Second Life Business Review

Is there Coke served on this cluetrain?

2007-08-28T15:13:15Z

Metaversed's Nick Wilson has a blog article with a number of useful links reviewing Coke's promo in SL.

Coke and Crayon and allies made a good presentation, quite up front, at SLCC. I'm reporting their testimony here, as I remember it. It wasn't quite as self-deprecating as Philip's, but it was bold.

How honest? Well, that's always hard to judge. But I'm willing to give them some benefit of the doubt, since they really are putting more effort in, and taking a pioneering stance.

Coke says they didn't intend to create a permanent presence in SL, and the only thing they regretted about it was not making that clear -- the contest was a finite promo. It had a beginning, middle, and end. A charming young woman, Ann Marie Mathis (SL:Emerie May), won the prize, and is now working with them in San Francisco to roll out the new Coke widget that was the prize winning design. Perhaps things are taking longer than expected, but that often happens in uncharted and experiemental projects (my comment).

Coke claims they are still quite devoted to SL, consider the promotion to be a success from "Happiness Factory" to the design contest and into the future.

They are looking forward to rolling out more Coke experiences for folks, and their recent blessing on a resident-made Coke-brand displaying garment (something they didn't mention until I brought it up in the Q&A) seems as though it shows clue, IMO. (Someone send me a link on this, please, and I'll hat tip you?)

We need to stop expecting companies to create the fully staffed mall to be in-world.
God knows, it's not what we expect from SL-native shops, but they are...native. We believe that the extra mile expected of outside companies is necessary -- that's accepted wisdom. We are, perhaps, too generous in our acceptance of wisdom in a young field. But that accepted wisdom is about consumer (or in our case resident cultural) acceptance of the colonial invasion of F1000s. It is not about what one needs to do to sell in SL.

Find out for me how many of the fashionista companies advertising in Second Style do quite well without staffing? It really depends on what the goal is. And Coke's goal may be to be a pioneer and understand what they must be doing in two years to be doing all this for real. Good on them.

Some companies should only come in for events, promos, hiring fairs, or to sponsor events for charity and the arts. It's the cultural equivalent of appropriate technology.

Nick's fond of putting out parallels to the web in 1997. A convenient year, as it has that "decade" thing going on, but to my mind, 1995 would be more appropriate. That was the year I started my own interactive agency.

In 1995, before the legal (in the US) and cultural acceptance of encryption made pervasive secure e-commerce possible, the right web site for many companies selling products was....a billboard! The exact thing that we dis companies for a couple years later, because they didn't adopt online shopping.

However, before secure e-commerce and critical masses of shoppers online, the investment in shopping online didn't pencil out. In 1995, an "e-commerce" site was a catalog site that built an order form that you then mailed in, and the company called you for a credit card. It was poorly accepted and cludgy.

We're there now. Some companies who sell product, as early adopters, are working on promoting and even selling (say, iWoot in SL, or Pizza Hut in EQ2 in 2005.

But we need to get over this hump, or much as we decry the design flaws of 1997 web being reproduced today in virtual worlds, we're going to find ourselves adopting the groupthink of the folks who said no one would ever sell anything but porn on the web.

These Coke project folks are pretty transparent. They have plans and aspirations. Should we be going to them and meeting them halfway on the concept that they also have read Cluetrain? Some of these folks are bold experimenters, even if some are the victims of build-and-bold developers. But that's another blog article...

PR Whiplash hits SL

2007-08-17T12:38:02Z

Well, Forbes, Wired, who's next to pick up a bat and try to knock some candy out of the Linden Lab pinata?

Part of this one has to lay at the feet of LL and LewisPR. LL have been total media whores for the last year-ish. This is based on the idea, I suspect, that they need to get big enough to be *the* hit destination for virtual worlds. Think of it as the Amazon syndrome, for those who remember when Amazon had competition.

But the hazard of building this kind of buzz is that it comes to that tipping point when the folks in the press who consider themselves to be savvy realize that their peers are subject to this PR push, this irrational exuberance -- and hey, maybe they've been subject to it, also!

That's the point we're at now. The self-styled thought-leadership folks are deciding that SL couldn't be as cool as hyped, and so it must be cool to take LL and SL down a peg or three.

