Steve Rubel has posted an informative and lengthy analysis of Second Life and its importance to professional communicators.
In a nutshell Steve is saying it isn’t as big as the hype, but you still need to know about it.
That pretty much fits with what I thought, but Steve has some figures to back it up. Second Life’s biggest barrier to growth is that it requires far too great a time investment.
I’ve installed it and started to explore but found it far too heavy going for the benefits I can currently see. That might change in the future.
The other big problem with Second Life as a business environment is the whole thing about it being a ‘second life’ and forcing you to use a false name. I know you can fill in your real world profile, but it isn’t something you are prompted to do. For me this just doesn’t fit with my transparent way of doing business. I’d much prefer to interact in Second Life as me, rather than as Stuart Briers, the pseudonym I’ve been forced to adopt. I know Neville Hobson (Jangles Junot) and Lee Hopkins (Lee Laperriere) are both in Second Life, but why do I need to go that extra step of wasting time to find out what their pseudonyms are? Like me Lee has used his own first name.
Doing a search on people it is interesting to see that Text 100, who are about to open Second Life’s first PR office, are using Text 100 as the first part of their character names (or at least some of them are).
tags: Second+Life, business, PR, public+relations
Drew Brewster 🙂
I've already got two lives, well three actually: Real life/family; Real life/work etc; Virtual life/electronic – blogging, email, IM, wiki (sorry), etc.
I tried Second Life. Thought I'd go and find Neville's store. Tried and failed to get two computers to do my bidding. I suspect I need much faster graphics gear. Found it utterly timewasting and pointless with my kit. Gave up.
I agree with you about the name stuff. Given that I was forced into a surname, I chose 'Day' and called myself 'Lovely'.
Know anyone who wants to buy it?
Probably against the rules.
I tried to get into The Sims when every man and his dog were playing the 'game' but couldn't understand why people would want to play it much like I do with Second Life. When I play games i want to be taken to another world, an interactive fantasy where you are the protagonist – the James Bond or the Aragon, out to rid the world of evil. Why would you get home from a day at the office to go and live a life in a virtual reality world that's quite similar real life.