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By Sheila Webber

In this article I'll talk about business uses for Second Life (SL) (http://www.secondlife.com/) and give some tips for working in SL. SL is a virtual world (VW). VWs provide digital environments in which you can explore and interact.

In Second Life (SL), you have a named avatar: you can see mine (Sheila Yoshikawa) at the head of this article. There are now many virtual worlds: some businesses have their own closed VWs (e.g. IBM), there are VWs aimed at children (e.g. Club Penguin), and virtual worlds developed for business simulation (e.g. http://www.forterrainc.com/), as well as gaming VWs (e.g. World of Warcraft).

At the moment, SL is the publicly available virtual world most used for business and education. Its distinguishing feature is that whilst the ‘land' in SL is leased from the owning company, Linden Labs, nearly everything else within SL has been created by SL users. This includes houses, clothes, cars, educational tools, art, trees, giant models of DNA or body parts, recreations of famous places and many other virtual things.

Anyone can sign up for free, and you can create a professional look for your avatar, participate and network without cost. However, if you want a space of your own (which most businesses do), you need to pay.  You will also get more choice in ‘dressing' yourself and your space if you are prepared to spend real money.  The currency inside SL is the Linden, and it converts to US dollars (about 250 Linden to the dollar).

Why get an avatar?

I think the question is more ‘why not?'. There are some inflated figures bandied around, but numerous forecasters predict that the use of virtual worlds for business, education and pleasure will increase significantly. Gartner Group is frequently quoted [1]. You may not ever find yourself in one of Gartner's scenarios, clinching a job by comparing World of Warcraft scores with one of your interviewers. However, it is increasingly likely that knowing what VWs are, and being fluent in using a major VW, might give you competitive edge.

This goes for any Web 2.0 (or 3.0 or 4.0) applications that move beyond minority interest. It can only look good if you turn out to be one of the knowledgeable ones when the application is first discussed in your organisation. If you are sensible, you will already have worked out where you could make a contribution or take the lead.

There is an obvious answer to ‘why not get an avatar?', which is that you may not have a good computer and access. For SL, you need to have processing power and the right graphics card, plus broadband. However, if you lack the right kit, you can still experiment with less complex VWs, like Google Lively (http://www.lively.com).

Where's it at?

Articles on business in SL tend to veer between hype and disaster-talk. However, I can remember the time when there was no business on the internet, and development in SL seems similar to that. There are companies that ‘get it' and see how they can best use SL, businesses that threw money at SL with no discernable plan and (surprise) are now backing out. There are also sectors which are working their way towards a business model.

The education sector is one of the strongest. Since this article isn't about education I won't say much more, but there are now examples of SL teaching in just about every discipline. Students studying literature can ‘be' Jane Eyre; biology students can fly through a giant model of a testis (prettier than you'd think); architecture and engineering students can experiment without incurring real life costs.

Business students can practice negotiating skills and (since SL has its own economy) try out a ‘real' SL business without going bankrupt. Although the minority of current graduates will experience VWs as part of their course, numbers will increase, also increasing the likelihood that graduates will incorporate VWs into their business plans.

Ten business uses of SL

1.      Promotion and relationship management

Companies are using SL to brief customers and agents about new products. Those in the systems and communications sectors, such as Dell, are particularly active. These activities can include developing working models of new and existing products, holding events with prominent speakers, and having closed sessions for clients or agents. At a conference I attended, a Cisco rep (http://blogs.cisco.com/virtualworlds/) reported that people find the experience is more real, enjoyable and sociable than conference calls.

2.      Training and professional development

Companies are using SL to train people in various sectors, and SL is being used on vocational degrees and by professional associations. It is particularly useful when you are gathering people who are geographically dispersed, or where it would be dangerous or expensive to simulate in real life. Examples are training border guards, mediators, doctors and [2] central heating engineers. And Certified Public Accountants have their own island...

3.      Cross selling and building brand

This may involve cross selling between your real life and SL products, and using SL as an advertising channel to connect with a particular demographic. For example, in the fashion sector, Armani was a failure (it launched in SL with mediocre designs and a very dull shop, not enhancing its RL [real-life] image at all), but other, smaller brands are cross selling by creating products which people want to own in both worlds (e.g. Petal Meg http://www.petalmeg.com/ - I'm wearing her SL jewellery in my picture and I just spent rather more money on a RL necklace).

4.      Product testing

Whether it's a new toy or a hotel resort, it could be cheaper to create a SL version and get feedback on that before building a prototype in RL.  (See the Business Week article for examples [3].)

5.      Making money from sales of virtual services and products

You may think that people are mad to spend real money on virtual land, homes and clothes, but I am one of these people and the statistics show that I am not alone. There may be few truly big businesses built solely on SL product sales, but large numbers of people and businesses are making some money. Since entry costs are low, this is a good arena for start-ups.