It's no more true that SL is doomed, or LL is doomed, than it was that they were an unassailable hit. So it will be a couple more months before some of the analysis goes the other way, actually analyzing quantifiable issues, actually talking to people in the community and such who understand the environment, and decide that the rumors of SL's demise are greatly exaggerated.

25 groups limiting social integration

2007-07-31T15:23:58Z

Right now, LL leaves residents with a limit of 25 groups they can join. Groups serve as mailing lists, group chat, and permissions for sharing collaborative projects -- essentially access control lists for those who know that term.

If I were to guess it's because of the access control -- the ability to share modification or land rights with a group -- that groups are limited by a certain number.

With this mixture of uses, and limited alternatives, most folks who've been active in world for even a few months start running out of groups.

For some purposes, people can go outside LL to create alternative methods of communicating like a mailing list, or group chat. But this requires either revealing a RL email address or creating an email just for the avatar (and then tracking multiple identities online -- something that seems much more natural to my younger friends than to my contemporaries.

But access control linked to groups can not be separated from SL.

One tends to wonder why the LL developers designed only 25 groups in a resident's record. However, the number is overdue for revision, and in fact, I would wonder why it would be limited at all? If someone wants to receive the chat and notification spam from 200 groups, is that a real issue?

But here is the real issue -- groups are a much more important map of SL than the physical geography. A world map of Second Life has no meaningful national boundaries. Even zoning is unknown in much of SL's "territory."

So to find a map of SL, you need to really track the map of social capital through the community -- and that taxonomy is composed of friends lists (private) and groups (often public). This would be a great topic for someone's thesis, to create such a map.

Meanwhile, the twenty-five group limit is choking the spread of social capital in SL, actually punishing people who share land, create collaborative projects, and so on. Such people have far less room for, say, announcement lists for cultural events, sales announcements from their favorite creators/vendors, clubs, religious groups, and other social activities that don't have to do with access control.

If the groups list is limited to limit access control issues, perhaps the annoucement/chat type groups and the land/item access groups should be divorced?

Quoted in InformationWeek

2007-07-31T03:43:21Z

Hey, I must really be a Second Life journalist -- Information Week says so!

I've been blogging here for a month and a half, and reporting for Life4U and the Metaverse Messenger for only a couple weeks, but now I can really claim I'm established...

SL's World Stock Exchange catches flu -- how far will it spread? UPDATED

2007-07-31T03:50:14Z

(9/30 -- after claiming a panic on Ginko Bank, news which made Reuters, Ginko buys the AVIX exchange and announces an unlikely IPO, putting up 4% of the bank for L$5M, and refusing to provide historical P&Ls -- details to come)

(old news, but perhaps relevant: Is LL liable for financial fraud in SL? [reuters])

(9/26 -- new from Beyers on metaversed: SLEC news conference and analysis)

(9/25 -- new from Beyers on metaversed: allegations of coverup!)

(9/25 -- new from Life4U [disclaimer: I wrote the script for this piece] -- a caveat emptor to investors in SL)

I heard from Beyers Sellers today -- that's Robert Bloomfield of Cornell (and also an author on Terra Nova). He had just published a blog article with news that the World Stock Exchange may have been hacked for L$3.2M (around US$12K).

The main metaversed.com blog also reported the news as unconfirmed.

Executives from a listed company have been associated with the wrongdoing, and their accounts suspended. They have publically responded.

WSE has also posted a response on the WSEonline site.

It will be interesting if this highlights that the inworld banks and exchanges have no regulation or oversight as to their general business or online security practices. Not that this should make them shut down, but there seems to be a lack of "caveat emptor" gene in a lot of SL folks that makes them...poor investors.

This should improve the gene pool of investors, exchanges, banks, and listed companies in the long run -- if it doesn't scare folks away from the markets entirely.

It's 4am here, but I'll post more news as I find it!

totally trivial: Shava Suntzu models "House of Nyla" on Canadian TV

2007-07-14T23:39:10Z

Nyla Cheeky in SL and I have discussed business and social issues -- and fashion -- in the months we've been friends. I really enjoy her label, as a designer, and tend to show it off on my slpics/snapzilla snapshot blog. Well, she was part of a segment on real businesses in Second Life (video) on Global National News on Canadian TV tonight, and used two of my snapshots modeling her togs.

