You may or may not be aware, but early to mid March marks two significant Australian anniversaries in Second Life: a year since the Telstra BigPond and ABC presences in Second Life launched.
We’ll be writing more on both in coming days, but today I stumbled across another Telstra presence in Second Life. Two islands, Telstra Experience and Telstra Innovation aren’t part of the BigPond islands but they do come up in Second Life’s search functionality.
The Innovation island isn’t publicly accessible but I had a wander around the Experience island, and as the notecard offered on arrival says, it’s a replica of real-llfe Telstra Experience centres, one of which is nearing completion in George St Sydney. It’s very much an enterprise and government focus versus the BigPond end-user focus of the larger presence.
Because the build is a replica of a real-world one, it’s far from an immersive, creative experience, with standard corporate office-space containing multiple video viewing areas. My guess is it’s also being used as a prototyping tool for the real-life builds in Sydney and Melbourne. There’s nothing wrong with any of that and it does demonstrate the growing awareness by the corporate world of the utility of virtual worlds in non-consumer, non-brand awareness applications. I doubt we’ll see the islands launched with much fanfare, if at all. And that’s the way it should be.
The full text of the in-world notecard:
“The Telstra Experience Centre (TEC) is a new state-of-the-art facility built for our customers, now replicated in Second Life.
The TEC has been designed to provide business and government customers with hands-on experience with Telstra’s world-class technology, service and media capabilities. Customers will be able to see, touch, feel and use Telstra’s products and services. Most importantly, this centre allows customers to explore solutions using Telstra’s Next IP™ Virtual Private Network and Next G™ high-speed wireless broadband network.
This Telstra Experience Centre in Second Life is designed to give visitors a taste of what to expect from the RL centre. It also allows us to experiment with the use of Second Life for RL collaboration and projects across business and government applications.”
Wow – we have been outed in Second Life!
It’s nice to see someone noticed; and you are quite right, this is a separate application of Second Life from BigPond’s The Pond.
If you want some of the background you can check out my blog at:
http://www.telstraenterprise.com/researchinsigh…
Or you can see the 40 second video at:
http://www.telstraenterprise.com/SiteCollection…
Bottom line – yes there is a lot of interest in virtual worlds to corporate customers and there is much more that can be done in Second Life in addition to reaching out to consumers.