What is Second Life
· World where anyone can create anything.
· World full of real people.
· World of high emotional bandwidth.
· World shared.
Source: John Lester (Pathfinder Linden), Community and Education Manager, Linden Lab
Landing in Second Life, a virtual world, has been compared to arriving in a new city or country. It takes awhile to get the lay of the land, to meet people, to find places you want to go and things to do. It takes even longer to learn "the ropes" - the social behaviors and customs that set new-comers apart from long-time residents. With this in mind, the exercise starts with enough time to familiarize yourself with this new market.
First, however, you have to get there. Second Life introduction pages (What Is Second Life) tells you basic information about the virtual world, the system requirements of the client, and how to get started with Second Life. Before the exercise starts, participants will be given a crash course into Second Life or one can follow the self-paced training material found in this page — the material in this page is the same that will be used in the crash course.
On the left margin of this page you’ll find tutorial material related to first steps into Second Life. Below this text, there is a short tour into different business cases inside Second Life — each picture (and slurl below the picture) works as a direct link to these cases once you have installed Second Life to your computer. These business cases are not all suitable for the exercise, but they are intended to show you how versatile the Second Life’s business landscape really is — and maybe they give you an idea for a business that is suitable for this exercise. Later, the best business plans from these exercises will get their own “hall of fame” for additional reference.
As in real life, sometimes you have to fiercely compete with other products and services for the customers’ attention and money. Second Life’s Business and Marketing pages can help you later in the exercise.
Business cases tour
Property development—Anshe Chung Studios
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Welcome Passage/111/118/34
Anshe Chung Studios hosts thousands of residents on more than 40 square kilometers of gated communities in virtual worlds—their value proposition is ”Choose your neighborhood in the metaverse”. While this business model may not be viable for this exercise, Anshe Chung and her company (http://acs.anshechung.com/) is a self-evident example of virtual business — In 2006 Anshe Chung became the first avatar with a net worth exceeding 1 million US$. She has lead a new wave of virtual reality entrepreneurs who have demonstrated to the world the very real profit-making opportunities that exist within virtual world economies.
Today, the environments made by ACS seems already old style, but the value proposition hasn’t lost its appeal. The regions in the picture are examples of neighborhoods kept clean for residents and companies to rent some space for their needs.
List of current solution providers can be found here:
http://solutionproviders.secondlife.com/
Market Place—Xstreet SL
http://slurl.com/secondlife/ZoHa Islands N/194/19/27
Another self-evident example of virtual business is Xstreet SL, which was originally developed by group of visionary people and bought by Linden Lab (the makers of Second Life) in true Web 2.0 fashion January 2009. Now Xstreet is the officially part of Second Life, partly replacing the old Classifieds section of Second Life search function.
Xstreet has an head office in-world, but more importantly you should familiarize yourself with the actual marketplace in https://www.xstreetsl.com/. If nothing else, you get the feeling of the different objects people are selling in Second Life for other residents.
The above link is to one of Xstreet’s in-world terminals, which are used for in-world purchases. The actual retail park (Zoha Island) was chosen at random. There are many similar retail parks, shopping malls and commercial areas that let you rent a shopping area for your needs for a weekly of monthly fee.
Tourism—b-places.com
While the retail park mentioned above was chosen at random, it turned out that it was in the top 20 of b-places.com’s most visited places. The voting booth associated to this service provider is near to Xstreet terminal. Just like with Classifieds section of Second Life’s search function, the Places and Events sections get easily crowded. This has created a need for services such as b-places.com. However, recently Linden Lab has introduced new Showcase section to its web page and Search function as well as launched Eureka - the SL travel blog. This service is pointed out to you to stress the fact that it may be hard to get enough attention in the fast paced virtual world.
Tourist attraction with a store—Greenies Home
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Greenies Home Rezzable/128/128/32
Greenies home let’s you experience what it is when being tiny, without becoming one. This build is an experience, an art piece, shop, and an invitation to have fun. The actual shop is located inside a kitchen cabinet in the Greenies Home. Check out the lawn in next Sim too.
Store as a tourist attraction—Happy Mood
http://slurl.com/secondlife/HappyMood/179/161/26
Happy Mood is gorgeous, silly, imaginative, magical, dream-like, and filled with great sculpties....and bunny-ridden. All the flora and fauna are available for purchase, as well as loads of furniture in the form of hobby horses, starry crystalline tables, and iridescent soap bubble seats. So yes, it is a store and the products are the subject of the build, but they're so nicely displayed that it's easy to forget you're on the receiving end of a sales pitch.
Next to Happy Mood is a nice example of one of the many sub cultures in Second Life – Tiny Sim. Although Tiny Sim isn’t a store, you can imagine the market potential of these sub cultures in Second Life by visiting this Sim.
Business in a box
If you don’t have time to make unique designs like the ones presented above, search for “business in a box” objects, affiliate kits, reseller kits, affiliate vendors, etc—you’ll get the picture.
Franchising and crowd sourcing—7Seas fishing game
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Molina/154/116/23
Another business in a box concept is a 7Seas fishing game, which is based on the idea of franchising the brand (you buy the official kits for making the game area, you receive 20% of the vendor’s profit and you get the support of the company in return), but also on the more contemporary idea of crowd sourcing where individual game operators have the ability to design their own fish for the game (in their own sim) and also submit the designed fish / resource for consideration to be added into the official set of fishes and resources.
This game is set in the popular resort (renting rooms for couples) that has equally popular restaurant (!) called Aphrodite.
