Second Life Bashing In Full Gear - But the Bashers Are Missing the Point

The LA Times bashes Second Life, noting that participants in the metaverse aren't there to buy real world products. Doh!

It's easy to put Second Life down - its software can be clunky, it's not easy for the uninitiated to understand how to use it and much of the content is anything but mainstream. Nonetheless, the 3D Internet is coming, and Second Life will, a year, or five years from now, be seen as the pre-cursor. Right now though, things are dicey in the corporate areas of the metaverse.

Starwood Hotels is closing Aloft, its Second Life shop, and donating its virtual land to the nonprofit social-networking group TakingITGlobal.

But Starwood noted that feedback from metaverse denizens gave Aloft ideas for its physical hotels.

The schedule of events on Sun Microsystems Inc.'s site was blank, and the green landscape of Dell Island was deserted. Signs posted on the window of the empty American Apparel store said it had closed up shop.

University of Toronto philosophy professor Philip Ludlow said most firms were more interested in the publicity they received from their ties with Second Life than in the digital world itself. "It was a way to brand themselves as being leading-edge," he said.

"In the end, my guess is Second Life will go down as having served as an important test bed for virtual-world marketing. A few intrepid brands have been pioneers in this arena. Most are lemmings."

Posted by B.L. Ochman

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Posted by: Renee Hopkins Callahan at August 1, 2007 5:25 PM

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