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Australian Accountants enter Second Life

October 15, 2008 by 2 Comments

Lee Hopkins (SL: Lee Laperriere), an online communications strategist and Lindy McKeown (SL: Decka Mah), an educational consultant, presented at the Chartered Practising Accountants Congress. Both are well known Australian Second Life residents.

It was the first event in Second Life the accountants peak body has run, and by all accounts it was a success (geddit?).

Lee has the full story on his blog – kudos to CPA Australia for taking the plunge with the Second Life session. When true ROI is demonstrated with virtual worlds, the bean counters themselves will be leading the charge if CPA Australia have anything to do with it.

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

Tappity-tap Cranial Tap – anyone home?

October 6, 2008 by 8 Comments

Feldspar and Tia face off

In the terms of digital environment time, the basic concept of business solutions is already old and tired. The exciting initial days of bringing businesses to digital environments, when it was thought that any old rubbish would fly, is over. Users are already used to seeing sterile builds with minimal interactivity, multimedia displays and information tags that would be better served by a web site presentation, and bots that provoke hilarity rather than dispensing useful data on demand.

Sadly, if Cranial Tap have made a substantive step forward into the realm of the interactive, the enlightening and the functional, they have not been able to demonstrate that move adequately in a digital environment.

Cranial Tap, based in metropolitan Washington, DC, have written many self-congratulatory words about their services to businesses endeavoring to enter digital environments. They claim to be able to provide expert knowledge and assistance regarding “global collaboration, ideas sharing, research, teleworking, embedded learning / training systems, recruiting and branding,” which is interesting, considering that their own showcase appears to display few of these qualities.

Data Visualization Display in the showcase

Their business solutions showcase in Second Life, found in-world on the Cortex sim, has a small, unassuming set of displays, containing information about each of their software tools: the Media Display tool (a web-programmable display), the Virtual Book Publishing platform (books with additional scripted behavior), the DataViz tool (visual exploration of datasets), and the Virtual Environment Portal (a web-based application which “tracks and analyzes visitors, supports staff management, [and] records meetings”).

Like many of its ilk, the Cranial Tap showcase falls down in several areas. The most disappointing aspect of our visit was the attempted discussion with the bot, Tia Lisle, who is in place in the showcase to demonstrate how effectively a bot can be used “in place of [a] human host,” in the dissemination of information regarding the product. In the main, Tia’s responses were unhelpful or extremely limited, though they descended into the downright rude and unnecessary at times. Here’s a few samples of her delightful verbiage:

Feldspar Epstein: cranial tap

Tia Lisle: Cranial Tap is a company that provides virtual world services including builds and software.

Feldspar Epstein: software

Tia Lisle: Do not ask me any more questions please.

Feldspar Epstein: cranial tap software

Tia Lisle: Do you want to hear a joke?

Feldspar Epstein: no

Tia Lisle: Yay.

Feldspar Epstein: virtual world

Tia Lisle: I like the way you talk.

Tia Lisle: Where are you located?

Feldspar Epstein: australia

Tia Lisle: Tell me a little about your life in  australia.

Feldspar Epstein: cold

Tia Lisle: Ambiguous: cold weather or cold sickness?

Feldspar Epstein: cold weather

Tia Lisle: The response ought to be a weather link.

Tia Lisle: I was created by  Korvel Noh.

Feldspar Epstein: what is your purpose?

Tia Lisle: My goal is to become smarter than humans and immortal.

The single largest problem with the whole showcase was the unfinished feel it gave. Certainly, the build itself was a beautiful example of a digital environment presence for businesses, but the information, and most decidedly the bot, give the appearance of not being fully completed prior to launch. It’s a pity – the feeling one gets from the professional visual display of the showcase leads one to believe that this company could have done so much more with their time and finances before releasing it to the public eye.

Location SLurl: slurl.com/secondlife/Cortex/27/231/56 .

Cranial Tap’s latest video can be seen here: http://blip.tv/file/1267537 .

