Wagner James Au's essay, on the problems of marketing in Second Life, will provide virtual-world skeptics with the material they need to douse down over-enthusiastic executives. The author is one of the most authoritative spokesmen for Linden Lab's clunky 3D game. If WJA is losing faith, the trend-sheep, such as IBM's Irving Wladawsky-Berger, won't be far behind. The commentator, who's writing a book on the much-hyped virtual world, explains that most users of Second Life, rather than flying around aimlessly, teleport from location to location. So it's not as though virtual billboards, en route, will attract their attention. WJA suggests that marketers, rather than transposing their banal brands to such a fantastic world, hire the college kids who build the few attractions on Second Life with genuine flair. But that misses the point: the reason Second Life has such a bizarrely enthusiastic following, among companies such as IBM and Sears, is economic: a coalition of in-house evangelists and external boutique agencies has done very well building the "banal" corporate presence that so depresses WJA. Without them, there would be no constituency for marketing in Second Life. After the jump, the key passage from WJA's essay.

The standard means of travel in SL is point-to-point teleportation, near-instantaneous transit from one x,y,z location to another. (Though it gets more press, Superman-esque flying is mostly used in short, localized bursts to get around obstacles.) P2P teleporting renders billboards and most other location-based advertising useless, and in any case, most SL marketers buy and develop on private virtual islands, where they can fully control the branding experience.

Due to server architecture, however, these islands are only accessible by teleportation, making it the ultimate opt-in experience. Giving marketers the unique challenge of getting Residents to voluntary dive into their ad, and stay long enough for any kind of meaningful brand immersion. So it's not all that surprising marketers are largely floundering in Second Life: it's like trying to create ads in a 3D Tivo.

Residents navigate the world through a dynamic map; in it, every avatar in-world is represented by a green dot, and this feature has become a quick way for getting a visual read on where other Residents are in the world, and what they're doing. In various locales and islands, green dots congregate in large numbers, and users' immediate inference is, if lots of people are going to these places, something interesting must be going on there.

Any noticeable clump of green dots attracts more dots, and as those grow, more follow- a feedback loop colloquially known as "the green dot effect". Second Life's most successful entrepreneurs (who've proven far more agile and inventive then most of their real world counterparts) sustain this flurry of dots by holding constant events, giveaways, and games, and even go so far to pay Residents to visit. Amazingly, corporate marketers have been slow to replicate these homegrown strategies. (Surely several interns can host regular activities at their company's SL site? Has to beat photocopying and bagel runs.)

Contact information for this author is not available.