The Second Frontier - May 9, 2007
Recently, during my travels, I read an article titled “The Web’s Second Act” in Southwest Airline’s Spirit Magazine. To be honest I read it a few times because the concept was hard to wrap my head around. Basically, Second Life is a metaverse, much like the Sims, that allows one to live a virtual life. Normally I am not inclined to play online fantasy games but this one caught my attention especially when I learned about the “Linden” (the linden is SL’s official currency). One U.S. dollar is equivliant to $267 Linden. My immediate question was, “How does this work?” Evidently it works well. Take Anshe Chung (his SL alias is Ailin Graef) for example. He is SL’s first proclaimed millionaire (literally) and real estate mogul. It is estimated that he generates $150k in profit a year. Yes, believe it, people actually spend real dough to purchase SL’s virtual property. But property isn’t the only hot commodity in this metraverse. Many people purchase designer clothing, drinks at nightclubs, and other various good and services for their avatar (your virtual self, which can be modified to look like you).
So how do we as an agency impliment our professional skills and services in this metraverse? Do we approach and pitch new buisness in this virtual world? Do we suggest that our clients have a presence in SL? Is there a need? To see if advertising actually had a presence in SL, I signed up (my alias is Shepard Straaf) and decide to take my virtual doppleganger on a walk of curiosity. To no surprise, I found many “outdoor” adverts for nightclubs, real estate, clothing and other various goods and services. I also searched, using the dashboard (Second Life has it’s own interface which you download) , for existing advertising agencies. There were a large number of self proclaimed advertisers. Which led me to my next question. What can we do better? My immediate answer was everything.
Is Second Life is a new business frontier? To put it into perspective I took an excerpt from the article.
“.…n the mid-1980s a friend of his had shown him something that he said was going to change the way we lived. My friend had scoffed. Turned out his friend had showed him a little thing called the Internet. So he was reluctant to scoff anymore.”
“Second Life is gonna change not just the Internet,” he said, “but the entire retail experience. It’s gonna change the way we meet with each other. It’ll make us see the Internet entirely differently.”
I might look back on this blog one day and realize I was chasing a broken dream. It could be a flop like Crystal Pepsi or the Ford Edsel or it could be the next big business frontier. In my humble opinion, I think the experimental risk might be worth the reward.
To view the entire Spirit Magazine article visit: http://www.spiritmag.com/2007_04/features/ft2.php