise edition. The latter charges 5000 USD, plus a further 400 USD a month for... ummm... some other stuff. The site says; "Zebra corporate is a simple solution to second life for companies looking to make their entry into the virtual world with confidence. Clever Zebra clients are encouraged to join an engaged, connected community and support network where there is always something happening, and always something to do." So apart from an optional community I might choose to join, it is not clear what I get for the money. An island? A bit of an island? A consultant (whose credentials I have not seen) telling me the time after asking to see my watch?? Perhaps CZ think it is obvious - indeed, I thought it would be, too - but if you read the website, it is not clear what 10K for the first year gets you.

Anyway... I digress. This was not actually what I wanted to say. Iyan's argument is, I think, that any corporation looking at Second Life is not put off by the cost of building, but by a range of other factors: getting their own people to engage; concerns over the stability of the environment and (he reckons) the difficulty of forging lasting and worthwhile relationships with the SL community. I don't think the latter 2 actually apply to companies looking at Second Life for the first time - these concerns come later, when they discover what they've let themselves in for(!). However, I do think lack of a clear business case, the complexity of the viewer interface and concerns over the seamy side of SL are further disincentives.

In any event, none of these are helped by the offer of free stuff - and it is hard to see how the 10K USD is going to solve these concerns either.

That said, I do see 2 primary markets for CZ's wares. First is the non-corporate SME (Small-to-Medium Enterprise) marketplace. SME's looking to get a taste of virtual worlds, and not having the dedicated resources to devote time to investigation, could make use of the CZ offer to get them up and running quickly. However, the number wishing to avail themselves of the Enterprise Edition may be limited. It is not an inconsiderable sum when all you want is to dip your toe in the water.[ I am not claiming this is the "right" way to enter virtual worlds - but it will be, I would contend, a common route. ]

The real corporates - those who may actually have a business case around savings on air travel - may also have a use for CZ's services. A serious involvement in Second Life requires a serious investment of both people and money. But that does not mean that you have to go all-out from day 1. Many companies of my acquaintance are rather more circumspect, and want to trial a low cost/low impact proof of concept in Second Life before getting further engaged. The CZ offering fits nicely with this requrement. Of itself it may not solve the internal engagement issue, but it does make it a great deal easier to get such engagement. I have observed that internal engagement and involvement comes about when there is something people can actually visit. While it remains an idea under discussion, engagement is difficult to achieve.

I think that, in using words like "Corporate" and "Enterprise", CZ may only be fooling themselves about their likely client base. However, there is mileage in the concept - and who knows? They may pull it off. There are many companies offering assistance in starting up in virtual worlds. If your only USP is "our stuff is free" then it could be a long and rocky road ahead. Meanwhile, although 10K USD is a figure not be sniffed at, I do wonder how many of these it takes before one has a viable company, capable of paying people's salaries and servicing its creditors.

In Times Like These...

... you need a good laugh. What with branding going haywire, the grid turning to jelly (or jello for our American cousins) and grown men and women salivating at the thought of taking money from children through assorted virtual worlds - we need a moment or two of levity. If that levity also includes some sideswipes at the Great and the Good, then so much the better.

With this in mind, I would like to commend to you TINYDANCING. the new blog by Kanomi Pikajuna. I think it is very funny - and about the only blog I can think of that had me chuckling outloud (it is a major achievement to raise much more than a chuckle from an ancient cynic like me). Also, don't forget to explore the TinyDancing Brand Center.

Kanomi, I realise I am in breach of brand guidelines here... but hey, I'm European - so sue me.

Enjoy the read.

Second Life and 3D Intranet

One of my predictions for 2008 was that we would see IBM, Sun and others launching "virtual world behind the firewall" products. I thought then, and think now, that this is inevitable - and I daresay you may feel the same way. While such worlds might do little or nothing to tickle the fancy of out-and-out Immersionists, they offer powerful tools for corporate use. So it was with more than a little interest that I learned, last week, that IBM would be partnering with Linden Lab to bring a chunk of the Second Life grid within the IBM firewalls - a 3D intranet.

