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Community Spirit
On one point everyone agrees: any real-world business wanting to see any measure of success in Second Life is going to have to become part of -- and give freely to -- the community.
"Companies need to investigate before they jump in; put on their anthropologists' hats, try to understand what the community values, and how to give it to them," says Garrett French, a partner with Bold Interactive, a community marketing incubator. The first thing businesses must do: give up control, he says.
"You have to think of yourself as providing a kind of brand play dough, giving users the ability to manipulate your products and services according to how they fit within the community," says French. This idea can be very frightening for major brands that are used to tightly controlling their messaging, he says. "But it's the prerequisite for success."
"The question is, what utility are you adding for users that they can't get from a traditional Web site?" asks Greg Lastowka, a professor at the Rutgers School of Law, in Camden, N.J., who studies the legal and cultural relationships between virtual worlds and real life. "I don't see anything wrong with putting up virtual billboards or opening a virtual store in Second Life, but it comes down to -- just as it does on the Web, or in real life -- how do you want to spend your overall marketing and advertising dollars, and what's the payoff? If the Second Life community simply ignores your billboards, or your store, what's the point?"
"It's not just a case of build it and they will come," agrees Ben James, strategy director at Rivers Run Red, a virtual design firm. "You have to treat people as you would in the real world. Tease them, excite them, keep a dialogue with them and keep them interested. That doesn't mean simply building something and walking away -- the community doesn't like that."
Indeed, one of the most disconcerting aspects of wandering through the beautiful but vacant commercial spaces of Second Life is that none of the major companies has bothered to "staff" their virtual spaces. There are no avatars to greet you, show you around, answer your questions. Although theoretically these halls will eventually hum with users who will share their experiences with, say, a certain model car, or recommend a good book to read, right now the social part of the shopping experience -- which is supposedly what Second Life offers over the Web -- is completely lacking.
Hiring and training employees to act as avatars to greet and guide visitors is a logical next step for real-world businesses to take in their Second Life initiatives, says PARC's Ducheneaut. "But a major change of mindset is involved. To do this right, it will be extremely labor intensive," he says. "You need these spaces to be warm and welcoming; this means there have to be avatars there at all times, and real human beings behind those avatars. This will require a tremendous commitment of resources."
About the weirdly echoing halls of the virtual Sun Pavilion when there isn't an event happening, Melissinos did a nudge-nudge-wink-wink "no comment." "Let's just say it hasn't gone unnoticed," he says.
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