Metaverse Marketing in 2006 versus Web Marketing in 1996

The photo on the left is an empty wing of the generally empty American Apparel presence in Second Life, launched in June of 2006, the year when a mini-dot com boom of real world companies began storming SL en masse;  I just came across the screenshot on the right, via a clever blogger called eKarjala and the Wayback machine, taken from the Web in 1996, at the start of the original dot com boom, when companies began storming the Internet en masse.  Now here's the most striking thing about it:

In 1996, that was McDonald's official homepage.  A company worth billions of dollars put that on the Web, to represent themselves.

But then, that's perhaps understandable, because at the time, most of the business world still considered the Net a volatile, niche media, worth experimenting with perhaps, but surely not large enough to invest more time and money into.  That's because they were reading New York Times stories like this one, from 1994:

Has the Internet been overhyped?  Even as cyberspace is being touted as the hippest place to congregate since the original Woodstock, some experts now contend that estimates of the number of people actively using the Internet web of computer networks may be grossly exaggerated.

There is still widespread agreement that the growth of the Internet, and the number of people using it, is exponential; it is seen doubling in size every year. But some network experts say the most commonly cited numbers -- 20 million to 30 million users worldwide -- may be many times too high.

Sound familiar?  Or is any apparent familiarity deceiving?

American Apparel in SL image credit: 3pointD; McDonald's homepage credit: Internet '96.

Update, 2:01pm: Tweaked title name for clarity's sake.

Comments

[Sandor Balczo]

Please change the title. I suppose it was meant to read "The metaverse in 2006 versus the web in 1996". And I fully agree that large corporations and the media are SL's greatest enemies even when the hype us now as they used to be when I was browsing the web in 1996 and earlier.

[Laetizia Coronet]

...the number of people actively using the Internet web of computer networks may be grossly exaggerated...

Yeah, they were putting bots on line...

[Benjamin Duranske]

Fantastic post. I've been trying to convince people of this for a while, but the McDonald's page makes the point far more eloquently than I've been able to. Sure, virtual worlds have a relatively high percentage of porn, scams, and failures -- but compared to the 2D world wide web, the 3D version doing far better at this point in its development.

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks, and thanks for the catch, Sandor, I changed the title accordingly.

[Joni West]

Bravo!!!
This is the concise and accurate article I have been waiting for!!! I tell people this all the live long day but the visuals and references you put to the story make it 100% clear!
Thanks!
[jW]

[Aldon Hynes]

Last September, I wrote a blog post entitled http://www.orient-lodge.com/node/2466>1994 all over again. Things are happening quicker these days and now it is 1996!

[Gary Hayes]

Thanks for this. I have been making the comparison for a couple of years along with many others but even so I think there is a massive difference. The internet is a distribution paradigm shift whereas Second Life is a service or mode of communication shift. You can't compare roads with cars.

To me the real issue here is the 'way' corporations are inhabiting these new social virtual spaces I cover in far more detail here.

[Marianne McCann]

I've made this same comparison time and time again to people. I actually think it's an apt comparison, including SLs own growing pains as a mirror for AOL's in the same "post first million member boon" time frame.

The sad part to me, though, is that so few seem to have caught this comparison, and are making exactly the same mistakes as then.