tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540166.post115601579352002656..comments2024-03-28T10:44:01.308-07:00Comments on @jspepper: Second Life Convention: RL Business in SLJeremyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17859194486093074401noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5540166.post-1156166549229234602006-08-21T06:22:00.000-07:002006-08-21T06:22:00.000-07:00Jeremy, I've been in SL 2 years running a large in...Jeremy, I've been in SL 2 years running a large inworld mainland rentals business so I get to work with a lot of different kinds of people.<BR/><BR/>It strikes me that the handful of "metaverse consultants" like Electric Sheep, Millions of Us, etc. who have parlayed their inworld experience and connections to Linden Lab into lucrative businesses are in a sense themselves trying to act as gate-keepers now -- and this is probably unnecessary. In some ways,l they're overcomplexifying the world of Second Life in part to sell their own services. That's to be expected, and their servers will be needed, even if hyped far less. But many, many people successfully enter and engage with SL in a huge variety of ways for fun, non-profit, and profit, and it's getting easier, not harder, and new group tools coming next week will make management of a product even better.<BR/><BR/>There isn't any such thing as "the community" in Second Life -- it's actually a hugely atomized and sporadic population and the "communities" that have identity and visibility and are "taste-makers" are very diverse, i.e. everything from Buddhists to Goreans to furries to Siths and numerous people uninvolved in any of these role-playing activities who are merely there socializing and looking for partners or to work a business.<BR/><BR/>Any business from the "outside" large or small can enter Second Life at any end of the spectrum on their own, without permission or hand-holding, by taking a free account and just flying around to explore or buying an island for $1250 and setting up a conference center or store. If you have no staff available familiar with programming or 3-D building, it will take at least 30 days to get some rough familiarity with the tools yourself, but there are enough prefabs, inworld services, and classes that the way is very much paved for you. You can interact with others as much or as little as you like. <BR/><BR/>It's true that you're likely to be only a one-hit wonder if you pin your success on the "first to do X in SL" strategy -- those niches are rapidly filling. But if you have "value-add" like a concert or a live radio program or authors to meet, you have to be very conscious of the limitations -- to avoid enraging the people beyond the mere 40-100 special ones who can get on your simulator or 4-corners at a time, you have to figure out how to enable people to mix their home brews -- and that means making sure you have an absolutely locked-down absolutely trouble-free working URL that *works on land in SL* i.e. not "pls" etc but a numbered IP address to be pasted in the media parcels. Not rocket science. <BR/><BR/>Taking your star quickly on flyabouts around to those networks of people in their villas/pubs/commons/palaces/beaches is also something nobody ever tries, they keep using the recipe of making the masses flock to these overloaded event sims, and that is just going to jam and break as a model sooner rather than later.<BR/><BR/>The other value to provide is lasting interest "stickyness" on the parcel for asynchronous visits, i.e. music to hear by interacting, text/pictures to look at, interesting builds, socializing areas, boating, etc.<BR/><BR/>There is a demonstrable way to measure advertising -- clickthrough rates measured by those actually teleporting to the parcel from the inworld classifieds ad, and the traffic numbers automatically posted on the land daily.<BR/><BR/>People like me with indigenous businesses are hoping that both the metaverse sherpas and the big gentlemen explorers and East India Companies they bring into this country don't displace us; by not displacing us they can assure viability to the many other customers that we help sustain in the world while they are off somewhere else, having finished their 45 minutes in SL doing their ad campaigns.Prokofy Nevahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01182569366619678896noreply@blogger.com