Why would I want a 3D intranet?
At its most basic, the cost savings coming from the reduction in travel, made possible by 3D intranets, offer a simple, direct return on investment. The calculations are elementary, and rely on very few assumptions (all of which are easily verified). Incidentally, this is in contrast to the complexity of proving a ROI based on revenue generation in virtual environments, but that is not germane to the 3D intranet business case.

Although this can be achieved with an externally hosted service, such as Second Life, there are concerns over security and manageability. The fact that systems administration is outside one's control, and that chat logs and other commercial content are being hosted externally is not acceptable when you want a totally secure, wholly owned environment. Hence the 3D intranet.

But there are further benefits. As I learned from the IBMers a long time ago, 3D spaces provide places for informal groupings to develop - where new relationships form, extending one's own personal network. The external view of a large company is that it operates as a single unit, that it probably has all manner of clever systems to keep people in touch, and that it makes sure that it knows the skills and capabilities of its employees. In fact, this is (almost universally) far from the truth; rather than a single enterprise, most large companies comprise a number of fiefdoms, and each of these is subdivided into further, smaller fiefdoms. Knowledge is precious, and poorly maintained across this motley array of business units, skill centres, CoEs, "tiger teams" and so on. The 3D spaces don't drive knowledge or business cohesion - but they can help, by providing a social network that operates outside of the fiefdoms, allowing people from across the corporation to meet, socialise and share knowledge.

Finally, there is the formal collaborative working environment. The 3D intranet allows people from diverse locations around the country and, indeed, the world to work together in a common shared (virtual) location, reducing costs and improving team cohesion.

That's causes enough for a 3D intranet.

So what about this news?
In my view, Linden Lab have a habit of letting good news get away from them and generally fumbling their marketing. However, for once, I think this is a masterstroke - a real gem of a move that could end up, not only saving their asses, but propelling them into the heart of web 3D - which is where they want to be. Why do I say this?

Well, for one thing - IBM, while clearly the biggest corporate presence in Second Life, are known to have their fingers in many virtual pies. Indeed, Roo Reynolds (well-known luminary in the Eightbar crowd [and all-round good egg, so I'm told]) gave a neat synoposis of IBM's virtual state of play on Eightbar only last month. If IBM were to ditch Second Life - and that was by no means impossible - then the impact on Linden Lab could be catastrophic. On the other hand, to have their product at the heart of IBM's 3D intranet should allow Linden Lab to see off the opposition, such as multiverse or OpenSim.

It comes as no surprise, then, that no money is changing hands; both sides should win through this synergy. IBM get a relatively mature, content-flexible platform on which to build their 3D intranet. Linden get to develop a product that (with IBM?) they can sell to businesses and universities, while also putting some clear space between themselves and their competitors. Finally, the ability for an avatar to move between internal and external grids brings the prospect of web 3D much closer. This is, I am told, still a technically complex task - what system resources are located where? and how do they tie together? - but one that is now being tackled.

A Fool's Guide To Branding

Ah... brand... it's such a delicate orchid. If some evil or misguided soul makes unfair, inappropriate or unprofessional use of your brand then it can apparently cause great damage. I can't recollect a good example of this, but I'm assured by various victims of brand police that this is, indeed, the case. It must be so, since otherwise how does one explain the draconian measures that the brand police invoke. And yet, much of such policing must, of necessity, happen behind closed doors. Why? Well... it's a curiously delicious irony that, to be seen to be invoking extreme or excessive brand management, actually reflects badly on your brand, potentially doing more harm than the damage your management sought to limit in the first place.

On the other hand, if you are trying to move from being a private West Coast geek academy to become the public powerhouse behind the next generation of the internet, then you might see a rather late-in-the-day conversion to extreme brand management as proving that you were now grown-up, wore long trousers and could be taken seriously by the big pension funds and other potential investors. Hmmmm... or maybe they might see such excessive zeal as evidence that you're West Coast geeks playing at being business people. Roll the dice.

