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Real Estate Life is latest aussie entrant into Second Life

October 23, 2007 by 4 Comments

Back in July we reported that the REA Group(best known for the realestate.com.au site) had an island under development. The development is now complete and is called ‘Real Estate Life’.

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We’ll do a more detailed tour of it later this week, but here’s what REA are saying their objective with the presence is to “learn from and build relationships with other in-world inhabitants and entrepreneurs”.

The build itself is described by REA:

“The island is relatively modest, with a small, inviting building, which includes a reception area, meeting rooms, a boardroom and large screens that provide information about the company’s websites.

The building sits on what is in fact the largest of four closely placed islands. Each of the other three has an outdoor gathering area for meetings and events.”

Watch for a fuller report later this week including an interview with REA about what they’re hoping to achieve. I’ll be surprised if there’s not some significant mainstream media coverage given the previous focus on virtual real estate in SL and the long timeframe since the last Australian corporation entered the fray.

Check it out in-world.

Filed Under: Australian News, Business, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

The Pond expands

October 19, 2007 by 1 Comment

As Tateru Nino has reported on Second Life Insider, the Pond have added another two sims: Pondagon and Pondi Beach.

An increase in rental property is an obvious driver for Pondagon in particular. Pondi Beach is off limits at this stage – maybe some surfing competitions are on the way? I personally would like to see a ‘Find Harold Holt’ treasure hunt….

Filed Under: Australian News, Business, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , , ,

Electric Sheep have virtual ad network in development

October 8, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Over on Clickable Culture, Tony Walsh has pointed to Electric Sheep’s ad network in development (beta sign-ups located here.

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Such developments will go down like a lead balloon with some residents and there’s previously been a movement against the proliferation of ads.

What’s your thoughts? Would you place advertising on your land if you were paid?

Filed Under: Business, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

New aussie rentals

September 26, 2007 by 2 Comments

I noticed a new aussie presence popped up on search this week: LeeLee Land. Owned by SL resident LeeLee Dagger, her aims for the island are:

“One island, sprinkled with beautiful houses, half a cup of romance and a pinch of that community feeling! This is the simple recipe I followed to cook up LeeLee Land.

Having been on SL for a while now, I noticed many aussies tend to stick together and I thought there might be a market for rental properties – aussie owned and aussie occupied. I will provide residents with a modern home that ensures them privacy and security while ensuring a romantic atmosphere for those quiet private moments. All houses surround a gorgeous shared area comprising of a water fall, lounges and a dance floor.”

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Of course, Telstra have a similar rental offering but it’ll be interesting to see the level of take-up. Are you the sort of SL resident that likes close engagement with other RL countrymen?

Check it out in-world

Filed Under: Australian News, Business, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

More than just the jitters? Australian business in Second Life

September 16, 2007 by 3 Comments

One of the most commonly reported aspects of SL is its relationship with RL business. A year ago, the reporting was predominantly rose-shaded and that continued up until recently when some US business reduced or ceased their SL presence. The mood change in the mainstream media was noticeable and to a large extent its continued. Even in the SL blogosphere there’s arguably a more sceptical tone adopted in relation to corporate presences – there were always sceptics but there’s now a wider acceptance of the pitfalls of doing business in SL. That said, corporations continue to set up shop – Peugeot are a recent example.

In an Australian context, Telstra and the ABC’s launches remain the largest to date with a few smaller presences either established or under way. Is it just our relatively small population that explains the state of play or a fundamental case of ‘wait and see’?

Filed Under: Business, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

SecondLifeGrid.net launches – Linden Lab chases business a little harder

September 5, 2007 by 2 Comments

Linden Lab have announced the launch of SecondLifeGrid.net, dedicated to businesses and other organisations wanting to find out about the opportunities Second Life may present. Notice I said opportunities and not threats. I spent five minutes looking around the site and couldn’t see any information alluding to the challenges and threats of doing business in SL, though to be fair there are lots of links to external resources which will contain some of the downside.

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The intro blurb pretty much sums up the pitch Linden Lab are putting to business:

“The Second Life Grid is a full-featured service platform of revolutionary technologies that support the globally renowned virtual world experience, Second Life. The Grid offers a comprehensive system of infrastructure, consumer features, tools, and services that allows any organization to provide its own unique immersive experience in the world’s largest interconnected virtual world.”

The formalisation of support programs for groups of non-English speaking new users is a welcome addition. A lot of other services already provided such as the ability for a company to offer their own registration and orientation portals, have been brought across to the new site.

In retrospect, this is an obvious thing for Linden Lab to have done and it’ll be interesting to see the impact it has on conversion rates for business – you’d think a more integrated approach for business would remove one of the barriers to jumping into the SL experience.

Filed Under: Business, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

AIIA forum discusses opportunities and threats for Australian Business

September 1, 2007 by 1 Comment

On Wednesday 29th August, the Australian Information Industry Association held an in-world forum entitled: “Are Virtual Worlds relevant to my Marketing Effort?”.

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Moderated by yours truly, the panelists were:

1. Lise Robiani (Lisa Romano), Project Manager, Strategic Development, ABC Innovation – ABC
2. Gizzy Electricteeth (Kelly Yeoh), Virtual Worlds Engineer, IBM
3. Caliope Voss (Mandy Salomon), Senior Researcher, User Environments, Smart Internet Technology CRC – Swinburne University of Technology
4. Texas TimTam (Grace Roberts), Founding Director – Second Life TV Network & Cattle Puppy Productions

The discussion ranged from engagement strategies to brand opportunities and threats with a variety of questions from the twenty or so attendees.