For those of you who have only met me in my business persona, here's me as I cut loose, first as the alien-skinned mardi gras belle at Tuna Oddfellow's (video) weekly experimental music night, and then at the holodeck pool party in a leopard print bikini.

Required reading: Who Controls the Internet? by Goldsmith/Wu

2007-07-12T23:24:55Z

Goldsmith, J. and Wu, T. 2006 Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World. Oxford University Press, Inc.
ISBN: 0195152662

When you end up mentioning a book three times in two days, perhaps it's time to tell more people about it?

Who Controls the Internet? is a book I've been reading by bits since the turn of the year. By Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law prof and a fellow at the Berkman Center, and Tim Wu, prof at Columbia Law, this is, honestly, not what I'd expect to come out of the Berkman Center.

Since I am at Berkman on and off, I'm looking forward to taking the book up with Professor Goldsmith, if I have the chance at some point. It has the honor of having the highest density of highlighting and marginata of any book I've read for a couple years.

This book basically makes raspberries and seeks to destroy the illusions of any person who might believe that the voluntary association built into the architecture of the Internet means a fig to the powers that be of national governments and various regulatory authorities.

As a conservative history of the struggle for Internet internationalism, it's a biased but enlightening read. The authors' agenda is stronger than their scholarship. I lived through some of the items they report (like the founding of the EFF and such) and even where the events are literally presented, and I can only say we disagree on interpretation, if not facts. In some cases, I believe the authors are either mistaken or distorting the course of events, often in ways that try to minimize the personalities they don't like who are on the "other side" of their argument.

However, my father taught me that to do the best possible work for peace, you have to intimately understand the ways of war -- how the other side of the negotiating table thinks. And for those of you interested in keeping worlds such as Second Life reasonably independent of national and regulatory morass -- this is the book to read, ponder, and plan strategies against.

Goldsmith and Wu believe that nationalism and national sovereignty and regulation have an inherent and uncontestable dominance over Internet affairs -- and they paint a history that shows how that viewpoint has come through in the courts.

Now, many of us might think that the courts are ignorant, don't get it, or whatever -- but when you consider the millions of fines and the convictions in the history of these disputes, it should give you pause to consider the present and continuing risks.

With those caveats, consider this a book reference rather than a review. It's controversial; it's interesting. Please do comment if you read it, and let's discuss it here!

Net neutrality fight for the Web3D space -- is this the opening volley?

2007-07-09T16:45:00Z

Metaversed notes that Trion is entering the "Web3D" space with a war chest and big backers behind them.

On that page a reader notes his or her wonder if Linden Labs can't develop scaling with a fat client, how can Trion do such a thing with a thin client?

Easy. They have NCSoft America's former games architect. NCSoft develops rich content online games including Lineage/Lineage II which were designed for the other side of the digital divide. They started lean on persistent worlds, and now think they can run lean on dynamic content.

Compare Lineage II's PC requirements to Second Life's.

And then imagine you actually got performance out of Linden Lab's "recommended" configuration. Lineage II runs like a dream at their recommended requirements level. On the Lineage II minimum requirements, it's a judgment call if it runs better than Linden Lab's "recommended" level.

Frankly, I am not impressed with Linden Lab's ability to design and implement code, but they have created the first large social non-persistent virtual world (unless you count Eve Online, which involves a world which while somewhat dynamic, restricts you to playing a brain planted in a starship). LL rushed in where angels feared to tread, and they can expect competition -- competition that is better funded, with better tech staff, and no utopian libertarian aspirations to fetter their behavior.

Is this a good thing? Dunno. Look at the megacorp badges on trion's front page and then think what your code of conduct will be on their sites? Your privacy? The marketing load you'll be subjected to? The amount of freely authored content, vs corporate content.

Perhaps this is the beginning, effectively, of the "network neutrality" fight for "Web3D" space?

The sleepless shall inherit the earth

2007-07-03T03:48:00Z

It's 5am, and we just finished recording audio with a collaborator on a vblog in Munich. Earlier this evening I was interviewed by a woman in Australia, and in between was asked by a woman in Hawai'i about booking a gig with my fiance Tuna Oddfellow (winner of the NBC "Avatar's Got Talent" contest prize of a million lindens, avatar of my RL fiance and business parter Matt "Fish the Magish" Fishman). Me, I'm in Boston.