Like I say... brand is a delicate thing.

The virtual worlds blogosphere has been having a field day with Linden Lab's decision to flip from something akin to a hippy-dippy love'n'peace commune to something resembling a Kafkaesque nightmare of anally-retentive branding thugs. Yet they have failed to heed that, if you try and carry big weapons without proper training, there is a real risk of shooting yourself in the foot.

To ramble off into reverie...

At the time of writing it seems that any mention of the company, its products or its logos must be accompanied by a swarm of ® and ™ symbols, rendering even the simplest text into a digital version of a well-used medieval palimpsest. I may be misreading this slightly, but it seems that any word beginning with, or containing, the letters "sl" are now the sole property of Linden Lab and can only be used if you have a correctly validated, signed certificate of authorisation. The same is true for the pair "ll". And as for using them in upper case - just don't even think about it.

As you might expect, any use of the word "second" or "life" must now be approved by a Star Chamber, whose decision is final. In fact, anything that could be interpreted as a synonym, antonym, exaggeration or diminution of any word ever written by the company, it would be wise to leave out. Sure, your vocabulary might suffer, but at least you can be happy in the knowledge that you are following the brand rules (as they stand at the moment).

And what about the eye in the hand logo? You know... the one that could be loosely based on Herbert Bayer's photomontage Lonely Metropolitan (1932)? That's right out, that is.

Now I will leave it to brainy people, who can write reams and reams of peerless prose, to make the proper case against this insanity.

I will conclude by saying: I admit this post is pointless, childish, a tad petulant and prone to misfire - which is rather like this new branding policy then.

Happy All Fools' Day.

Google's Engineering HQ in Zurich

While browsing the BBC News website, as I tend to do, I came across a fascinating item on Google's Engineering HQ in Zurich. I thought you might be interested, too.

Yeah... And? What's that got to do with the main themes of Ambling in Second Life?

Simple. I have been asked on many occasions by non-SLers: "What is SL like?" It struck me while watching the video that this is what Second Life is like, and what a corporate site in Second Life might offer. And here it is... slap bang in the middle of the atomic world. OK, there may be a lack of teleports, and flying is not recommended, but the look and feel is spot-on.

If the link doesn't work - or you want more - there's more images and videos here. Or there's a great selection of photos here - which you can view on this slideshow.

Rosedale to Step Down, Step Up, Whatever

The twitter servers must be under heavy load at the moment as hordes of virtual worlders leap in to speculate about today's announcement that Phil Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, will be stepping down from his role.

According to Reuters: "Rosedale will become chairman of the Linden Lab board when his successor is found, replacing Mitch Kapor, who will remain a board member and the company’s largest investor. Rosedale said he will also keep a full-time role at the company working on product development and strategy."

There doesn't seem to be any air of panic, just the recognition that a big, grown-up company (which Linden Lab has now become) requires an entirely different sort of leadership from a hip, young start-up. I made this point (as many others did) when Cory Ondrejka left Linden Lab at the tail end of last year: "once you have a large (and largely successful) implementation on your hands, your focus shifts from rapid innovation and heads more towards Quality of Service and effective service delivery. "

Provided they get the right person - and that's a big proviso - then this should be a good thing for consumers of Linden Lab's services - that's us residents, both private and corporate. Hopefully, we will continue to see innovation and creativity from the Lab, after all Mr Rosedale is only moving within the outfit, but tempered with the skills needed to deliver a customer-centric, high quality service. Well... I can hope, can't I?

Incidentally, I hope that his replacement does NOT succumb to the temptation to pimp his/her avatar - and sticks resolutely to the no-prim hair etc.

UPDATE: Or indeed no-hair hair.

For a far better read than this - check out Mitch Wagner's post at Information Week.

UPDATE 2: Mr Rosedale's statement and resident responses on the Second Life blog.

