Second Life attracts branding efforts

From retail marketing and politics to education and health care, everyone's looking for their place in Virtual Reality.

Although I have already integrated numerous instances of science fiction into the accepted reality in my everyday life, I am still amazed at the speed by which people are drawn into the science-fiction-like virtual realities of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Modeled after Neil Stephenson’s Metaverse in the 1990s science fiction novel “Snow Crash”, Second Life is a MMORPG that is receiving a lot of press attention lately. Giles Whittell of Times Online reported approximately 400,000 “residents” on July 29, 2006. Today, October 13, 2006 Second Life has 911,356 registered residents. That is phenomenal growth!

Most all of this Second Life Metaverse is user created and exists on over 3,000 internet servers in warehouses a few miles south of San Francisco. Whittell reported that between 150 and 200 new servers were being added each month to accommodate this amazing growth rate.

Second Life creator, Linden Lab's policy of allowing users to retain ownership of their virtual creations is unprecedented in online games. Virtual goods and services are bought using the local currency, Linden dollars. Linden dollars can be exchanged for US currency. Within the past 24 hours, the US equivalency of $345,479 has been spent in Second Life on virtual goods.

Emphasizing creativity and communication, Second Life is attracting the branding efforts of more and more corporate entities.

“Branding is an attempt to garner an emotional response to one's products and/or services,” explains Ethan Allan Smith in his July 2006 posting about The Philosophy of Logo Design. And Second Life appears to be a popular place to create emotional response.

In September of 2005, Wells Fargo introduced Stagecoach Island. The free, multi-player, online role-playing game was developed to teach young adults important lessons in financial literacy.

Last month CNet News launched a permanent presence in a Second Life virtual building modeled loosely after their San Francisco offices, complete with an amphitheater where CNet reporters can do interviews, give talks and stream media in the virtual world.

Toyota has been giving away free virtual vehicles of its Scion model and will start selling them in Second Life to create experiences around their brand.

Adidas adidas (104, 182, 53). [<--SL link] has also opened a store on a private island in Second Life, focused on a campaign for a the Microride shoe. The virtual shoes come equipped with a jump script that allows the user's avatar to bounce around the Metaverse. Outside the store there is a "testing area" trampoline.

Starwood's new hotel brand, Aloft, has chosen to build buzz, brand loyalty and gain consumer input on design, by going virtual first. A prototype of the real hotel on Second Life, will be used to hold virtual marketing events and daily board meetings as well as obtaining valuable input from users.

Harvard Law School and the Harvard Extension School are jointly offering a class in the fall semester, 2006 in Second Life. The course in persuasive, empathic argument in the Internet space is studying many different media technologies to understand how they affect the communication process. Classes take place on Berkman Island, a space in Second Life that resembles Harvard Law School. The island is named after the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, of which Professor Nesson is a founder and co-director. Nesson, the Weld professor of law, is offering “CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion,” not only to Harvard Law School (HLS) students, but also to Extension School students as well as Internet users across the globe.


For the purpose of the Beyond Broadcast conference, an inworld broadcasting center and a 3D replica of the Ames Courtroom at the Harvard Law School was built in Second Life.

Sarah Robbins, a PhD candidate at Ball State University who is studying rhetoric and composition, is also experimenting with a class conducted in Second Life. Robbins, whose avatar goes by the name of Intellagirl Tully, has created a hybrid option for her English composition students, combining classes in real life one day of the week and with online classes in SL on another. Robbins is "very interested in how virtual environments can foster collaboration and community building."

Virtual Reality is also being recognized as an effective tool for political communications. Former Virginia governor, Mark Warner recently flew onto a virtual stage in Second Life in August for an interactive interview that has boosted his name recognition tremendously - especially among the techie population.

The health care industry is not to be excluded from the rush for a virtual presence. There is a group of medical consumers, caretakers and physicians that are working on creating a Virtual Hospital in Second Life to provide information services and activities for all interested people.

There is no doubt. Virtual Reality is having a profound impact on our changing society. Let's become a part of the process that utilizes technology to help create the positive possibilities of the future.

What do you envision?

In-game voice communication

Project Massive, a Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute study led by Dr. A. Fleming Seay, has spent the past three years tracking the behavioral and social impact of massively multiplayer gaming on the average citizen by polling over 4000 people in the online community. A. Fleming Seay, driven by a desire to participate in the creation of the future, believes that multi-person experiences are the future of interactive entertainment. His studies found that social interaction was one of the most common motivations for MMORPG participation.
In an paper analyzing the study’s results entitled Project Massive 1.0 : Organizational Commitment, Sociability and Extraversion in Massively Multiplayer Online Games, Seay found that the reason for 77% of in-game communication is for the exchange of support and advice. The primary tools used included email, instant messenger, web forums, and standard telephony. In-game voice communication was identified as a feature that many would be interested in using.
Educators on the Second Life Campus appear to be aware of this expressed interest because last week I noticed that a little red phone booth showed up on campus. Apparently Vivox, a leader in integrated online voice communications, is giving away one million free phone minutes to Second Life residents who sign up. The free promotional minutes are good from October 4 until November 1, 2006, allowing Second Life residents to talk in real-time to other Second Life residents as well as to make phone calls from any of the Vivox Phone Booths within Second Life to any phone in North America. Also, residents can engage in live group voice chat on specially located Vivox microphones, supporting up to 5 users at a time.