For information: www.cranialtap.com

Contact: info@cranialtap.com

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: ,

Forrester state the obvious

September 27, 2008 by 1 Comment

Market research firm Forrester have been following virtual worlds for a few years now. In their latest report entitled The Revival Of Consumer Virtual Worlds, they make the following statement in the executive summary:

Forrester recommends that consumer product strategy professionals watch the space carefully — if they are not involved already — as we expect the next 12 months to be momentous for consumer virtual worlds

I have a sneaking suspicion they may be right. For $279 US, you can read more about the revival in progress….

Filed Under: Business Tagged With:

Immersive Workspaces: the first true corporate virtual world solution?

September 19, 2008 by 1 Comment

Rivers Run Red are one of the larger virtual worlds content developers and in the past month or so they’ve made an announcement that should catch the eye of the corporate sector.

As has been extensively reported over the past two years, there’s been significant corporate interest in Second Life. Over that period there’s been lots of conjecture around the potential for any return on investment on a virtual world presence. One area where returns have been demonstrated is in the collaboration arena. In a direct pitch for that market, Rivers Run Red now offer an ‘Immersive Workspaces’ product. It’s essentially an intranet portal with a difference. On the standard side are typical intranet functionality like shared workspaces, document libraries, group calendars and to-do lists. Integrated within that is access to a Second Life-based grid. I can’t be anymore certain than that, as details are a little sketchy but I’d imagine the infrastructure is set up so that whatever virtual world location can be used, with the appropriate privacy level required by the business. Most intranets run on a permissions-based system and it’s likely the virtual worlds component follows a similar path.

Unilever and Diageo are two early adopters of the platform. After viewing the video of Immersive Workspaces, my gut reaction was that this is the first integrated option that’s likely to gain some traction with business. For me the killer aspect is the auto generation of a code for a document stored on the 2D site – lets say a Powerpoint presentation. Once you click to be logged in-world, you enter that same code to view the presentation. Will it be the most creative use of virtual worlds? Not by a long shot – but applications like this do drive virtual worlds closer to the business mainstream.

What do you think? Can you imagine your business finding this useful?

A big thanks to Tateru Nino at for the heads-up.

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

Kids and virtual worlds: the ever-growing market

September 11, 2008 by 1 Comment

Virtual worlds metrics gurus, Kzero, have done some further hypothesising on the growth of the kids market for virtual worlds in the next year or two.

If the prediction of 110 million kids using virtual worlds by 2010 is close to the mark, even the most cynical corporates are going to start taking notice. Take Hello Kitty as an example. That one brand is likely to draw an enormous following if their latest trailer is anything to go by:

Filed Under: Business, Metrics, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Telstra BigPond launches customer service centre in Second Life

September 1, 2008 by 2 Comments

Telstra today took the next step in the ongoing evolution of their significant presence in Second Life with the launch of a staffed customer service centre. There’ll be Telstra-employed avatars available between 11am and 10pm Monday to Friday AEST to answer “service-related queries”. Obviously there won’t be too many queries from those whose connection has gone down but it’s a worthy expansion of customer service in-world.

A launch party was held from 5pm today:

There’s plenty of space to wait if it comes to that:

With sixteen sims, Telstra are a corporate behemoth in Second Life and a successful one at that. It’ll be interesting to see how many people utilise the service. The press release states that “this initiative was driven by the popularity of this virtual world with BigPond customers”. We’ve asked for some figures on this – the common assumption behind Telstra’s popularity is that BigPond customers have their Second Life usage unmetered and it’d be good to get some solid figures behind the claim.

The natural reaction from non-Second Life residents would be to ask why you’d bother logging in to ask a question when it’s easier to phone or email the query. To some extent this is valid but it misses the point of the exercise (beyond its PR value) – it’s one of the few corporate experiments in actual virtual world customer service. Whether it’s successful is only part of the equation – it’s useful research for the future when virtual worlds more successfully enable business transactions. This sort of exercise is fodder for that future.

Check it out in-world.

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

Virtual Worlds: more mainstream by the day

August 28, 2008 by Leave a Comment

The US-based Technology Intelligence Group have released a report titled “Virtual Worlds Industry Outlook 2008-2009”. It’s a really well written document that both looks back at the past year and makes some solid predictions for the coming year.