To Whom It May Concern

The blogosphere is a strange kind of place when it comes to intellectual property. Bloggers (well most of 'em at any rate) place their cunningly crafted, finely honed pearls of wisdom into the public domain day in, day out. And once they're out there, they're out there. The blogger is left to trust that these words (or these thoughts) are not misrepresented or misappropriated.

Sometimes you might find your posts being picked out by one or more blog portals or aggregators and, in effect, re-broadcast to a wider community. And this is 'A Good Thing'. I am delighted that this blog has been picked up by a few such sites. Personally, it gives me great encouragement and pleasure to know that I am not just writing these words for myself, and that others (even if only a few) are entertained by my sometimes tortuous meanderings. In each case, the site concerned makes clear and unambigous attribution to Ambling in Second Life - and that's all that I ask.
[ OK... cash would be nice... but attribution is just fine. ]

I was therefore somewhat dismayed to come across a site today - one I had never encountered before, and with whom I have had no discussion or prior contact - who have taken one of my posts and simply re-broadcast it, word for word, with someone else's name as the author! I may be easy-going, but this is going too far.

I daresay this is the result of a poorly designed aggregation script that has simply inserted "Written by: so-and-so" - and I acknowledge that the article header (if one thinks to check) actually does link to here. Nevertheless, the article gives the distinct impression that it was written by someone else.

What am I saying - "gives the distinct impression"? It baldly states that it has been written by someone who did not write it! Whether intentional or not, this shows a cavalier disregard for my intellectual property. Furthermore, I am unlikely to be the only blogger affected by this.

You will understand why I choose not to name the site - I see no point in providing free advertising to a site that gives every impression, not of plagiarism, but of wholesale plundering.

So... to whom it may concern... I should be grateful if you would take appropriate steps to rectify your error and either remove reference to this blog henceforth or, in the interests of the wider blogger community, ensure that all aggregated feeds receive clear and unambiguous attribution.

Thinks: I wonder if this will show up as a news item there in a day or two's time?

Dutch banks depart Second Life - some thoughts...

Sometimes I get the impression that Linden Lab places rather a lot of emphasis on the "Lab" part of the name. Like a vast scientific experiment, they have created this fascinating virtual world, given it some vital nutrients (in the form of LSL, the L$ and the like) and then sat back to observe what happens. Generations have come and gone under their watchful - but largely uninvolved - eye. Aside from some essential maintenance to weed out what they (often rightly) perceive as dangerous and damaging fauna, Second Life is left to get on with it... whatever "it" may be.

"And quite right, too!" is a reaction I can understand. However, as both a private citizen of Second Life and a rather stop-start corporate evangelist, my feelings on the matter are somewhat mixed. My private citizen self says "Yeah... leave it to the residents and watch how it plays out. All sorts of stuff happens - some good, some bad - so just seize the moment, enjoy it while you can, 'cos it may not be here forever - but let's hope it will." In my more frivolous moments I might even be tempted to add a: "party on, drude"

My corporate evangelist self has a different take on it (and is unapologetic about the buzzword frenzy to follow). Second Life provides a great environment for immersive collaboration and innovation. It collapses geography, instantly co-locating colleagues from around the physical world in a common, shared 3D space where they can network and share ideas around a single virtual view. It is also an environment that challenges marketing people in unexpected ways. It reveals that virtual spaces, while capable of sharing many of the same visual cues as the physical world, are profoundly different in ways that I, a mere mortal, find hard to nail down and that drive some fascinating challenges when trying to define marketing campaigns in this seemingly familiar, but actually rather alien, channel.

Returning to my laboratory metaphor, it seems to me that LL don't really care whether corporates thrive or die in SL. Indeed, it would be unscientific of them to get so involved with the subjects of their observation. Yet this is a naive (some might argue, arrogant) view of the role of corporate (and other non-resident) users of Second Life. Unlike most laboratory situations, the Observed pay handsomely for the right to be observed.Yet they get little in return. A small example is the unwieldy sales process, about which I might write on another occasion.

