LA Times Sets the Record Straight on Second Life Hype
After spending the last few years shamelessly fawning over Second Life (including this recent puff piece), the LA Times has finally ceased its lightweight regurgitation of Second Life press releases and published an article that is actually critical (!) of the much-hyped virtual world.
Four years after Second Life debuted, some marketers are second-guessing the money and time they’ve put into it.
“There’s not a compelling reason to stay,” said Brian McGuinness, vice president of Aloft, a brand of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. that is closing its Second Life shop and donating its virtual land to the nonprofit social-networking group TakingITGlobal.
On its website, Second Life says the number of total residents is more than 8 million. But that counts people who signed in once and never returned, as well as multiple avatars for individual residents. Even at peak times, only about 30,000 to 40,000 users are logged on, said Brian Haven, an analyst with Forrester Research.
“You’re talking about a much smaller audience than advertisers are used to reaching,” Haven said.
None of this is new and this information has been reported in various forms (especially blogs) for the past year, but it is still nice to see it reported the mainstream media and especially in the Times which has been particularly syrupy in its coverage.
What is new, at least to me, is that not only is Second Life far smaller than they would like you to believe, but they are not growing.
Between May and June, the population of active avatars declined 2.5%, and the volume of U.S. money exchanged within the world fell from a high of $7.3 million in March to $6.8 million in June.
These stats confirm the “I don’t get it” feelings of the majority who’ve tried Second Life and were quickly bored. I was one of those and could never reconcile the incredible growth that was being touted in the media any more than I could understand the growth of Enron, HealthSouth, MCI, ZZZ Best, and everyone else who got to make up their numbers with impunity .
tags: 
los angeles times 
second life
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July 16th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Forbes did a great article about this recently, referencing the firebombing of the American Apparel store, poop-attacks on the John Edwards campaign headquarters and a helicopter crash (intentional or unintentional) into Nissan’s building, replete with “fatalities.” My favorite quote was from the Wells Fargo ad guy: Laughs Erik Hauser, creative director of Swivel Media, Wells Fargo’s digital agency: “Going into Second Life now is the equivalent of running a field marketing program in Iraq.”
My employer keeps trying to get me to go in there. No.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
I’m one of the inactive ones who logged into Second Life once, couldn’t figure out how to work it, and never went back. Even my teenage daughter was puzzled when she saw the Second Life icon on her desktop; I was hoping she could teach me how to use it, but she hadn’t even heard about it.
July 16th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
This is exactly the point and Second Life would have counted all three of us as “citizens”.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
My secret shame (well one of many secret shames) is I was a SLer for about 6 months. There really wasn’t a lot to it other than some good music feeds. I really dont understand how any 1L companies expected to make money there.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Well you accomplished a lot more than me and most. I think the key to the corps in Second Life is that they did it because they thought it made them look cool. I think for many people it had the opposite effect as is often the case when people try that hard to be “with it”.
July 17th, 2007 at 6:22 am
That could be. When I first logged in I couldn’t figure anything out, but I I randomly teleported a couple times just to see what was the big deal and ended up at a location with some veteran players who were willing to help me out. For a brand new player it is incredibly difficult to make sense out of anything in Second Life. If I hadn’t bumped into that group of players I would have lasted about one session.
July 26th, 2007 at 4:02 am
My thoughts on the numerous comments about brands leaving Second Life.
Firstly, remember that in many ways, Second Life (and other virtual worlds) is just another marketing channel, albeit with unique characteristics.
When companies run marketing campaigns on other channels (such as TV, radio or print) and the campaign fails to deliver the desired level of response, one of two things happen:
1. The creative concept is critised as not being appropriate or good enough. In other words it did not resonate enough with the target audience or deliver the right messages.
2. Expectations were too high in the first place. Either because they were not correctly analysed or the channel has a different set of metrics.
You rarely hear about the media channel being critised as being incorrect. Some brands have run campaigns in Second Life and the platform has been critised with very little commentary on the quality of the actual concept or the metrics being used to assess the success.
The concept of media planning in Second Life (understanding the attributes of the channel audience - what motivates them - what they want - what the platform can deliver) has been overlooked to a very high degree to date in Second Life. This is the area that successful virtual world campaigns should focus on.
July 26th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
The point is that Second Life put an inordinate focus on corporations and other organizations moving into their virtual world. They got a great deal of press play for these launches and did their best to leverage them. Kind of like when a studio makes a big deal about how many screens a film is opening.
However, when you do this people are going to ask about results. If a film is hyped at launch, you can bet there will be stories about the actual size of the opening. For SL, it’s not surprising that now that some time has passed that the media is asking how press release announcements have actually faired. Sure you can blame the quality of the campaigns or their expectations, but SL and their brand friends decided to hype them anyway leading to the position they are now in.