Hype Alert: Second Life’s Media Focus Outpaces its Business Success
- Posted by Ephraim Cohen on November 15th, 2006 filed in Advertising, Public Relations, marketing
- Comments
The Globe to Friendster to MySpace to YouTube to SecondLife…except one only has a fraction of the users of the others. SecondLife.
I’ve tried Second Life and it is a great virtual platform. It’s interesting, entertaining and shows the potential for virtual worlds…when the world is really ready for them. Right now it’s still too slow, too ugly and too clunky for the average consumer as compared to the Web. Doesn’t anyone remember VRML?
A Webcast is still easier for a press conference, an IM is easier for an online chat and a Web site is easier for commerce (sorry Dell).
As a practical platform, it’s slow and not conducive to today’s short-attention-span-must quickly-flip-through-web-pages consumer.
As a social networking platform like MySpace of Facebook it’s too slow. It doesn’t allow the quick in, check messages, read a message and out experience that so many consumers are used to.
As an entertainment platform for virtual economics and other forms of entertainment, it’s, well, entertainment. Meaning it could one day lose its hype value and, along with that, its media and core user focus.
The bottom line is that it is the flavor of the day. It gets attention as virtual worlds so often do – by captures the imagination of the media and forward looking consumer. The problem is that people aren’t writing about imagination. They are imagining business success. It may happen at some point but that point has not arrived.
So take advantage of Second Life while it’s hot. Maybe it will be a long term success. But for the moment, companies that invest for the short term marketing value are placing the safer bet. In the meantime, don’t forget to lookout for the next big thing…
