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Forrester to business: ignore virtual worlds at your peril

January 12, 2008 by 2 Comments

Well known technology and market research company Forrester have released a paper titled ‘Getting Real Work Done In Virtual Worlds’.

If you’ve got a spare $249.00 (US) you can read the full report, but otherwise you’ll have to be happy with the executive summary supplied. Although far from a new claim, the key one in the summary is that “within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today”.

It’s a message most businesses either can’t or won’t digest. A lot of businesses are unable to see beyond immediate return on investment and combine that with the cutting edge nature of virtual worlds and you have the slow adoption occurring now. The corporations who are taking the plunge have rightly realised it’s a research and development exercise. Of course, the true virtual business innovators are the thousands of small businesses running every day in worlds like Second Life. The larger real-world entities could learn quite a bit from the home-based virtual world entrepreneurs.

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

Metrics for virtual worlds

January 1, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Business-oriented site Metaversed is running a very interesting story on metrics in Second Life and the implications for business. To date, measuring the amount of activity in worlds like Second Life has been fraught with inconsistencies and downright impossible in closed worlds like World of Warcraft. Of course, traffic numbers don’t equate to engagement, the real holy grail for business.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: ,

Accessibility to virtual worlds in business

December 12, 2007 by Leave a Comment

A post from Peter Abrahams on IT-Director.com makes the claim that business cannot afford to block access to Second Life for their employees. The argument runs that the gains to be made in training, meetings and their associated cost savings makes it a no-brainer.

Abrahams takes the argument further, stating “A blue chip company will never want to be pulled through the courts or exposed in the media for excluding anyone with a disability from a real life meeting”. With the more traditional options like teleconference, I think it’s drawing a long bow to claim that discrimination is occurring if Second Life isn’t made available. For me, the real argument is the cost savings – compare teleconference costs to installing Second Life and the value proposition is obvious – there’s no need to even have premium accounts for your employees (though it’s not hard to imagine the grumbling around that).

So is it likely to be open slather for Second Life in business? Somehow I doubt it – like most applications there’ll be varying levels of access with procedures around their use. The more innovative businesses will allow more widespread use and even encourage it. The more conservative group will either avoid the issue until they start to lag their competition or allow access to a couple of product development people.

What are your thoughts? Can you imagine Second Life widely available in your workplace?

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

Deloitte and Westpac explore Second Life

December 9, 2007 by Leave a Comment

A story last week in The Australian’s IT section mentions that both Deloitte and Westpac have made some initial forays into Second Life. Both appear to be adopting a model of using it for internal purposes like meetings, something that business is increasingly latching onto.

Both companies have enormous numbers of staff – Westpac has 27 thousand and Deloitte has 4 thousand in Australia (135 thousand worldwide). Those are the sort of numbers that make virtual worlds a very attractive proposition from a cost-saving viewpoint, let alone the innovation potential.

Thanks to Ross Dawson for the heads-up.

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

SydSim – is that progress?

December 3, 2007 by 10 Comments

We covered Telstra’s new islands a month ago, but I thought it was worth paying another visit to see what progress had been made on what had been touted as a Sydney CBD replica. Here’s what I saw:

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I think the pictures pretty much speak for themselves. Telstra deserve plaudits for their work to date in Second Life, but SydSim is looking increasingly like an exception to that rule. There’s a real risk of failing in any sort of engagement with the Second Life community when you have a maze of virtual roadways and tall skyscrapers to navigate. Telstra’s own building on SydSim is the pick of the small bunch but even it is nothing more than a promotional shopfront. Obviously, the whole build is far from complete – I’m unsure why the two islands are even open to the public given the state they’re in.

Have you had a look and what do you think? My impression so far is that SydSim is an extremely poor competitor to its Melbourne counterpart.

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

Pearse’d & Cut – Victorian Menswear

November 25, 2007 by 1 Comment

Pearse’d & Cut is an Australian-owned Second Life business that focuses on 19th Century menswear. Owner Edward Pearse offers waistcoats, trousers, hats and shoes and an array of military uniforms.

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The whole get-up is authentic as you’d expect from a business on the Caledon sim. I even picked up a kilt for the hell of it.

Check it out in-world

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

Australian business interest growing in Second Life?

