Emergence Media

Introduction

Last week, there was a lot of buzz around BrandWeek’s article, “Are Marketers Dying on Second Life?“, which placed a reality check on the marketing hype around Second Life:

So far all this collective marketing savvy hasn’t much impressed the actual Second Lifers. More than 70% of the site’s users say they are disappointed with the marketing that goes on in SL, according to a new survey by Komjuniti, a Hamburg, Germany, research firm. This could be because companies are approaching the site like a traditional marketing channel. (Emphasis Mine).

Does that sound familiar? Remember back in 1996 when someone’s idea of a website was scanning in the company brochure and uploading it? Yep, that’s what marketers are doing on Second Life.

The Web is not a PDF repository for your company brochure. Why are the big brands on Second Life following that pattern? As Karl Long declared: “For gods sake have some imagination, experiment with something, create something that you can’t create in the real world, create a way to for people to interact with people that they can’t in the real world.”
Understanding the Second Life Market Landscape

A 15 minute walk around Second Life will reveal that its a very niche demographic of users - again, just like the Internet in the early days. Further exploration would reveal two major challenges on marketing opportunities in the Second Life metaverse:

1. Scale and Audience Size

Scale

Just like in real life, in Second Life only so many people can be at one store at a time. For regular websites, you can have hundreds of thousands of visitors entering your ecommerce store with not too many problems (given enough hardware).

Audience Size

Second Life is rushing in its attempt to scale up, but in the near future it will never have the size nor the scale of say American Online at its peak in the 1990s. As of today, Second Life has +5.3m members, but only +1.6 have logged on in the past 60 days.

AOL had about 10m members in the late 1990s, and I would assume that most were active (since it was a paid service). And on Facebook, there are 18m members as of February 2007.

2. Demographics and “Second Life Culture”

Second Life geniuely have its own distinct culture that is different from the general Internet users at large. Eric Kintz of HP puts it well, when he neatly separates the mass audience appeal of the Internet with the more narrow and niche intention of Second Lifers:

“Second Life is about realizing your fantasies and being something different than you are in real life. Many avatars have a different gender than the subscriber or take animal forms. However most brands mimic their real life experiences and value proposition in Second Life.”

In other words, you do not go to Second Life dressed in your transgendered furry costume to go to the newly opened H&R Block Island on Second Life. Note: If you don’t know what a “furry” is - then you really need to do your research before marketing on Second Life. ;-)
Eric Kintz goes on to list 10 reasons why he feels hesitant about Second Life, here are some of the most relevant:

#5. The content is primarily adult oriented
#6. Brands are underestimating the investments required.
#7. Brands are not staying true to the Second Life values.
#8. Second Life experiences are not integrated with the overall brand experience.

Conclusion: Second Life is Not Ready for Primetime
In short, Second Life as a marketing channel face several barriers before it can seen as having broader marketing opportunities:

• Scalability: Second Life has a relatively small, active and niche userbase. Also, being 3D you can not have say, 1 million people hit your location at one time. Just like in real life there’s a limit on how many people can be in one store.
• Demographics/Second Life Culture: Given its small size, Second Life has its own culture that must be respected and requires any brand to truly fit and become part of that community. Unfortunately, right now that Second Life community is too narrow to appeal to most companies - Why is H&R Block there?

Assuming Linden Labs can overcome its scalability issues (as they’re known for having some issues keeping up) and establish a more diverse Second Life audience and culture, marketers may find broader opportunities in the Second Life metaverse.

Additionally, while not discussed here, Second Life also seems to have a lack of full metrics tracking, due to technical bandwidth and priorities. While it is possible to track all actions on Second Life, this is something that is currently not a priority on Linden Labs.