How do we turn virtual worlds like SL into a business platform ?

[Jim Brock]

Now that the media hyped bubble has burst and a mere presence isn’t guarantee no more for some flashing headlines, how do we upgrade to the next level ?

What is needed to turn a virtual world like SL/Opengrid into a successful business platform ? Is it a matter of time before people's mindset will change or should we try and develop the tools first ?

[Mark Burhop]

So who is "we"? Or, rather, who would would be "second"? What do you mean by business?

Are you thinking about conducting business with others like what exits in the SL economy now?

Or are you talking about RL companies using it for RL business? For example SL and IBM are working on a "secure" SL. Many people are working on OpenSim where you can host your own VW inside a corp fire wall.

But I may be getting off the topic depending on what you are asking.

[Jim Brock]

With 'we' I meant, us :)

The people interested, involved and passionate advocates of VW's. The content creators, the marketeers and early adopters. With business I mean RL businesses, not specifically sales, but how can we try and shape a enviroment where businesses and professionals feel confident to use it as a 'mature' medium.

Lets say for arguments sake we take LinkedIn as an example. Most of us propably have a LinkedIn profile, expanding the LinkedIn network to a virtual meeting place sounds natural, but linking SecondLife/OpenSim to LinkedIn atm sounds un-natural, cause nobody considers SL as a 'business' platform...

[Jay Swartz]

Jim,

Great post. This fits with the Making a Living from VWs group.

The answer to this is complex. A range of factors impact the adoption curve and those factors vary by industry as well as market segment.

Some VWs are already well established as business tools. Forterra has a growing installed base of customers in the government sector for training military squads, first responders, and other emergency situations. Caspian Systems, out of the UK, has established training customers that include Volvo and several pharma companies. Proton Media also has a growing installed base, primarily in the training sector. The common thread to all of these is that the VWs are private, inside the corporate net and secure.

The public VWs face a challenge. There are issues with IP created or discussed in these VWs. Linden Lab has a clause in their agreement that gives them uncontrolled access to anything created inworld. Beyond that, it is also unclear how secure the creations and the conversations are from third-parties, likely not very and certainly not up to corporate security standards.

Many businesses entered Second Life with visions of reaching out to customers in a new and exciting way. The stark reality is that there are only 50,000 people in all of SL at any one time, and only slightly more than that who enter through the day. For any business, this is not a sufficiently large market to merit major investments. Many companies have come and gone because of this; they were sold the hype and the business reality wasn't there to support it.

This said, there is an opportunity for VWs being testbeds for green concepts. Meetings, collaboration and training can benefit greatly from VWs, but again are subject to the IP issues above if conducted in one of the public VWs.

My crystal ball tells me that private VWs will continue to grow and proliferate, public VWs will continue to struggle, and over the next several years technology advances in facial recognition, security, bandwidth, interconncting standards for avatars/objects and VW technology platforms will make VWs an irresistible force that will move the web as we know it today to a 3D environment everyone uses.

So, the short answer is that in some areas it already is a thriving business and in other areas it will take some time to become viable.

[Jim Brock]

I agree, atm 'closed/private' VW's will take a bigger flight atm then the public ones. The current practical applications are more viable for closed versions, but isn't that for a big part also due to 'mindset' ?

If we, the vw creators/shapers, would build the tools for businesses and professionals to communicate and do business, wouldn't they eventually see the appeal ?

Linking back to my previous reply, wouldn't a virtual face-to-face meet with your LinkedIn contacts be more appealing then some of them being just a contact in outlook and LinkedIn ?

Couldn't a VW presence be more attractive then a web presence ? Instead of mere 2D pages with some flash/silverlight widgets, wouldn't a 3D enviroment be more compelling ? A knowledge base represented as a real library for instance ? Amazon as a real store instead of flat pages ? iTunes as.. well not as a regular cd store, but something different and compelling ?

[Ryker]

IMHO... there are many similarities between real life and virtual worlds, as it should be. Virtual worlds is simply another place to go to, just as you would go to the local mall. Just as in real life, access should be simple and easy. I think, on the internet, f or web3d, this means: put the web3d directly in the browser and hopefully
the user will "surf onto it" and immediately the web3d shows up in his browser.
So...I think..for RETAIL success, it really should be in the browser.

However, for corporate uses etc.... where they WANT a walled environment..
then a stand alone client specifially modelled to their needs wouldwork perfectly:
a web3d intranet.

[Jim Brock]

Ok, well consider LindenLab releasing their servercode Q3/Q4 2008, then you'd be able to run your own simulator not connected to the grid... but a mere 'offline' enviroment isn't gonna change much before businesses are willing to adopt it as a mature business platform.

[Dep1050 Plasma]

Hi Jim.
Can you say what is the source of this news?
I read from here http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/03/second-life-ser.html
different info. This is the last news I have about.

Tx

Dep

[Jim Brock]

Let's take it from a different angle...

We've a got a unified secure payment system. Global access. Full compatibility amongst all users. We're able to stream video and audio, interact one-on-one and one-to-many.

Why can't we lift this of the ground ?

