As Second Life aficionados debate whether their virtual world needs a new lease of life, its synthetic economy is quietly paying out second incomes to a cadre of freelancers.
Working in small teams populated by other freelancers, independent, Web-savvy, workers, often between assignments, are winning roles as greeters for in-world companies.
PA Consulting is one such corporate resident that has turned to freelancers, not its own employees, to deliver a good first impression – critical in space of more than 100 leading global brands.
“Second Life is still a relatively new space and so it follows that in terms of the technology, it’s only people who are using it day in, day out, that are really at the forefront.
“The majority of those people tend to be working freelance, from home and are embedded in the Second Life space, as developers largely,” said David Sumray, Second Life lead at PA.
PA pays each freelance, greeters or developers, in Linden dollars – SL’s currency that carries the space maker’s name and, crucially at this time, is convertible to real-world cash.
Having, then, done their bit to “keep in the spirit” of Second Life, Sumray and his fellow consultants set about ensuring resident, and would-be resident, companies do the same.
He explained :“If global firms want to ensure their SL visitors sense their presence is truly global, they need people in-world to greet them, to make the environment warm and the visitor comfortable.
“The company would also need to provide the right technology-led interactions, to make people who visit feel as if they are taking part in the environment, rather than just walking through it.”
Without this ‘personal touch’, designed to foster participation, resident companies risk giving their visitors – prospective clients – no reason to engage, come back, or spread the word.
“What typically happens when companies first enter SL is that they create a static environment which just replicates a real-world office of some description,” Sumray added.
“All of a sudden, they realise [it is actually worse than a normal office because] they have not created any interactivity, so they thrown in game or gimmick. This slightly misses this point.”
Joseph Jaffe, founder of Crayon, hailed as the first company to launch simultaneously in the real and virtual worlds, has advised firms not to build a presence in SL ‘just to be there.’
“When you do it for the buzz, when you force that viral marketing,” he told Ad Age, “that's when you go off course. Great content and great ideas will naturally be viral.”
In terms of what to create, Mark-Hans Richer, marketing director at Pontiac, told the industry bible it was key that companies offer value to the community, other than just a product.
“This is not the kind of place where you have a salesperson avatar trying to collect leads,” he explained. “That's not correct for the culture. You have to stand back and let them [consumers] explore you.”
Sumray agrees: “What is it the company can learn about the consumer, and what they want?” he said, starting a check-list of questions companies in SL should be asking themselves.
“With the technology provided, what is the consumer getting out of the interaction? What is it the consumer can learn about the company or its products/services? [And] does it really feel [to the consumer] they are engaging with an organisation specific to that sector?”
Having asked these questions, firms still struggling with their virtual debut can commission the likes of PA and Crayon for advice, leadership and expertise to avoid a Second Life misadventure.
Both outfits will be glad to hear that a recent Social Research Foundation survey shows residents who use SL primarily for ‘business’ expect to increase their use of the space in 2009, more so than ‘personal’ users.
And, according to Sumray, there’s no reason for smaller, start-up companies to feel that Second Life, boasting 1.4 million active users, is off-limits, or a domain just for multinationals.
“It can be a lot shorter and less expensive than the 10 days at £100,000 consultancies might offer for corporate builds,” he said.
“At a very simplistic level, you could buy a little piece of land as part of someone else’s island and start to build on that landscape.
“The space is very much a project that should be built incrementally. So build a small presence first, then start to work out how to attract visitors, and then work with those people who are visiting to understand what you should do next.”
Yet corporations, or SL evangelists, typically want their own island, not least so they can choose who visits there and who to lock in our out, which is ideal during pitches or meetings.
But regardless of company size, firms were advised to “continually reiterate” they want their visitors to feedback. After that, “building a presence in SL is not difficult,” Sumray said, “once you get to grips with it.”
His allusion to the know-how challenge facing newcomers to SL is evidenced by report that it takes the average person two and half (real-world!) days just to learn the basics.
Such practical obstacles didn’t stop Chris Mead, a former factory worker from Norfolk, who quit his job in 2006 to become the first Briton to subsist entirely from trading in Second Life.
His idea to sell character animations that were more lifelike than the originals earned him $2,000 within his first week of trading; not bad given each avatar cost just 60 pence to design.
Reassuringly for other budding virtual traders, Second Life’s makers have told FreelanceUK they are unconcerned SL’s residents might only be ‘residents’ to make money.
“Second Life can be whatever experience players want it to be,” a spokesperson for Linden Labs said. “All you need is one good idea.”
Dec 4, 2008
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