What has prompted me to write now is news, reported at Mindblizzard, that Dutch banks ING and ABN Amro are pulling the plug on Second Life. To grossly paraphrase Lady Bracknell, in The Importance of Being Earnest: "To lose one bank from SL, Mr. Rosedale, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness."

Both banks took an "innovative" and "creative" approach to Second Life. They didn't just set out their stall and hope people would wander by. They actively sought to build genuine communities here, offering something distinct and unique at a time when most corporates were treating Second Life as a 3D billboard. I am therefore deeply concerned about their departure, and deeply concerned about the long-term viability of Second Life as "the Virtual World of choice" for the future. I still firmly believe that web3D will be an important part of the digital experience for all of us in years to come. But this turn of events is worrying me, a fan of Second Life. I have to wonder whether Linden Lab are simply too detached from both the world they created and the physical world in which they are running a business.

[Apologies if this is a bit rambling - but it's late, and I wanted to get this posted. I'm not a journalist, just an enthusiast - but I hope I got my point across.]

How Clever is Clever Zebra?

Things have been rather quiet for a while over at Metaversed.com. Not quite as sepulchral as 3pointD, to be sure, but nevertheless it is a site that has faded from its early days as a young, snotty, opinionated upstart in virtual world news and views. Latterly it has become little more than a vehicle for advertising the Metaversed/Metanomics inworld meetings. I’ve been curious about this, wondering why Nick Wilson, the original voice and founder of Metaversed, had all-but disengaged from the site. It seems the answer is that he has been busy behind the scenes. There is a metamorphosis underway in the world of Metaversed, with the emergence of a whole new site – and more importantly, a whole new concept: Clever Zebra.

I know… I know… from nothing 24 hours ago, this is becoming the “phrase du jour” – but I thought you might like to know a bit more about it.

Broadly, Clever Zebra is a new company that will offer companies and others a new approach to establishing a presence in Second Life. At its crudest, the approach looks like an uber-version of the freebies already available to newbies and the financially-challenged in SL. Clever Zebra’s first product, Zebra Corporate, will be available later in January. This “will include the buildings, productivity tools, furniture and landscaping necessary to form a corporate build that can be adapted to each organization’s individual purpose.”

And it won’t cost you a penny. “By providing companies with enterprise class virtual world solutions for free under an open source license… All Zebra Corporate pieces will have full permissions to copy, modify and transfer under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3. This license allows the redistribution and resale of all or part of the system but stipulates that redistributed copies, whether modified or not, must also carry the same open license.”

Clever Zebra intends to make its money from the services that can be offered alongside, such as customisations, training, support and consultancy.

Won’t this mean a cookie-cutter approach? Well, yes and no. While Zebra Corporate provides a general toolset, it also offers plenty of scope for customisation, branding, layout changes and so forth. And it is worth considering whether “cookie cutter” is such a bad thing. It offers a quick, easy entry point to Second Life for companies that might otherwise have considered the environment too strange – and expensive – to consider. First and foremost, a place has to work as a social environment – looks are secondary.

What about the big building companies? It is unlikely that CZ will have a big impact on the existing virtual world development companies. Large corporates and media groups will still prefer to go the totally bespoke route offered by these specialists. Smaller build companies may well feel the squeeze – but from the conversations I have had over the last 6 months or so, most of these companies are suffering already. I don’t know if this is feasible – but some form of alliance with CZ might actually benefit such companies.

What about artisan builders and craftsfolk? A few people have already voiced concern about the possible threat to existing SL artisans. I don’t see Clever Zebra posing any greater threat than they experience already. In fact, it is part of the company’s ambitions to bring in artisans to broaden the range of objects available under the CZ banner. “By creating a set of standards for Zebra Corporate, including measurements, content, and quality grades, we can invite the creative community to build to those standards and submit variations of the corporate theme for inclusion in the Clever Zebra collection.”

Artisans should benefit from commissions, promotion and direct engagement with enterprise clients. CZ will also offer to help with profiles, contracts and freelance work – in effect acting as an agency.

