While a FarmVille knockoff is using Second Life screenshots for its advertising, there's another ad campaign on Facebook coming from the other direction: Second Life itself is being advertised as an animal-caring social game on Facebook! SL designer Nylon Pinkney recently spotted this ad in her Faceook profile, presumably put there by Linden Lab. (The Corgi is actually an old variation of Second Life dog noted on NWN a couple years ago.) This campaign seems aimed at capturing the huge market of Facebook users who enjoy top social games like Pet Society, PetVille, Zoo World, and Happy Pets (which altogether, have about 40 million active players.) It will be interesting to see how much of this audience clicks through and ultimately transitions over to try Second Life. From my experience developing City of Eternals, I can say jumping a Facebook user from a 2D social game into a more 3D experience is quite challenging. Then again, if even 2.5% of that 40 million player base gave Second Life a try, that'd be a million new SL Residents.
Hat tip: Iris Ophelia.
The jump from "Feed your doggy" to "See if you can earn some money or buy some lindens, then go find a pet shop and buy a pet, if there is no trouble with teleports that is" must be quite big as well.
Posted by: Laetizia Coronet | Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 09:28 AM
'Twould seem to me that first you gain your Lindens, then you gain build access on some land, then and only then do you purchase your virtual cat-in-a-can.
This might upset the good suckers of Facebook.
Posted by: Martien Pontecorvo | Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 10:56 AM
I do however see a nice crossover with Mafia Wars for SL. It's called Pet Wars. When you kill enough kittens, you get to travel to other sims and start afresh.
I'm dusting off my Desert Eagle as we speak.
Posted by: Laetizia Coronet | Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 11:10 AM
Back to my lab to work on the vorpal kitten prototype.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 11:22 AM
Back in the day, I knew about one major VW developer that was hoping to create a pet-oriented game that would use a custom browser into SL.
The browser would take you into SL, but you wouldn't even necessarily know you were in SL, landing you on the island of the pet shop / zoo / farm / whatever it was.
It was a cool idea, but I don't think it went anywhere.
Posted by: rikomatic | Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 12:31 PM
I really hope there's more to the new PR's plan than "ZOMG PUPPIES!" Though ... on the other hand, who can resist a Corgi?
Posted by: Hiro Pendragon | Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 12:48 PM
This only strengthens my believe that Linden Lab has a *horrible* Marketing department...
Yes, it's sort-of a step in the right direction, but as Laetitzia put it so perfectly, their is a HUGE gap between going to http://secondlife.com and actually raising puppies!
I guess LL is still closing it's eyes to the fact that getting people "to" SL isn't the hard bit, keeping them there is!
Posted by: Alex | Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 03:45 PM
...
Posted by: Bettina Tizzy | Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 09:50 PM
As a developer, I'm a firm believer in "under-promise and over-deliver". I realize that this mantra doesn't really apply to marketing, but I still see a high potential for marketing SL in this way to backfire.
Posted by: nexus burbclave | Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 07:25 AM
It is not safe to assume that LL placed the ad. You forget that LL is working with both linkshare and google affiliate networks. Some members of these networks are quite inventive.
Posted by: MarillaAnne | Monday, December 20, 2010 at 06:04 AM
SECOND LIFE SHOULD ONLY BE USED **MY WAY**
I DON'T CARE ABOUT VIRTUAL PETS. THIS IMPLIES THAT VIRTUAL PETS ARE STUPID, PEOPLE WHO PLAY WITH THEM ARE STUPID, RELATED BUSINESSES ARE STUPID.
EVERY USE OF SECOND LIFE THAT I DON'T APPROVE OF IS STUPID AND WRONG. ITS MERE EXISTENCE DEMONSTRATES THAT LINDEN LAB ARE STUPID AND UNABLE TO PROPERLY FOCUS AND DO THE RIGHT THING.
(I don't even have a Facebook account, but still I'm amused by intolerant comments that always come out when this topic is discussed in relation with SL). Second Life can be many different things to many different kind of users.
SURPRISE
Posted by: Tired reader | Tuesday, December 21, 2010 at 06:02 AM