An audio transcript should be available soon and we’ll add it here.

More pictures from the event here.

Filed Under: Australian News, Business, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Coldwell Banker Australia’s non-presence in Second Life

August 28, 2007 by 11 Comments

I came across a press release dated August 23rd from Coldwell Banker Australia, touting its win of an innovation award, partly for its Second Life presence. To quote from the press release:

========================================
COLDWELL BANKER’S USE OF ONLINE VIDEO AND ENTRANCE INTO SECOND LIFE® EARNS “MOST INNOVATIVE FRANCHISE” TITLE

HOPE ISLAND,QLD. (August 23, 2007) – Coldwell Banker Australia is pleased to announce that Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC has won the 2007 Inman News Innovator Award in the franchise category. The announcement was made at the Inman Real Estate Connect Conference in San Francisco, just one day after Coldwell Banker® made history by being the first national real estate brand to market a real home in the virtual 3-D world of Second Life. Inman News is a
leading independent real estate Web site and media news service.

Mr Alex Caraco, chief executive officer of Coldwell Banker Greater Australia said, “Coldwell Banker has a long and distinguished history of keeping up with customer’s demands in regards to property information and innovative forms of consumer control, this award recognizes that we have become “the next generation” real estate brand” Coldwell Banker entered the second phase of its involvement in Second Life recently when it unveiled a 3-D reproduction precisely matching the specifications of a newly constructed $3.1 million home in Washington, currently listed for sale by Coldwell Banker. Users can visit www.coldwellbankervirtualhome.com for immediate access to the “real world” home and to Second Life.

Previously, Coldwell Banker became the first national real estate company to open a virtual headquarters on Second Life and in March began selling 500 virtual homes to Second Life members.

“Second Life is a great example of our willingness to explore new channels,” said Charlie Young, senior vice president of marketing for Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. “We are gaining insight into the potential of 3-D as a marketing vehicle and learning how a tech-savvy consumer wants to interact with the brand prior to even contacting a sales associate.”
========================================

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Of course, Coldwell have been in SL since March but I thought I’d contact the Australian contact listed in the press release to ask what the Australian operation’s involvement was with SL. The response was:

“Coldwell Banker Australia at this stage is not involved in Second Life , the media release was an announcement of the brand’s initiatives.”

Here’s a perfect example of a subsidiary attempting to look innovative by riding on the coattails of a parent company. It’s one of those examples where there’s zero interest in engaging with SL residents and maximum interest in hyping the perception of innovation.

Filed Under: Australian News, Business, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Get your face into SL

August 21, 2007 by 8 Comments

Avatar Island is the home of the CyberExtruder, a fully automated process that merges your RL face with your SL one.

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The easiest way to explain the process is to reproduce the notecard you receive when you lay on the operating table:

“Thank you for choosing the CyberExtruder face creation service for you avatar. This simple and fast process will automatically prepare your new face texture within minutes. The steps involved are as follows:

· Pay the sign in front of you; $2700L for one face, $4000L for 2 and $5400 for 3

· After you complete the lab machine process, you will receive a personalized webpage link, click it

· Follow the guidelines on the web page to produce the best results

· The system will prompt you to locate a photo on your computer for uploading

· Within a minute or two your new face will sent to you by email

· To apply the face texture to your Avatar: upload the image file (File -> Upload Image) then apply it to your character using Face Tattoo under Edit Appearance

IMPORTANT: Make sure you have modify rights to the skin you will be wearing with your face BEFORE you begin. If the skin is not modifiable the face tattoo option won’t be available once you have uploaded your face.

NO REFUNDS”

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I haven’t tried the service as yet, and it’s not cheap but if you want a face that at least resembles your RL one, it’s probably worth the gamble.

Thanks to 3pointD for the heads-up

Filed Under: Business, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Stock Exchange churn continues

August 20, 2007 by 11 Comments

The near-farcical nature of the multiple stock exchanges in SL continues, with the delisting of a number of companies on the fledgling ISE (International Stock Exchange). A number of these delisted companies were refugees from the World Stock Exchange and they now state they’ll list elsewhere.

The obvious question is – why would anyone have confidence in any virtual world stock exchange or the companies listed on them, when it’s so easy to change exchanges at a whim. To be fair to the ISE, they have implemented “a policy of disclosing all CEO’s stock transactions in direct relation to their listed company”. If this is the reason that the companies have delisted, then the concern should be focused on the company side of the equation. It’s a fair expectation that shareholders know the shareholdings of a company’s CEO.

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It’s been discussed in detail all over the SL blogosphere: the current situation is a murky mess full of contradictions and conflicts of interest and it’s fair to assume the churn isn’t going to improve until some fundamental transparency measures are implemented across the board.

On a related note I received the following IM overnight:

[23:41] MouzurX Wise: (Saved Mon Aug 20 01:13:14 2007) You have been ejected from ‘World Stock Exchange’ by MouzurX Wise.

His profile claims:

“I work at WSE Customer Service, am GMG PR/IR Manager and I run an investment company in SL, Wise Financial. Also, I am the CEO of Builders Paradise – Franchise.”

Aside from no explanation about my ejection, here’s one of many examples of the conflicts of interest that abound. Can you imagine someone in RL who owned a financial services company also working for the stock exchange?

Filed Under: Business, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

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