Ray’s Web 2.0 Business Minitests: Secondlife.com
by
on November 07, 2006,
Theses minitests are purely about real business potential, not about the technology behind it.
Ok, ok, you are right, Secondlife.com is web 3.0, not web 2.0, and yes it’s the next big thing.
Interaction with other people, that’s what it is all about. You choose your own avatar which you can tweak to look just like yourself or if you want to look differently, just make yourself look like a sex-bomb, cat, an angel with wings whatever.
The thing is, you learn to live, walk and fly in a virtual landscape. You (your avatar) are meeting with other people in bars, casinos, in the most wonderful places.
-Ok, but can you make money there?
-Yes you can, because you can create objects which you can sell for Linden $.
-Linden what?
-..Dollars. These are even interchangeable with normal currency, so it is real money.
So every kind of creative initiative is taking place. People are selling yards, houses, clothing, advise just like in the real world (RL= Real Life). You thus can have a genuine Secondlife.
Mind you it takes a while before you know how to really make some money out of it. Surely you can rum a casino on SL, but you aren’t the only one. Naturally you can also use it for marketing purposes, creating bill-board, etc.
The easiest way to make money however is to become a member and then to go to the SecondLife Blog, where you can login to retrieve a code which you can forward to people you know. I have done that for you so here it is. You can forward this hyperlink to everyone you know. I’ll be smiling because for everyone using the hyperlink and upgrading to a certain level, I will get 2000 Lindens! So naturally you can do the same, which in essence is networking.
Being on Secondlife is a wonderful experience. Mind you, you will need at least a 3mbs download speed and a relatively new computer to run it, but it is very promising indeed…
| Key-web 2.0 factor | Points (1-10) | Remarks |
|
1) Manage and view profile |
10 |
Create your own profile in 3d! |
| 2) Manage contacts |
5 |
You can make ‘friends’ but you cannot manage their background, there is no link to RL |
| 3) Communication options |
8 |
Just like RL, using IM, voice will be added soon |
| 4) Effective business use |
10 |
Just use your imagination |
| 5) Growing potential |
10 |
The best next big thing which can only be surpassed by Google Earth 2009 which will include similar 3d features, just like copy of RL. |
| 6) Money making potential |
10 |
Depends on you |
| Total |
53 |
Verdict: Check it out now, in 3 years the whole web will go this way I promise you.. |
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skindeep
Svetlana Gladkova
Michael Fidler 
jiri
Hey, this is really interesting….ineresting analysis.
Dear readers, please note this publication from Cnet.com which shows you the way online networking will develop. It seems that Big Blue is thinking among the same lines as i do..
Ray
IBM is ramping up its push into virtual worlds with an investment of roughly $10 million over the next 12 months, including an expanded presence within the popular 3D online universe Second Life .
Chairman and Chief Executive Sam Palmisano is set to visit Second Life on Tuesday, following a “town hall” meeting with some 7,000 employees in China, and speak with the more than 250 IBM empl
oyees on one of the company’s virtual islands.
Second Life, where Reuters opened a bureau last month, is one of the best-known virtual worlds, with more than 1 million registered users and a well-established economy and currency. The equivalent of more than half a million U.S. dollars change hands there every day.
IBM has already established the biggest Second Life presence of any Fortune 500 company. It uses the world primarily for training and meetings but has also built a simulation of the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
The company is also looking to build a private 3D intranet where it will be able to discuss sensitive business information. It is moving to champion what it calls “v-business”–short for virtual business–just as it championed “e-business,” or electronic business, during the dot-com boom.
“We always ask the question, ‘if you knew 20 years ago what you know about the Web today, what would you do differently?’” said Sandy Kearney, IBM’s director of emerging 3-D Internet and virt
ual business. “The Web took decades. This will likely take half that time.”
Now on News.com:
* Raising a glass to wine tech
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From CNET Reviews:
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The company said it is already holding meetings and conducting development inside virtual worlds with about 20 major clients, including telecommunications and aerospace firms, a petroleum company that wants to use virtual worlds for training and “a major grocer in the U.K.” that wants to build a virtual storefront that will allow consumers to buy real-world groceries online.
“The essence of e-commerce today is
built around the idea of catalogs. That’s very useful, it fits with the idea of Web pages and catalog pages, but most people don’t think of shopping in terms of catalogs and pages, but in terms of stores that they go into,” said IBM chief technology strategist Irving Wladawsky-Berger.
A spokesman for IBM said its goals go far beyond Second Life, although it currently has its largest virtual world presence there, and that the company eventually wants to see all multiverses integrated into a seamless whole.
“In addition to our desire to work more closely with Linden Labs, we’re exploring how we can work with many virtual world players, including companies like Multiverse and Bigworld Technology, as well as open source platforms like Uni-Verse.org,” the spokesman said in an email.
“IBM’s ultimate aim is for inter-world integration, instead of separate islands of virtual worlds, where you cannot cross over from one to the other in a consistent way,” he said.
Wired Magazine also has some great coverage of Second Life. I think the product is very interesting and its potential is unlimited. We’re not quite at Star Trek and its holodeck yet, but I think we’re seeing the start.