FireStarter: An Introduction to Second Life

An Introduction to Second Life

For those of you that have not come across the Second Life phenomenon, here is a brief breakdown of what it is and how it works…

Second Life is a virtual world developed by Linden Labs but imagined, created and owned by its users. These users are a rapidly growing population currently running at about four and half million people, from around 100 countries. In the last 24 hours (12 March 2007) users spent a staggering US$1,530,000! You can join for free and own, create, build or do pretty much anything you wish.

A virtual world would not be interesting in the least if you were controlled by the same set of rules as normal humans, real drags on your normal life such as gravity, getting old, normal human features and no teleporting and sword fighting in public areas. Of course the community as a whole have decided on some basic rules in order to try and ensure the SL experiance is a good one. The alternative is that everyone starts running around in their underwear and then the random killing and destruction starts! The community rules can be found here.

The only limit to this world is your imagination.

Needless to say this makes the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. Strangely enough when you first visit and start interacting with people you feel like a twelve year old going to your first school disco.

So who are the real residents of second life? There are apparently 1,974,607 actual unique residents signed up at the time of this article (figures are approximate only and changing all the time). These are split into active and inactive users to give a real figure of participation.

Active users are defined in one of two ways;

• Logging into your account for more than one hour in the previous month
• Logging on for more than 60 hours (no time frame given)

The volume of users fitting the above “active” description falls into around the 1.6 million mark. Some 85,400 have premium accounts, own land and spend substantial time online there. It is these early adopters, largely made up of software developers, designers and communities that keep this world going. They have even spawned new and diverse groups within Second Life that follow specific “physical” or behavioural traits such as Steampunks, Furries, Geeks (of course) Elves, Goths, Goreans, Mechas and Blingtards.

It covers over 361 virtual square kilometres and is expanding quickly and of course the land NEVER runs out (kerching!) Recently Second Life announced their first “millionaire” landlord in November last year.

Second Life operates its own currency allowing its residents to do business on the other side in Linden Dollars (L$) and yes they have their own currency index known as the LindeX. The exchange rate is about L$250 to US$1.

Start up businesses are joining Second Life and trading without the need for a real world counterpart. Take Nepheline Protagonist (Second Life name) owner and operator of Pixel Dolls, Second Life fashion store. She creates stunning outfits for her customers that visit her store in Port Serephine looking to clothe their avatars (an Avatar is the digital representation of you in this world).

This is a full time business for the virtual fashion designer and makes a very good living from it. She has even been approached by real world fashion companies for the license to create her designs in the first life. But, and this is the real kicker, she designs an outfit electronically and sells the same one over and over and over...

How much money is involved in this? Linden Labs tells us that around $140,000 was made in Fashion sales alone last month by the top 20 designers in SL .

Big business in Second Life

The challenge for real world business, especially large corporate entities, is how to integrate into SL without offending the community. Some will never consider this of course because of real world success and a degree of arrogance, but the real force behind SL is the equality the platform gives its independant users and businesses that create there. This brand acceptance should not be taken for granted and you’ll find the clever businesses will consider their online community rather than just chase the dollar.

Frustration with some brands has lead to the creation of groups that are set up to defend the space such as the Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA). They recently attacked the Addidas store and created havoc at a Big Brother launch party!

So who are there?

Vodaphone
Dell
Sony
Warner Brothers
Toyota
Intel
Coca-Cola
Reuters
Microsoft
MTV

Watch the You Tube Intro movies to these companies in Second Life.

It's not just big business getting involved here but also some very well known bands and DJ's - check them out.

What is the Australian angle?

This very much depends on your type of business, some industries are better suited than others but you can pretty much promote or sell anything in this virtual world. Imagine being able to hold a conference, meeting and either present (with powerpoint) or attend and listen to the presenter and have a chat with the people sitting next to you (via Skype or IM)!

Telstra has bought 3 islands and ABC one island, are both poised to announce their residency in SL later this month. Linden Labs has issued their report on membership and of the users falling into the active category Australian represent approximately 1.48%. This equates to approximately 2922 Australian users.

When Telstra opens their Islands it will be introduced to their 1.5 million Bigpond internet users. This will no doubt have a substantial effect on Australian adoption of the cyber world, as more companies adopt this and deliver it into the mainstream consciousness it will naturally become more of a force in Australia.

The current keymetrics were released in January and can be viewed here on the Linden Labs blog.

A new world without taxes!? Well, that was true until the ATO got wind of this and determined that income generated in virtual worlds is taxable. Even if it is in Linden dollars. More information on that can be found here. Unfortunately you can virtually be taxed to death and the person carrying out the audit will no doubt turn up looking like some kind of giant Squirrel with a brief case.

The most interesting of the metrics released were as follows

The average age of SL's active user is 33. This would indicate that despite all efforts to associate Second Life with Myspace or YouTube users its audience is definitely more muture.
SL has an approximate land mass of 361 square kilometres, this grew by 26% in December alone.
The gender split is predominantly male and runs at about 59% male and 41% female.

Australia sits at around 11th place in the SL adoption stakes, way behind early adopters United States, United Kingdom and Germany.

The skeptics are out in force on this one.

Some say that you should get a first life before getting a second one. Others are predicting the crash of the LindeX if SL doesn’t hit 45 million users by 2008.

Whatever your point of view, you should give it a try before forming an opinion. Who knows you could be the next virtual Picasso, you could fall in love (find the man, woman or animal of your dreams) or sell the same pixels over and over again and make a killing...

Kevan says...

Does anyone remember something called the internet and how “it will never catch on?”

Article written by Kevan Baker of FireStarter.com.au, call us on 1300 13 89 31.

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