My normal day begins at 11am eastern -- it'll be a slightly short night. But here's one lesson learned from SL -- the insomniacs inherit the global economy, if they can bobble a schedule and yet remain comfortable. It's something a lot of us in international business have dealt with for years, especially since the Internet made communications cheap and easy, borderless.

But Second Life more so. We've added another dimension to our timezone liberated lives.

A theory of why LL may really be looking at age verification

2007-06-29T00:46:00Z

Some days I'm forced to admit that SL is simply not for the weak. There aren't enough Lindens to prevent a situation such as the one documented below, not quickly enough. If you are delicate about language, you may want to skip the part of this post that begins with a chat log.

But perhaps this demonstrates, at the very least, the silver lining of age verification done right.

Many of us have suspected that accounts without payment information -- often throwaway accounts with throwaway email addresses -- are used by griefers, hackers, and generally people with non-communitarian intentions, shall we say.

Perhaps the new age verification system will cut down, indirectly, on people who create throw away accounts, much as that's not its heralded reason?

It makes more sense that ID verification would cut down on hackers and griefers than the overt reason that it would eliminate age play -- that never made sense to me. But so often things are instituted for less obvious reasons than are stated in public.

I actually like the idea that the Lindens want people with no payment information included in this world, but do not want people who want to create throw away identities behind which they can hide ugly behavior, incarnation after incarnation.

Pseudonymity is one thing. I am extraordinarily open that Shava Suntzu and Shava Nerad "map" to one another, and I respect people who come to SL to experiment with identity or escape their real life -- so long as they come to be part of this community, and not to tear it down.

The scene is the new Ben & Jerry's sim. E-Sheep has a promo going that invites people to join affinity communities on creating a new avatar. As a result, this sim has a constant stream of new folks, many international with poor English skills, trying to get oriented to the signs that are urging them to load a custom HUD to play a game to pick up "meadow muffins" around the island. It's a PG land.

As I appear, a couple folks, perhaps from Germany or the Netherlands from the grammar, are trying to figure out the signs.

[22:24] Kaia Boa: hey
[22:24] Kaia Boa: did you read?
[22:25] Kaia Boa: can you see it
[22:25] Vitia Vella: yeaaah
[22:25] Kaia Boa: its a pink cloud

[22:25] smoofdaddy Barbosa: slurp
[22:25] Kaia Boa: its here

[22:25] smoofdaddy Barbosa: damn bitch... you stink!!!! Duche once in a while

[22:26] Vitia Vella: fuck off
[22:26] Toroar Allen: yes.. well i must go.. it was a pleasure

[22:26] Click here to get a Methaniac HUD! owned by Methaniac Sheep gave you 'Ben & Jerry's Methaniac! (Right-click to wear)' ( slurl.com/secondlife/Ben%20and%20Jerrys/97/131/28 ).
[22:26] smoofdaddy Barbosa: taste like rotting tuna
[22:26] Kaia Boa: well see you soon
[22:26] smoofdaddy Barbosa: what the fuck are you
[22:26] Toroar Allen: ok bye}
[22:26] Kaia Boa:

[22:26] smoofdaddy Barbosa: bich has a tail
[22:27] Toroar Allen: Bye
[22:27] Kaia Boa: Looking good!
[22:27] Vitia Vella: creepy..
[22:27] You: smoof, what is your problem?
[22:27] smoofdaddy Barbosa: freaky bitch want some dick?
[22:27] smoofdaddy Barbosa: zipppppp
[22:27] smoofdaddy Barbosa: plop
[22:27] You: I don't know...do you want to end up reported for harrassment?

[22:27] Luobubu Hax: i don't kown waht shall i do next
[22:27] smoofdaddy Barbosa: whoooo?
[22:27] Luobubu Hax: me
[22:28] smoofdaddy Barbosa: I guess I should call animal control
[22:28] Kaia Boa: hi
[22:28] Vitia Vella: i want to make a good blow.

