Second Life Backlash Reversed? Former Detractor Now Touting SL For Enterprise Use

The front page of last weekend's Los Angeles Times included a very interesting story on corporate use of Second Life, and it's even more intriguing if you know a bit about the writer's background.  The article itself is about how companies like Sun Microsystems and Intel are embracing SL to hold company meetings and training sessions for their far-flung employees-- not news to readers of this blog, I suspect, but it's rich with enough details to make it clear the author, Alana Semuels, has done her homework.  One choice tidbit:  Sun employees are not allowed to show up to SL meetings as non-human avatars.

Three Skeptics Become Three Advocates

But here's the backstory that's just as interesting to me:  In 2007, Alana Semuels was also the author of two widely-cited LA Times stories that depicted Second Life as a disaster for corporations.  The first dubiously suggested companies were under attack by anti-globalization vigilantes; the second was an equally questionable report arguing that real world advertising in SL had utterly failed.  The latter piece was, in my opinion, among the top three articles which drove last year's media backlash.  (The other two from Wired Magazine and Forbes.)  Now from the same journalist comes a glowing story touting the cost-effectiveness and morale building power of working in the metaverse:

Compared with plane tickets and hotel bills, it's pretty cheap: a 16-acre private island in Second Life costs $1,000 plus a $295 monthly maintenance fee.  And instead of staring at white walls during conference calls with strangers, employees can wander a virtual paradise and see representations of the co-workers they have never met...  The eccentricities of the virtual world also lead to social connections that aren't possible on conference calls. For instance, Spohrer said, avatars sometimes bring their virtual pets to meetings and chat about them or invite colleagues back to their Second Life homes to show what they have built.

In recent months, Forbes has written favorably about practical uses of Second Life for education and innovation; before that, Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson wrote a reconsideration of the negative article he commissioned, and last December, was spotted citing SL as a model for the future of business.  Taken together, they represent a decided shift in the outside narrative.  It'll be interesting to see the ripples of this move pass through the tech world, as all those who dismissed Second Life out of hand on the basis of those earlier reports slowly realize their rationale has eroded out from under them.

Hat tip: Kanomi Pikajuna, who as she often does, compiles a comic SL-meets-The Onion response to it.  Image credit: www.latimes.com.

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

Yessir! Learning how to do the Beltway Two Step sure has it's advantages in the long run.

Number one recommendation I make to any startup that will have country wide or planetary significance is to get to Washington DC and get busy schmoozing. The power of this cannot be understated.

Of course the presence of Phillip Rosedale giving testimony before Congress has nothing at all to do with all these sudden reversals of opinion in the media.

Does it?

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Good news coming on the heels of a hellish SL weekend, when the assets servers came apart and some of us rezzed bald and barefoot. I'm already bald, no np on that front :)

Yet I am sure some of us lost no-copy items...The LL Grid Status updates were as ominous as I've seen them yet. Just imagine how that will influence skeptics to return to SL.

But this fool keeps rushing in...I just hope this turn in the tide by critics does not drive more folks back to SL than the creaky database can handle!

LL--if you read this--we need out-of-client inventory backup NOW. That's my only major gripe after 15 months in-world.

[Suzanne Aurilio]

Thanks for the backstory, very useful. I'd seen the article, shrugged it off and moved to another tab, thinking it was kind of old news (To us it is).
I came back to it and thought, I could use it in my rhetoric (to educators) : "See....it's a fun meeting place, an (not the) alternative to other ways of meeting with folks who aren't a stone's throw away.
I seriously doubt, although I don't know, that they're doing much more with SL. I couldn't tp home most of the night last night. NP, I was there to play not to work.
Not dissing SL, just sober about it's potential and limitations for teaching and learning.

[BurghMike3V Michalak]

Second Life offers countless opportunities to engage in activites that might, in RL, be deemed too risky. Among these is opening a virtual business. Being provided the ability to engage my entrepreneurial spirit with greatly reduced risks prompted me to open a 60s retro cafe in Febuary, and I'm now in my 4th location, with a growing clientele.

What I now experience, and what I think is endemic to SL is that the more popular my venue becomes, the more dificulty people have navigating to and staying in the place. It's a two edged sword, I want to grow in popularity, but don't want that growth to impact the quality of the experience.

[Truthseeker]

Bah. One of those classic examples of journalistic 'finesse,' taking the smallest kernel of truth & spinning it out into a baldfaced lie that makes for jucier-sounding copy:

"The virtual world's early inhabitants, who largely disdain anything with a corporate tinge, rebelled by launching terrorist attacks and starting gunfights in the shops. Faced with empty storefronts and ridicule, many companies pulled out."

While I'm positive some of that sort of griefing did actually happen, as I understand it, it was the metaverse's GENERAL INDIFFERENCE to the obvious, empty branding efforts that actually hurt the poor-wittle corpowations' feelings, causing them to take their ball & go home.

It wasn't that we were hostile, we just weren't paying any attention to them...

Hyperbole from journalists isn't anything new, tho. *shrug

[Hamlet Au]

Yeah, I totally agree, I've never seen much explicit anti-corporate sentiment, as opposed to indifference.