Staying Grounded

As excited as I am about the capabilities and possibilities in Virtual Worlds, sometimes Real Life; with the sun on my face, wind in my hair and my hands in the dirt, is just too good to ignore.

Savoring the last of the September Sunset while sipping some Ravenswood Cabernet Sauvignon, I reminisce over the beauty of the season’s abundance as I fill basket after basket with butternut, zucchini, yellow crookneck and spaghetti squash. Picking the little Juliette tomatoes becomes a meditation as I search amidst the 6 foot high lush greenery of my “tomato hedge”. This was my first year growing Juliette tomatoes. They appear to be half-way between a Roma and a Cherry tomato, maturing early, producing consistently throughout the season and appearing almost ornamental, with little bunches looking like oversized red grapes.

My mind meanders ahead to menu planning for the upcoming week. I will make a zucchini quiche and some vegetable soup and tomato salsa with generous amounts of freshly snipped cilantro. I want to add apples and blueberries and pecans to a baked butternut squash and the thought of spaghetti squash topped with tomatoes and fresh basil makes my mouth water. I do love to cook!

I line up the baskets of bounty in the center of the courtyard next to the fountain and think about what a pretty picture the arrangement would make, with the bright reds and yellows of the vegetables flanked by deep greens and oranges from a backdrop of perky marigolds. I take a mental picture and tuck it carefully away, along with other private treasures.

Orange light explodes across the horizon as the sun sinks from view. My time is limited. Already the light is growing dim. I retrieve a blue plastic bowl from the kitchen, along with a pair of scissors and move on, to the row of bushy basil.

It may be the last basil harvest of the season so I approach the process as one would a spiritual ritual. My eyes grow accustomed to the impinging darkness. I let the pungent freshness of the basil scent engulf me as I carefully select each leaf, holding the basket of fresh cut leaves to my face and inhaling long and luxuriously. Later I will add garlic and pine nuts and olive oil and parmesan cheese to create the pesto to dollop atop the golden spaghetti squash. I’ll bet it won’t be long before we figure out how to add the sensations of smell and taste to our virtual worlds.

In the meantime, instead of tapping a keyboard, my fingers search beneath the soil for a good hold on the root of a weed that I want to yank out. I know that the weather of the Pacific Northwest will offer me ample opportunity to escape into Virtual Worlds in the next six months. Tonight in my garden, feeling connected with Mother Earth, I immerse myself in the beauty, perfection and abundance of my Real Life.

And tomorrow, once again, there will be time to fly ... in my Second Life.

Moving from Exploring Outer Space to Inner Space Potentiality

With the penetration of Outer Space a reality, writers of the 1960s and 1970s turned to the possibilities of exploring Inner Space, focusing on psychological and spiritual scenarios to seduce us into other worlds. This brand of intellectual, metaphysical science fiction plotlines made all things seem possible.

It was an era of staving off aging with meditation, thinking thin with self-hypnosis and achieving prosperity by drawing pictures in your mind. Hypnotists made big money claiming they could change your habits and self-help book sales soared.

However, documented stories of achievements possible through the untapped powers of the human mind did little to alleviate the immediate constraints placed upon adolescents undergoing chemotherapy or war victims missing arms and legs. Visuals play such an important part in communication. It is difficult to get past the ravages of illness or the deformities resulting from violence. It is hard to transcend physical limitations of appearance to reveal the inherent beauty of the soul.

Today, I see the technological science fiction merging with the intellectual, metaphysical science fiction to create a world where we can indeed create our own reality. In massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), like the popular Second Life, I can "Explore an ever-changing 3D landscape. Meet new and exciting people. Create a masterpiece - or an empire," Linden Labs homepage promises me.

I choose my size, shape, sex and the color of my skin. There are sliders to adjust the length of my nose, the cleft of my chin, the spacing between my eyes and a myriad of other details. I can be young or old, thin or fat, or black or white. I can even be green or blue, a monster, an alien, a bunny rabbit or a cartoon character.

How will identity and personality be challenged by these new possibilities to leave the body? How will the relationship between the real and the virtual and between body and mind, be affected by immersion into Virtual Environments? Do some environments encourage escape from the physical world more than others?