In the hyperbole coming out of the site all of this is described as a “paradigm shift”. I’m not sure I would go that far – but I do think this is an interesting, new approach for bringing companies into Second Life. The low cost may well attract a large number of new companies to try their hand.

And perhaps here’s the rub…

The business model, in large measure, relies on selling people’s time – time for customising, time for training and support, time for consultancy. Unlike virtual products, which can be sold over and over without any further intervention, people’s time is not a scalable commodity.

Fundamentally, CZ needs to sell time, and that means having bodies, and that has all manner of ramifications. People are expensive. People need to be trained, managed and paid. How do you scale up quickly if there is high demand? In fact, how do you tune resourcing according to peaks and troughs in the market? Sounds like contracting to me.

But it goes a bit further than that: How do you ensure consistent quality? How do you ensure the CZ brand values are preserved? This starts to resemble the Virgin business model. It requires investment in the contractors – and governance mechanisms that allow CZ to monitor quality and conformance.

A final thought is around winning business. The costs associated with bid management, sales and marketing can be high – and the time these activities devour is time that cannot be readily clawed back from charge out. I know this has killed other small companies in SL.

The calculation of running costs, incorporating these and many other factors, looks to be highly complex and full of assumptions. Coupling this with an industry-standard per capita charge-out rate leads me to believe that making a profit will be a real challenge with this model.

I wish CZ good luck with this venture, but I think they need to work through some of these issues if they are to survive (but then, I’m not an open source zealot).

PS: I am glad to see that the "meta" prefix is noticeable by its absence. Here's to a meta-free '08!

Looking Back on 2007

I started this blog almost exactly 12 months ago, so I thought it would be a good point to pause and look back over the last year and see if any shapes have emerged.

While the commercial world started to sit up and take notice of Second Life back in 2006, it was not until 2007 that it really hit its stride. The first half of the year saw an explosion of new commercial sites, coupled with an increasing sophistication in the way Second Life was used.

A few themes stick out during this time:

• inworld recruitment
• techie communities
• virtual conferences
• cities going virtual
• evolution of island archipelagos

A number of recruitment companies established themselves, hosting job fairs targeted at attracting skilled professionals in areas such as IT, finance and marketing. European business units from my own company participated in such fairs, and found them to be an effective method for shortlisting candidates.

Large technology companies, such as Intel and Microsoft, established thriving developer communities. The benefits worked both ways: for the company they had a ready focus group to work with, while for the developers it gave them an opportunity to establish networks, share ideas and keep their costs down. I think this is a trend we will see more and more in the year to come, and leads nicely into virtual conferences.

Although these have probably been around as long as virtual worlds, the extension of real-life conferences into Second Life was a common occurrence in 2007. In this way it was thus possible to attend at least some conference talks without incurring vast travel costs, loss of productive time and conference expenses. The impact of this should not be underestimated. I recall talking with a SAP developer who was unable to attend the various SAP conventions as he could not get the time from work, and his employer was not prepared to pay his expenses. This left him feeling isolated and largely out of touch with the rest of the SAP community. He was looking forward to participating in the inworld SAP community, and attending virtual developer conferences.

Cities – particularly those in Germany and Benelux – started to put in an appearance in Second Life in 2007. Whether sponsored by the local tourist board, the Chamber of Commerce, or enterprising locals, such city sims seem to fulfil a need. Much as we might like to ignore frontiers and live the international high life, for many of us there is still no place like home: a place where people speak your language, share the same cultural heritage and laugh at your jokes! These city sims go some way to doing this, while also offering a more traditional 3D billboard for the city, its features and its opportunities. Building on this theme, I also noticed a tendency for related sims to cluster and form entire archipelagos. Most often, this was related to a common language or culture – so for example, there are French, Italian and German archipelagos.

I reckon that’s enough to be going on with for now. Too many words in one post (and no pictures!) gives me nose-bleeds. A view of the second half of the year will need to wait for another day.