[22:28] You: less than a day old and already a griefer. Such a shame

[22:28] Luobubu Hax: hi
[22:28] smoofdaddy Barbosa: meowwww
[22:28] muraken Oyen: hi
[22:29] smoofdaddy Barbosa: vita wants it
[22:29] Vitia Vella: yeah,,,
[22:29] smoofdaddy Barbosa: do you like it in the ass?
[22:29] Vitia Vella: luv it
[22:29] smoofdaddy Barbosa: cornhole bitch toss my salad
[22:30] Vitia Vella: can you make me feel good with dirty words?
[22:30] smoofdaddy Barbosa: I am now a ice cream cone lick me!
[22:30] smoofdaddy Barbosa: this game blows
[22:31] Vitia Vella: wont u come and fuck me hard?
[22:31] smoofdaddy Barbosa: you have to come to me I am now an ice cream cone

[22:33] Luobubu Hax: hi
[22:34] Toroar Allen: hi who are u
[22:34] Luobubu Hax: do you kown what the notes mean?
[22:34] Toroar Allen: or what are u
[22:34] Luobubu Hax: i am luobubu
[22:34] Luobubu Hax: an u?
[22:34] Luobubu Hax: and u ?
[22:34] Toroar Allen: im titiar je
[22:34] You: I just started to figure it out when this idiot harrassed me... Just getting out of reporting him... *sigh*
[22:34] Toroar Allen: sorry toro ar
[22:35] You: Sorry to seem distracted. My name is Shava.
[22:35] Luobubu Hax: my english is not good ,i can't eunderstand what it means
[22:35] Luobubu Hax: and you are new comer?
[22:35] Toroar Allen: whats you r mother language whatis
[22:35] You: Actually, I've been here over a year and a half -- old in SL terms!
[22:35] Luobubu Hax: oh
[22:35] You: I'm afraid I only have English and a little French.
[22:35] Luobubu Hax: what a good thing
[22:36] Toroar Allen: ok i must go bye
[22:36] You: Let me help, perhaps, with the signs?
[22:36] Luobubu Hax: can you tell me what should i do next?
[22:36] You: the first one, where it says "Click Here" -- click with your mouse.
[22:36] Luobubu Hax: but i can't understand the signs

[22:37] You: Smoof, you do know what a PG sim is, yes?
[22:37] You: It means no profanity or nudity or sex talk
[22:37] Luobubu Hax: waht is PG?
[22:37] smoofdaddy Barbosa: porn god?
[22:37] Luobubu Hax: i want to go to city
[22:37] Luobubu Hax: how can i do ?
[22:38] You: In English, it's a movie rating "Parental Guidance." It means, suitable for teens, or for younger children with their parents with them

[22:38] You: and pushing people like that is not ok.
[22:38] You: you are going to be so banned.
[22:39] smoofdaddy Barbosa: this game sucks
[22:39] smoofdaddy Barbosa: party naked
[22:39] Luobubu Hax: why?
[22:39] Toroar Allen: but you sucks more
[22:39] smoofdaddy Barbosa: hey racoon chick get naked
[22:39] Toroar Allen: ?=///@(/&%$$(((//
[22:40] You: smoof, go away, please. Your behavior is awful, and these people are new here. What an awful first impression you're giving them.
[22:40] You: You don't belong here
[22:40] smoofdaddy Barbosa: party naked
[22:41] Toroar Allen: ))((((//&&%%$###

[22:41] Luobubu Hax: oh ,there is a hero
[22:41] Luobubu Hax: thank u
[22:41] Toroar Allen: youre welcome

[22:41] smoofdaddy Barbosa: muuuuummmmmmmm
[22:41] You: I will come back and explore this place later, after this buffoon has been banned.
[22:41] smoofdaddy Barbosa: rat tail
[22:42] Toroar Allen: ok bye
[22:42] You: I am sorry everyone. This isn't what SL is like...

...at least, I hope it's not.

Forbes tries to take a speck out of Second Life's eye

2007-06-28T04:07:30Z
You have to wonder what's involved for an organization like Forbes to get someone to fact check an article in a virtual world. That was my first thought when a recent magazine article, Sex, Pranks and Reality (free registration required), began with a description that questioned whether a helicopter crash into a Second Life Nissan building -- starting a fire and raining dead bodies on the pavement -- was an accident or a prank.

