Sex, Pranks and Reality – Forbes.com
“But this leasehold doesn’t fence out troublemakers. It turns out that avatars seem more interested in having sex and hatching pranks than spending time warming up to real-world brands. “There is nothing to do in Second Life except, pardon my bluntness, try to get laid,” blogged [emphasis mine, ed] David Churbuck, Web-marketing vice president for computer maker Lenovo. (Lenovo isn’t represented on Second Life.)”
Long time reader, first time poster. I had a friend from IBM show me Second Life for the first time this evening while I was at his house. He showed me IBM’s presence, Dell World, and a few other places.
To say I was underwhelmed is an understatement. Frankly, I don’t see the point of Second Life either. I don’t see why all of these companies are wasting money setting up a presence. Then he told me how CUSTOMERS want to come in for VIRTUAL MEETINGS? Yuck! Meetings are bad enough in person.
As a shareholder, I consider this money wasted. I don’t get it. I don’t get it. I don’t get it.
Second Life is very hyped. It’s not the be all end all and I think the Forbes article was correct in pointing out risk averse companies will have issues with the Wild, Wild West.
I distinctly remember connecting through the university’s Internet connection in the early 90’s. Those on IRC (internet Relay Chat) really disliked all the Compuserve and untouchables from AOL. Seemed like it was the same thing everyday – silly questions starting with “How do I…” and silly responses like “RTFM noob”
At that time, there were companies coming onto the Internet and “wasting” the bandwidth of academic “pursuits” like IRC, and a personal fave, Gophering for really important weather information.
A buddy of mine and I even got into some trouble for selling computers on USENET. There was a strict policy against spamming USENET but we were young and silly 🙂
So.. what’s the difference between the early adoption of the Internet and the early adoption of Second Life/virtual worlds? Not much – commercialization is nasty word. The alpha geeks didn’t like it then and they don’t now. To me, it’s inevitable that it will occur in one form or another.
What I don’t quite understand is why everyone is willing to jump on board with a single company (Linden Labs.) That’s the major difference between this hype cycle and the one in the early mid 90s. I’d see that as a larger risk than having a random penis fly by your head in a virtual world 🙂
I’ll post this on routerlab.net as well. Really bad about blogging…
Hello David Charbuck, and the two commenters to his post, Mkohut and Kelly Hair. I beg to differ with your negative portrayal of the virtual world of Second Life. First, did you know there are at least 60 colleges and universities worldwide that hold classes in Second Life or have graduate students conducting research in-world? Also, did you know that several trade shows and conferences from around the U.S.A. and Europe (most recently the iCommons Summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia) are streamed into Second Life, making it possible to ask the panelists questions without actually being at the real life venue?
If you look carefully, you can find virtual book clubs where you can sit with people from all over the world and discuss books, or listen to poetry readings, live concerts and watch movie premieres? For example, I watched a couple of documentaries in Second Life that were exclusively available to Second Life “residents” in addition to the people attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
Did you know that there are real-life architects in Second Life, building prototype homes for real clients? You can build your own home there, too, rather than buy a version of AutoCAD or a dozen other software programs. I could go on, but I believe I have already debunked your original statement. Please try taking a second look at Second Life.