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« A night in Edinburgh got me thinking! | Main | SAP TechEd '06 takeaways (I) »
Fancy a second life?
I was intrigued by yesterday’s article on bbc news http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6054352.stm about Reuters setting up a news agency in Second Life.
According to Second Life, its GDP in 2005 was $64m. Main stream businesses are establishing themselves in this particular virtual world and providing connections to normal Web business channels. And there are many other larger virtual worlds out there.
And so some questions - is this the sole preserve of gamers, singletons and generation Y-ers? Or are we going to see virtual worlds become mainstream and combine with Web enabled business models? And if so, when should we start thinking about the business and IT opportunities and risks?
If we consider that only 10 years ago most if not all could not predict the mainstream adoption of Web by people and business, and that in the UK alone 40 million of the 60 million population now use Web and email – without a centrally managed business change programme by the way! – perhaps we should start to think about our personal and business second lives sooner rather than later!
Posted by Carl Bate on October 17, 2006 | 
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Comments
# on October 18, 2006 6:21 PM, Vijeesh Papulli said:
A very interesting article. One can see a huge potential in using virtual Second Life as a test ground for various business strategies and models and as you said a convegence of models for the virtual and real world.
Second Lifes here we come!
# on October 19, 2006 3:25 PM, Sunil Parekh said:
I heard about Second Life from an uncle of mine who is a marketing professor in the UK. He also cited the major potential of such a concept, so much so he's featuring it as part of an article on digital marketing.
I do think now is the time to look at these areas - the BBC have something similar called Bamzooki where children make virtual robots to enter into competitions. You can see all sorts of creative uses such as virtual 'product test drives', brand development to name a couple.
But we must look at the risks and understand the upsides and downsides. For example could there be identity theft of a virtual character? Will we get Virtual Phishing (Vishing!)?
Nonetheless I think its an exciting direction that will open up allsorts of new ideas. Now to think of some.....
# on October 19, 2006 9:18 PM, karin blum said:
I am a citizen within Second Life. In real life I work at Capgemini. An Architect with a focus on innovation. I see it as a perfect pilot environment for anybody who wants to try out a new innovations. It's a perfect environment to try things out. We might even have workshops on innovationmatters with our customers within this environment. There is no thread. Each person is an anonymous person. Furhtermore: Companies sometimes need to build a green field environment because a new design does not fit in to the existing structure. We should build this green field in second life and have all the actors involved pilot the environment as an avatar.
Life is nothing but a beautiful game.
# on October 23, 2006 3:59 PM, Carl Bate said:
Guys, thanks all so much for the excellent thoughts on this.
It's clear to me this is something way beyond niche potential and something to be seriously considered.
I'm sure 'virtual' will further support and challenge 'boundaryless' organisations, new business model testing, and the approaches and capabilities business needs to manage IT successfully to support related business models.
From an IT perspective I see a fascinating connection with emerging Web standards around Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 and how these might support a mass adoption of virtual (i.e. with it being perceived as another normal way of how we each use the Web).
Will sumbit a blog entry in the coming months on emerging trends!