I’ve been hearing and reading about Second Life from some of the big minds in the business I respect, like Jeff Doak, Sam Harrelson and Wayne Porter. But is it something affiliate marketers should be getting in to (if they’re not already)?
If you’re not familiar with Second Life, it is “a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.”
Second Life opened to the public in 2003. Since then, the population has grown to more than 1.7 million people around the world.
Businesses are flocking to Second Life to establish a presence. IBM is there. NBC and Reuters, too.
The media are all reporting how Anshe Chung is Second Life’s first millionaire.
Wayne Porter opined at ReveNews today about critics of the million dollar avatar:
“What I found the most ironic during some of my discussions is that people scoff at her “virtual empire” are the same ones who understood the the concept of “virtual real estate” like a website with a domain name attached about 15 years ago.”
I think that’s a reach. Then again, it’s probably worth affiliate marketers digging in to find out more about this whole thing.
I’ve heard some interesting ideas about how Second Life could be leveraged by affiliates – I’ll be watching and experimenting myself.
By the way, my Second Life persona is Wildebeest Amsterdam.
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I tried selling tickets in-world. People just didn’t care or apparently trust things. And my affiliate boss didn’t understand how I couldn’t give him a URL to take people to my stuff, which he needed for tracking purposes. The closest I could get was a SLurl, which shows the approximate virtual neighborhood. Perhaps other businesses than tickets can benefit, but for what I attempted to sell people disregarded it in their time in SL spent escaping real-world things.
I have been watching secondlife, IMVU, World of Warcraft and other online worlds that are going crazy right now. I have seen a few affiliates figure out how to profit from these virtual spaces but I think the majority of potential is still untapped.
I see a merging of interactive entertainment (i.e. video games), the internet and marketing but it doesn’t seem like the mainstream is fully adopting it just yet.
@Andrew: I think IMVU is trying to do just that. Their 3D chat client and drag-drop websites attempt to meld virtual worlds, instant messaging, and myspace. I’m not sure how successful they are but they appear to be doing well enough that I doubt it’ll be a decade. Either way it’ll be fun to see how it plays out!
Second Life has a roaring PR machine. I would say these big corporations are just wasting money but all the free press coverage read by non-users balances it out.
May be this is just anecdotal but I read a story about a recent event with a musician. 15 people attended. This would be a poor turnout for a local even in a small town. When I see the stories about 1,500 15,000 150,000 people showing up to an event — then I’ll be impressed.
Give it another decade and some company will figure out how to do this with really mass appeal. Someone is going to figure out how to attract the Myspace audience to a virtual world. When this happens they will become a billionaire and a whole lot of affiliates and entrepreneurs will become millionaires.
I think this release is going to get the attention of a lot of folks. Affiliate Marketers have traditionally been ahead of the curve on creative ways of generating revenue and 2nd life is no exception. While the game itself wasn’t really my style, I too am fascinated by the model and the amount of business being transacted.
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