My educated diagnostic? It was a prank. Anyone who'd spent more than a few hours in Second Life could have told Forbes that.

For those of you who might be reading this blog who have not yet entered your Second Life: you can't die there, unless it consensual. This is to say, unless you are playing a game-inside-the-game where the rules say you can die, you can't even be made to seem to die.

So, my expectations were set low for the rest of the article, and I'm afraid my expectations were met.

First, let's talk about SL in context.

This is 2007 and Second Life is positioned to take off as the web did about a decade ago. Then, at the dawn of secure e-commerce, systems were clunky, deliveries sketchy, the entire e-commerce world seemed to have forgotten every lesson of conventional interface design or mail order best practices. "Everybody" knew that the only people who were making money were porn sites. It was terrible. Who in the world would want to do business in such an environment?

Does this look familiar?

What Will You Do When The Internet Becomes a 1.2 Trillion Dollar Online Marketplace?
The Internet is not some new advertising medium, it is a center of communication and product development; a place to eye trends and keep abreast of the changing marketplace ... a place to put your business online.
Results are in from ActivMedias 5th Annual Study: "The Real Numbers Behind Net Profits". 1997 Closes at $22 Billion (U.S.) Up 700% from 1996! Growth continues broadly across all Web sectors: retail, B-to-B, manufacturing, services, computing, networking, and telecom, as well as the Web's own ISP's and marketing/design consultants.
According to Forrester Research, l998 could shape up as the year online shopping takes off. According to Bill Bluestein, a Forrester analyst, "it's the last year you have to get your organizational act together, after that, the market will take off." Many industry experts agree that retail merchants that wait to get online are at risk.
This was the finger that retailermart.com shook at the timid in 1998.

What will you be thinking in 2008? What tune will Forbes be singing then?

The Forbes article goes on to focus on the tired formula that Second Life is a hotbed of sex, gambling, and pranks.

Traditional corporate people exhibit dramatic cognitive dissonance when they examine Second Life culture -- a culture which is, after all, a mirror of the desires of real life people.

No marketing person in the world would deny that sex sells, that sucker bets trick people into taking risks, or that people are drawn to the lure of transgressive behavior without consequences. Throngs of culturati have continued to toll the end of civilization as marketeers continue to evoke these "lesser urges" to sell anything from vacations to soap to pickup trucks.

But you see, the marketing people never have to see the leer on the face of the guy in his underwear watching the nubile woman on their red pickup truck ad -- so they forget that their ads are all about sex, and as much sex as they can get away with in public.

There's never going to be a guy in a wifebeater walking into their sparkling ad agency office to give them grief. The security guy downstairs would never let it happen.

After all, on the web, the average consumer is still invisible. The web is all about sex too. The US government says that about 1% of web sites are pornography. It's fair to assume that more of those sites are e-commerce sites than the general run of web sites. About five years ago, after all, the domain name sex.com was assessed at US$65 million when the owner admitted to having made US$40 million on the site in the previous five years.

The difference between the audience for the traditional advertiser or web site operator is that they don't have to see their market. In Second Life, if you advertise a car with a nubile waif, your customer may show up aroused and asking for a date.

Welcome to your market, up close and personal!

But let's not call them just a market. They are your prey. Your job is to find them, gain their trust, grow relationships and affinity, and cajole them to spend money. You are the predator, and they are prey -- simplistic, but essentially true.

TV? DVRs eat eyeballs, and more and more folks in the demographic you want are turning off the TV and spending their evenings online.

Web? Oh, yes, "web 2.0," right? Social networking, interactivity, multimedia, customization -- it's all gradually converging into a virtual world environment. Just a matter of time.

The virtual world will be where your herd is migrating.   You can follow them this year, or you can come in later, with less skills and nothing staked out. If you aren't agile, then you shouldn't be an early adopter -- but the benefits of early adoption could magnify into the future -- for those who see clearly.

Coming soon...

2007-06-22T02:00:00Z
Business Presence in SL: the professional services model
Review: Galveston Island (clue -- I like it a lot)
Review: SL4B -- Second Life's 4th birthday bash!