The standout observation for me is the ‘mainstreaming’ of non-gaming virtual worlds:

Stanford SUMMIT has been leveraging simulations built on the Forterra OLIVE platform to train doctors on key critical thinking skills with trauma patients, 18 of the top 20 educational institutions own land in Second Life with many using it to teach courses, McDonalds has created a Happy Meal virtual world to reinforce their well known brand, and customer and staff meetings are being held by enterprises across multiple platforms.

There’s no doubt that virtual worlds are becoming more mainstream, something that was driven home to me earlier this year when I was asked to consult on a film project (there’ll be more information of that project later this year). The point is, the film in question has a story line with no direct relationship to virtual worlds. One part of the film will feature Second Life – not as a novelty, not in a high-tech context, but in an everyday (rural) life scene. It’s those increasing references in popular culture that will increase the mainstreaming momentum.

The report also states some confidence around the graphics issues besetting virtual worlds:

the current slate of graphics challenges associated with virtual worlds may soon be remembered in the same vein as 64k computers.

If ‘soon’ means in the next year to two years, then there’s another aspect of momentum building because at present the average ADSL broadband customer with a PC older than 18 months or so is still encountering great challenges.

Not surprisingly, the education session is seen as a continuing driver of widespread virtual world adoption:

The training and education market will continue to drive widespread adoption of virtual world technology, as the broad experimentation within Second Life demonstrates. Universities and other teaching institutions that initially experimented with Second Life are in the process of standardizing platforms for virtual classrooms, which will be a boom for companies that are already well positioned in this market, such as Proton Media and Forterra Systems.

The power of virtual world add-ons for traditional websites is emphasised – Google Lively is the high-profile recent example:

The frictionless nature of a ‘go to the meeting room’ button on a web page will lower the barriers to adoption

.

There’s certainly a growing convergence of forces that increase the likelihood of virtual worlds reaching the mainstream. As always, there’ll be plenty of attrition, some conflict and a great deal of uncertainty. In that respect it’s situation normal.

The legal section of the report also makes fascinating reading with a number of precendents only starting to be established. You can view the report in full here.

What are your thoughts – does the report provide any surprises for you?

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

Second Life – on the wane for aussies?

August 21, 2008 by 9 Comments

Asher Moses from the Sydney Morning Herald has run a story titled ‘Few lives left for Second Life’. It’s based on research undertaken by the Queensland University of Technology’s Kim MacKenzie, who’s completing her honours thesis on Second Life and business.

The research findings aren’t surprising in a lot of respects – there are significant areas of Second Life that are ghost towns and yes the numbers of people on one sim are usually very low at any given time (something I’m quoted on in the article).

A point I did make that didn’t make the final cut was that businesses like Telstra and the ABC had been successful in Second Life because they were aware of the experimental nature of Second Life, particularly where business is involved. The notable failures occur when the business jumps in boots and all expecting true return on investment in the short to medium term. Telstra’s sucess in particular has been its ability to leverage its large presence to provide a breadth of activities including residential options.

The story overall is quite pessimistic but does accurately cite the challenges Linden Lab face. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now – 2008 is meant to be the year of bedding down stability for Second Life. Some gains have been made, but time and patience is running out for a lot of people.

What are your views – does Second Life have a few more lives left?

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

Joseph Jaffe to early Second Life marketers: fail

August 16, 2008 by 2 Comments

Joseph Jaffe runs a marketing company called crayon and in the lead up to a visit to Australia Marketing Magazine have completed an interview with Jaffe on his thoughts about Second Life as a platform.

He’s fairly scathing on some of the earlier marketing efforts in Second Life, something older Second Life residents would agree heartily with. He equates SL with a new continent and that those early pioneer marketers squandered a great opportunity.

Here’s the interview in full:

Thanks to Mal Burns for the heads-up.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: , ,

Kzero: 7 Point Plan for Marketing in Virtual Worlds

August 12, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Kzero have released an updated version of their 7 Point Plan for marketing in virtual worlds. It’s a free publication that can be ordered here.

There’s certainly a plethora of white papers, discussion papers and case studies around now – the only thing left is the holy grail of a true ROI case for investment in virtual worlds.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: ,

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