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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Second Life For the Enterprise?

I abandoned SL about a year ago after over a year of exploration. Is it now crowded and profitable? People spending 100 minutes of time there per visit on average? I saw my enterprise build a space, I watched some very large companies build theirs presence. As an avatar I chattered with developers and managers there. I attended a number of meetings. It is still an interesting idea, but very clumsy and inefficient to get anything at all done. You could establish a new life, but only by largely abandoning your first one. Waiting for a reason to take another look.

2 comments:

Roz said...

I agree with the point I think you're making -- Second Life is an inefficient way to do the same things we do in real-life business.

The greatest potential, though, is in tackling the things that are hard to do in real life. Training, collaboration (especially across distance), scenario planning, crisis planning -- there are beginning to be some exciting applications in these areas.

And as the technological obstacles to widespread virtual-world adoption get fixed, the businesses who are already "fluent" in virtual space will have a competitive advantage over those who send one marginalized employee into the space to test the waters and try to get on the moving train. Though I shouldn't complain -- this may turn out to be the Full-Employment Act for longtime SL residents.

Just my $.02

Franz Dill said...

Roz,
Good points. I was looking for remote collaboration and interaction. I found that SL just confused that .... it was more about random social interaction. For the enterpise something much more focused made sense. I still like the virtual meeting idea. Check out Teleplace for that http://eponymouspickle.blogspot.com/2009/09/qwaq-becomes-teleplace.html