The web's made up of dozens of different payment systems, creditcard is the defacto standard along with paypal but still nothing universal. It's global, just like the internet. There are no browser incompatibilities like with IE and Safari. The tools to express and communicate are even bigger then the internet...

So apart from 100 simultaneous visitors maximum and the usual upgrade/bug fixes, what can we do to make a VW like SL a more mature business platform ?

And with platform I mean a logical choice as a method of communication, either internal or external wether it's B2B or B2C. We have a unique oppertunity to target our audience, and track them. We can include avatars in web CMS' so they're verified so we can conduct sales transactions inworld with realword product delivery. Instead of seeying the grey 'google analytical' numbers we can drill down and follow per person activity...

Is it time for the creative and the tech people to embrase the commercial professionals and to let them sale these exciting platforms for us, or do we still need time to develop it further before we're ready ?

[Ryker]

Jim quote "Is it time for the creative and the tech people to embrase the commercial professionals and to let them sale these exciting platforms for us, or do we still need time to develop it further before we're ready ?"

Ah yes I think salespeople can help! Sales and development working in tandem
can perhaps focus product. :P

[Jim Brock]

I don't mind tandem jumping off a cliff with a cute blonde, but how do we sell it to the sales people in the first place ?

[Shenlei Winkler]

We at the Fashion Research Institute are using virtual worlds not for social networking or for microbusiness, but to enable real enterprise level business manufacturing for business. We serve the apparel industry, a $1.7 trillion/year industry. The industry is global, old, and wasteful. It has never been mechanized in any real, meaningful way.

We're working with IBM, our business and research partner, to overhaul the apparel industry using virtual worlds to enable meaningful product design and development. We've looked at all the VWs out there, and we are focused on OpenSim for a lot of reasons. Scalability, interoperability, and above all, security; the fact that we can build the back end server code from the ground up to IBM standards; the fact we can develop our own user interface and our own industry-specific and appropriate tools - these are all reasons we want OpenSim.

We've looked very closely at SL tm and for various reasons, Second Life tm is not the platform of choice for enterprise-level production, especially for any industry or business that genuinely values its intellectual property. At best, it can serve as a training ground (how we use it), for B2C plays when the consumers show up, for brand extension, or for some a micro-business supporting those who come to 'play' after their 'real life' work is done.

I would argue strongly that we will see widespread adoption of virtual worlds as the 'next thing' by 2011. At that point, the consumers WILL be there, and the marketers and other consumer-facing sorts will have an audience to play to. As those of us active in virtual worlds know, the consumer there doesn't always respond well to old marketing tactics. You do need to engage with those communities in specific ways. Preparing yourself and your company now is mission critical or when the consumer base lands - companies may find themselves running just to catch up.

As far as what is needed for OpenSim: coding. Lots, and lots, and lots of code. And then testing. Lots and lots and lots of testing. If you're interested, pick a grid and just get going - they always need testers. I spent some time on the OS Grid doing some building and testing before my IBM team got our two Blade servers on the IBM Yellow Zone up and running. I like the people over there, Charles Krinick (Sp?) is a great guy and he's very helpful towards people who want to build and file bug reports on Mantis.

Also, for all virtual worlds, interoperability standards. For those who have a real interest in such matters, the Architectural Working Group (AWG) is head's down on such considerations. Our IBM Research Team Leader, Dave Levine (Zha Ewry in sl tm) is very involved in this area, if you're interested in working on such matters IMing him in world or joining the AWG is a good first step.

For some virtual worlds - content. Textures, animations, 3D models - the list goes on and on. I know that there is movement to have an appropriate process to accept content for OpenSim for their installation library, and I'd think other VWs would have something similar.

I still love SL for its rich content, and I hope we see it stay around for a long time. But I'm also looking towards the future, which is now.

The scalability issues - I don't lose sleep over this consideration. It's not quite fixed yet, but it will be, and it will be within a 12-18 month window.

My thoughts. Your mileage may vary, etc.

[Oh...Shameless plug for those Blade servers - they are screamingly fast and stable, even with very alpha code running on them. They're just monsters. If IBM does come out with an offer this year for SL hosted on THEIR servers, I'm going to try to get Shengri La transferred over. If their hosting services are at all similar to their current server hosting charges, it'll be a deal on so many levels.]

[Mark Burhop]

Great Post Shenlei. Use of Virtual Worlds for product design could become very fashionable in the future (pardon the pun). As Ken says later, many of the pieces are there.

On the other hand, there is really not a huge effort going on to support this. Sure, the IBM/LL agreement will offer some security for better control of your region one it becomes available.

OpenSim probably offers more potential since you can bring it inside your firewall. However, while it does work, you really can't do much more than experimenation at this time. It will probably be another year before it is as stable/usable as SL is today.

So the issues beyond that for things like scalability, support for much richer geometric and display functionality (needed for real product design) may be a year or so beyond that.

Now other readers might take a look at some other VW technologies and they could get there sooner in terms of security and functionality (I have a list floating around her someplace). However, no one wants to learn yet another complicated UI interface and businesses need something serious for something like product design.

Now IBM and Sun are aware of all this too (I bother Zha a lot about this stuff :-) but until businesses start better comunicating what they will need, they will continue to be over run by a bunch of young girls wanting access to the Barbie world.