Second Life Orientation

Interesting fact in a Reuters Second Life article I read today: only about 12% of new SL users make it through orientation. Wow!

SL's answer is to let other people handle orientation. Apparently one "private" orientation has pushed retention up to 20%.

I think this could be a good solution for many, especially organizations targeting a more casual use of Second Life around trainings or corporate meetings. This way you might be able to cover only the skills needed like talking and moving and skip flying or teleporting initially.

The trick will be developing what is likely a complicated sim if you are a small shop. Maybe someone will start building some different orientation options and then renting them out for specific campaigns or events.

What Are people doing in Second Life anyways?

I heard an interesting theory from a smart guy that works for a vendor of ours. His observation of Second Life is that people go there to have a second life. His firm does a lot of political work, so they're basic take was that fantasy land was not the place to try to communicate about people's real life issues.

I think there is definitely a kernel of truth here, but if you have a message that can be communicated in a fun environment, maybe SL is worth a look. Driving a car on a test track sounds fun and is certainly not something I can do in my real life, so having a car manufacturer set this up on a SL island might work. (It has been done, I do not know if they think it worked.)

I've had an idea for a while about developing a simulation game that would be interesting and fun and sneakily educate people about the background that goes into a particular industry's issues. most business' political issues stem from their particular business models and the unique factors that come up in that business.

Showing that business model and its unique factors has always struck me as an underused way to show the underpinning logic behind often selfish seeming political requests.

Lots of people know what they know about evidence because of CSI, even if they're wrong. My guess is that lots of people know what they know about counter-terrorism from Tom Clancy's video game series. If you make the game realistic enough, people will probably assume that these details are correct, even if they are slightly exaggerated for affect.

SL Training?

Remote training. Online training. Webex Training. Sounds like a good time to multi-task doesn't it.

Ever multi-tasked while sitting around in Second Life?

Perhaps that is the killer business application. Training. The tools are all there or you can probably build the few you may need to add. Chairs, tables, tools for interfacing with each other. Would you pay more attention looking at an Avatar then a power point slide on WebEx?

I would.

Then again, I might also get distracted by the fact that half of the audience was dressed like extras from the Matrix or just the fact that I could fly around the room.

Again, might work for existing users of SL, but newbies? Maybe not.

Second Life -- the Audience

I've started wandering around Second Life to see what applications to work it might have.

Early Notes:

1) Requiring users to go through "demo island" seems like a barrier to casual use. Perhaps that's the intent or perhaps they got too many complaints that there was no orientation. I could see that. Heck, I still can't figure out how to open a box someone gave me yesterday.

So if you were going to do meet ups in Second Life for people who don't normally interact in this kind of world at least, I'm not sure how that would work.

So the goals in Second Life need to be tailored around brining the message to residents not bringing the interesting tools and environments possible in SL to outside audiences.

That seems to match the marketing applications I've read about for Second Life, but not other comments I've heard about using Second Life for corporate team building.