November 10, 2007 by 4 Comments

In the next two weeks I’m involved in two separate events that have the same purpose – to raise awareness of the opportunities that Second Life presents. The first has a corporate focus and the panel discussion involves key people from Telstra, REA and the ABC involved in their respective Second Life presences. The second one is also business orientated with a communications flavour.

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In both cases, there’ll be up to a hundred representatives from Australian businesses, most of them medium to large operations with varying understanding of virtual worlds. A while back we wrote about Australian business taking a ‘wait and see’ approach – this may still be the case but there’s certainly no shortage of forums where SL is being presented as an innovation option.

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

World Stock Exchange – the latest controversy

November 4, 2007 by 7 Comments

I noticed on SL Reports.net that the World Stock Exchange (WSE) run by Australian, LukeConnell Vandeverre, is subject to controversy again.

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A virtual financial company called Midas Group has declared bankruptcy and alleges that WSE is part of the cause due to not paying a bond payment. There’s been calls made for WSE boycotts and much more.

What this latest drama reinforces is the fundamental problem with the unregulated financial system in SL – why would any serious investor look at a system where there’s no regulation and multiple stock exchanges that publicly criticise each other’s viability? One of the main value propositions of Second Life is it’s freedom, but this is one area where too much freedom may be one of the virtual world’s major pitfalls.

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

SydSim is on its way

November 1, 2007 by 3 Comments

Telstra have announced the development of a replica of the Sydney CBD on their suite of islands. It’s a development with business firmly in mind:

“At SydSim, real world businesses will soon be able to explore the commercial opportunities available in the virtual world, by renting an office or shopfront at the virtual location of their existing real world premises.

This is an opportunity to secure top-notch locations in a 3D virtual skyscape of Sydney’s CBD, and see what sales, marketing and employee collaboration opportunities are available, without the fuss of setting up their own island.”

When we contacted Telstra and asked when SydSim would be a reality, we were told it was already live. All I could find this evening was the start of a build on two new sims: Martin Place and Loftus:

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There’s never been any doubts about Telstra’s commercial focus within Second Life – this is an obvious evolution from the successful land rentals and the recent expansion of two more sims. I’d imagine there’ll be no problems selling the SydSim real estate – the real challenge will be managing lag issues on what is already a popular neck of the woods.

What’s not in doubt is Telstra’s committment to SL – the other Australian Telcos have some major catching up to do in the virtual world sphere.

Check it out in-world

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

Real Estate Life – the full story

October 25, 2007 by 4 Comments

As promised, we spent a little more time checking out ‘Real Estate Life’, the island launched by the REA Group. There’s a lot of emphasis on space and it’s certainly not a build that has logo saturation – the main building certainly has its fair share but otherwise it’s an understated approach.

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We caught up with Dave Platter, Corporate PR and Internal Communications Manager from REA to ask a handful of questions:

Lowell Cremorne: What was the impetus for the decision to develop a presence in Second Life?

Dave Platter: The web has changed a lot since we got started with our first site 12 years ago. SecondLife represents one possible vision of what the web of the future will look like.

We want to be a part of it so we could better understand how it works. That way we can apply the lessons we learn to our 16 real estate websites.

Lowell Cremorne: You’ve mentioned a primary aim is to engage with the SL community – how do you plan on achieving that?

Dave Platter: Launching the REA Group island is the first step. But in one sense it’s the least important of all. What’s really important is building relationships. So our next step is to spend more time in-world, using the island as a base and perhaps a place for meetings and events. We’re walking with baby steps and we will use what we learn from other Second Lifers to help us decide what to do next.

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Lowell Cremorne: Do you have a timeframe for your committment to Second Life – are there success metrics that would lead you to leaving if they weren’t met?

Dave Platter: At this point the only thing that would cause us to abandon SecondLife would be if we simply decided there was nothing else useful to learn there. But, given the vitality of the community and the innovation the platform displays, there probably is a lot to learn in SecondLife.

Lowell Cremorne: Will the islands have any staffing?

Dave Platter: They won’t have full-time staff for now. It’s not a retail store or even an information booth, although there are some information screens. Rather than waiting on the island for people to drop by, we’ll seek out people, places and events of interest, and also sometimes we’ll invite others to come by.

It’ll be interesting to see how the island fares over coming months – there’s no shortage of near-deserted corporate presences around Second Life. If the enaggement strategy espoused is put into practice, REA may be one of the success stories.

Check it out in-world

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

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