Review: Kelly Services Island

2007-06-22T02:18:12Z

It's always a little tricky reviewing a brand new SL business presence, but a story in SLNN attracted me to check out Kelly Services Island. Besides, 25-30 years ago I was a Kelly Girl when we were still called “Kelly Girls,” before the temp and contract labor group became the more PC “Kelly Services." I figured that makes me an alumna.

In SLNN, I got the first impression that Kelly was setting up an in-world placement business. What a great idea (but, what's the margin?). But no, it turns out that Kelly is seeking the typists behind the avatars who are seeking RL jobs. They are simply promoting their temp and permanent placement services.

TPing in, you receive a Kelly HUD with a few options and some instructions to approach the doors of buildings to get jobs. “Shava Suntzu, welcome to Kelly Services Island. Please use the Kelly Services HUD found in your inventory to interact with the various items around the Island. Enjoy your stay.”

The HUD was mounted center-top...and sort of confusing. It did let me turn off music, and launch a URL to Kelly in web space for temp and permanent placements (not that these were obvious from the URLs – who thought itstimetogetalife.com was a respectful way to market to even post-ironic potential temp workers?).

The button for [KellySL.com] actually brought up a TP to the island, not a URL. The button that promises a link to Kelly Isle actually loads the main Kelly business site. However that site has a link to http://kellysecondlife.com. FINALLY! Too bad there's not much there.

You land on a very cartoony landscape. In fact, the ground is perfect curves of a flat color texture, the insipid green color of that fiber-y stuff they spray on grass with seeds in it. It's color coordinated with the pastel Cartoon Network-style simple-prim collage of buildings around a central park area focused on...a money tree?

Alrighty then, let's head in! You step away from the landing point – and fall. Yes, that flat green texture is hiding the geography of a hill steeper than a camel's hump. Interface vertigo seized me.

The park area is shared with a Kelly swag freebie giving box, a figure who looks remarkably like the lazy office guy from Dilbert (but is actually a Kelly property from their virtualbreakroom.com site), and a few benches.

The first building I came to said “janitors wanted.” Well, I don't really want a janitorial job in SL, or in first life, but let's check it out. Approaching the door, I found a sweeper that gave me L$1 per ten minute work polishing the floor, and a warning that said, “Don't push the red button on the big machine! It's broken."

Well, I didn't run the sweeper or touch the button.

Is this a way to attract business? The site started to gain on the “what were they thinking?” scale.

The next building was a messenger service. Do Kelly Services hire messengers? Does SL need messengers? I requisitioned a messenger bike, and ignoring the pump, mounted the bike. As the bike pedaled, exercise bike style, and we rose into the air, leaving me bikeless and falling at a very high altitude to splat on the steps as I returned to the island.

Hmmm....

A video kiosk produced a simple animated video that flashed (Quicktimed?) through a number of work sectors, starting with teachers (Kelly hires teachers? Teachers are important enough to their placements that they deserve first exposure in a promo video?). The animation clip, which loops, doesn't even mention the traditional office staffing services, or anything about Second Life. There was no call to action – the animation is from last year's 60^th anniversary of Kelly's founding.

A sandwich board (2 prims on a hinge, so to speak) next to the video display urges you to join the “Kelly Free Agent” group for updates and events – but I don't know about you, I have 25 packed and painfully selected groups already.

Another building calls for scientists. No call to action, no interactivity but another link to virtualbreakroom.com.

The last building is labelled for Exterminators. Chittering roaches are scattered around the floor, and a static prim TV in the corner mysteriously displays a frame from the 2006 video that says “Nurses.” Nothing was clickable, but after a moment, a twice-tall-avatar size brown grub emerged from the dusty pink carpet and waved pseudopods at me. This is SL. You think I'm going to jump?

In completing my circuit of this very small island, I discovered a sign at the bottom of the camel's hump hill which had been totally overlooked in my precipitous arrival. It declared that the sim is G-rated (despite the PG rating on the land), and that nudity, violence, and various other antisocial (to a G-rating) behaviors were forbidden and could lead to banning. Might have been nice to see upon arrival.

