Do I Need to Get A Life?
By Steve Horton
A year ago, our partners asked that I research Web 2.0 and determine which new internet-based tools were successfully supporting corporate communications efforts. Web 2.0, after a quick Google search, is simply the term coined by Tim O’Riley of O’Riley Media, Inc. to define second-generation Web-based communities. In more popular terms, those are the social networking sites.
Today, the sites are part of our daily vocabulary: MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube. But it’s Second Life that’s taken the user experience to a new level – drawing the attention of the world’s corporate giants. Those companies are dumping major marketing dollars into making sure their brands are as prominent in Second Life as they are in real life.
Second Life, an Internet-based virtual world created by Linden Labs of San Francisco, is a social community where you can chat with friends and meet new people with similar interests. Second Life takes the best of social networking and plugs it into a three-dimensional world complete with water, land, trees, buildings and yes, people. Now when users have a conversation with someone it’s more than copy in a dialogue box… there is a face behind it.
How does the 3-D experience ad up for company’s bottom lines?
There has been a backlash of negative attention in recent months surrounding the ad value for businesses investing in Second Life. One of the biggest question marks about the emerging communications outlet is: Will my message reach my audience? So far, Second Life has reported millions in advertising revenue spent in their virtual playground by Nissan, Dell, IBM, Sun Microsystems, among others, but the questions remains… what’s the ROI? You won’t find the answer on the bottom line of your year-end balance sheet or in green next to your stock market ticker.
In the new age of social media, calculating the number of potential consumers viewing your message is not easy because blasting a message is not the designated role of Web 2.0 outlets. Instead, they are designed for user-generated content where the “experience” is most important and can’t be bought, only created.
Take for example, the Geek Squad. In real life, they have built a name for themselves by driving around in their “geek mobile” and dressing in the traditional nerd uniform. Who better to help with the virus on your computer than a computer geek, right? Well now you can save your time (and their gas) by visiting their Second Life office (or islands as they are called in Second Life), where Geek Squad staff keep regular business hours to answer your IT questions… for free! Is this a revenue generator for Geek Squad? No way, even the service representative I spoke to testified to that. But, their laid-back approach has created a consumer-generated buzz, making their island one of the most popular on the grid. So, while their Wall Street stock may not be skyrocketing, their virtual stock amongst a new generation of potential consumers, some nine million strong, is producing steady returns.
Does Second Life fit into my communications plan?
Second Life hasn’t proven to be a threat to traditional media outlets for dispersing news, but organizations are finding their way in this virtual word. The Web 2.0 presence does provide an chance to enhance:
Brand presence: At its most simple, companies create the Second Life version of their Web site, giving information commonly included in the company credentials kit.
Human resources: Many companies including Accenture, U.S. Cellular and GE Money hold virtual job interviews in Second Life. The virtual interview process has become so popular that Second Life now holds its own series of job fairs.
Customer relations: This is another outlet for your audience to find answers to product related questions – an extension of customer-service sites and call centers.
Events: Perhaps the most appealing from a user standpoint, online events such as concerts, book reviews and online speaking engagements have been successful in reaching a large number of visitors.
While Second Life, with nearly $7.5 million in U.S. currency exchanges in Q1 2007, seems like a sure bet for getting in front of the next generation of consumers, the safe call may be to spend some time exploring before investing marketing dollars on creating an island in this vast marketing menagerie.