6.      Developing VW infrastructure

This includes the VWs themselves, the kit that people use, and customising spaces within VWs.

7.      Developing a low-cost international presence

There are people from all over the world on SL and some areas are dominated by particular language/national groups. You can make first steps in getting to know your market by observing, interacting and setting up virtual shop.

8.      Modelling and monitoring operations

A recent example is from AT&T, where engineers from Atlanta, Austin and New York have been using SL ‘to jointly monitor tests of rogue attacks on network devices, such as set-top boxes and other networking gear' [4].

9.      Recruitment

Individual companies are running events and initial interviews in SL [5], and recruitment agencies like Manpower (http://www.manpower.com/press/secondlife.cfm?mode=secondlife) see it as a channel that will be increasingly important.

10.  Networking

‘Hanging out in virtual worlds' is how IBM's Roo Reynolds has put it, making VWs sound like the executive wash rooms of the 21st century. Personally I have found SL worth the time investment for this aspect alone. In particular I am making connections with people in North America which are going to be useful for my research, teaching and professional life. However, as in real life, you get out what you put in. You need to spend time finding out what is going on, making the effort to contact people, volunteering. The people who complain that ‘there is no life in SL' usually haven't made this effort.

How can information managers and librarians contribute?

An obvious way is being part of the team, or the team leader. If you have VW skills, you may get more opportunities to interact directly with clients (an example is at Cisco) and be included on innovative projects. Librarians started collaborating in SL early on, and a rota of librarians provides reference services from the clutch of Info Islands (http://infoisland.org/) and organises events. This is a resource to which you can contribute, or to which you can refer people.

If your company has a presence in SL you may be able to leverage your knowledge of Web 2.0 applications to advise on how SL strategy fits in with corporate blogs or wikis. There are also many information management issues within SL - managing the content that develops on your virtual land and advising others on how to manage their own ‘inventory' (the collection of thousands of items that you acquire in SL, presenting the same challenge as managing your computer's files with the difference that your SL inventory may include virtual kittens and photocopiers).

Three things to take seriously

1.      Other people

Some people treat SL like a game, but the majority of business people, educators and librarians will be treating it as an extension of their lives. Most of them will be helpful and understanding - but not if you have started by making fun of their appearance, trying to disrupt conversations and so forth.

2.      Your name

Basically choose something that isn't stupid or offensive (in any language). If you feel you've really made a bad name choice, then abandon that avatar and start again with another name - but it's a good idea to realise this early on so you don't for example have contact lists to rebuild. I've found it useful to have the same first name as in real life, and ‘Yoshikawa' (my SL family name) is a conversation-starter in a good way.

3.      Your profile

When in SL you can click on another avatar and bring up their profile. Your profile can have pictures, blurbs about your second and first life, links to places you like and a few other things. When I'm at a meeting I will usually go round (invisibly, so to speak) clicking on people I don't know, to read their profiles. It is easy to throw a few unconsidered words into your profile early on (e.g. ‘Nt sure whats up yt but the chics are well hot!!!!') and then forget about it.

To summarise

VWs aren't going to go away. My view is that different types of VW will evolve for different purposes. They may also get more popular when the ‘Club Penguin generation' (enjoying baby VWs at the moment) reaches adulthood. SL may not last forever, but if you want to stay an early adopter, then it's currently a good place to find your virtual feet.

Notes

[1] See e.g. Gartner Identifies Three Steps to Encourage Corporate Investment in Virtual Worlds (June 2008). http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=703907.

[2] HVAC students attend Second Life school.  Heating and Ventilating Review 31 July2008. http://digbig.com/4xncs

[3] Tahmincioglu E (2008).  Business, and Startups, in Second Life.  BusinessWeek 22 August 2008. http://digbig.com/4xnct

[4] Hamblen M (2008).  AT&T will make video and voice apps for iPhone.

Mac World 17 September 2008. http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=22828

[5] Driver E (2008).  Accenture recruiting in Second Life cost-effectively targets the ‘Facebook audience'.  http://digbig.com/4xncw

Sheila Webber is senior lecturer in the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK.  She is director of the Centre for Information Literacy Research and owner of the SL island ‘Infolit iSchool'. She blogs information literacy at http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/ and her Second Life (in a Bridget Jones fashion) at http://adventuresofyoshikawa.blogspot.com/.

Her avatar's proudest moment is being called a "blue haired babe" in the Guardian newspaper.

 Other related FUMSI stories: 

Social Networking: A Research Tool: http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/find/3196

Convenience Trumps Quality: How Digital Natives Use Information: http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/use/2971

If Members Won't Come: The Royal Society of Chemistry Builds a Virtual Library: http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/share/2818

Online Digital Special Collections in English Universities: Promoting Awareness: http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/share/2692

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