Final call? Here is another extensive effort that could have been replaced with a prefab office building with a notecard dispenser with links, and some informational signs – it's a 3d website. The games are not engaging, the graphical style is simplistic and annoying, and the people who come there are going to probably just go to the website and never come back to the SL presence – but then, if they were really looking for placement, they could have found Kelly easier in first life, in a phone book or on the web.

Potential fixes:

Texture the grass.

Chuck the games – they aren't attracting anyone I would want to hire as a first life businesswoman.

Less fun, more business.

Put in promotions to attract hiring companies as clients – there are a lot of them here.

Office hours. Have times the sim is staffed so people can chat with a Kelly Services agent, even if it's only four hours a week, with hours that touch your best international markets.

The Napster Syndrome: will Linden Lab survive its pioneering spirit?

2007-07-27T16:16:54Z

Six years ago, only two years into its amazing rise and fall, Napster was accused by the RIAA of 2.79 billion violations of copyright law -- in one month. Napster claimed invulnerability as a tool maker -- the maker of a crowbar isn't liable if the tool is used to steal a car, and it has many benign uses.    Napster relied on the Betamax decision, which found that video tape recorder manufacturers were not responsible for possible misuses by tapers.  Still, a controversial decision brought the filesharing utility company down in a blaze of glory that equalled that of its ascendence in the popular imagination. Later cases continue to muddy the waters.

Because of the way P2P file sharing gripped the imagination of media consumers, the market demanded successor projects that could prove legally well founded.

Today, we find odd bedfellows such as BitTorrent and Warner Bros. Studio in a case of parallel development that confuses every layperson I know. How is it that the same studios who cried out for the blood of Napster could ink a partnership with Napster's obvious offspring?

Part of the answer to this is social and consumer acceptance. Napster ran bluntly into a legal morass of undefined issues without social conventions behind them. Today, with iPods sprouting from millions of ears, electronic distribution of music and other media is more than a consumer issue -- it's become part of the memetic background of the culture. Forbidding the electronic sharing of media would be no more acceptable than forbidding unmarried couples to cohabitate. Laws follow social norms.

Napster's successors have benefitted from clarified case law, as well as a changing culture. But the pioneer who started their sector is gone.

So, today, we find Linden Lab blazing new paths in international issues that seem to trample sovereignty around taxation, currency regulation, and laws representing social norms around money and sex.   As pioneers, will they survive?

Mitch Kapor, Linden Lab' chair, was a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group I admire immensely and who defends a lot of online rights -- in the United States. But EFF's influence ends at the US border -- there really is no global advocate for issues of online rights or online commerce.

As a US company, Linden Lab uses US law as a base for most things. But with residents in a hundred countries each with laws covering all of the above mentioned sensitive issues, Linden Lab has got to be bracing for a long series of challenges.

Most of us in business are used to issues having to do with online jurisdiction of taxation. Should e-commerce be taxed? What constitutes "local operations?" What is "income?" These questions gain a certain richness in a virtual world with a virtual (but exchangeable) currency. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Britain and Wales is concerned. So is the US Congress.

But legal questions in SL aren't restricted to finance.

As an illustration, controversies over age play in Second Life led to some confusing press.   Linden's reaction was to cooperate with the German police. In Germany, the animated depiction of sex between an adult and a minor is illegal, while in the US it is not. Linden Lab banned two middle aged residents for play-acting illicit sex in the viewing radius of a German journalist.   Linden Lab' secondary reaction was to move toward age verification, a confusingly irrelevant follow-on.

Even if you are not involved in the sex industry in Second Life, these issues should concern you as vulnerabilities to Linden Lab. If the Lindens flip the switch, we all go out.

As a Second Life business woman, I would love to be a fly on the wall in Linden Lab' board meetings. As Kapor and CEO Philip Rosedale confer with investment community directors, will Rosedale's 2004 quote come back to haunt them? Wired quotes Rosedale: "I'm not building a game, I'm building a new country."

Does this mean we should not be investing time and infrastructure in SL? I vote with my feet, which are firmly planted on SL's land, just in the same way I would locate in any entrepreneurial environment -- with confidence, and a contingency plan.

I do believe that Second Life will change the way the world thinks about community and business. However, I'm also of the opinion that I am gaining portable skills in Second Life that will transfer to the next virtual world, should Linden Lab go the way of Napster.