By now, you probably have heard of Second Life, the popular 3D virtual world that allows its residents to live, interact, buy/sell, and collaborate all under a virtual identity. Where these residents lived, real-world companies have been experimenting too. In my research with Dr. Bill Judge, we have seen more than 50 of the Global Fortune 500 companies who have established an official presence in Second Life. We spoke with some of these companies to find out what drove them to Second Life, how they use it, and how they have benefited from it. Here is a quick summary of what we found:

1. Why Companies Enter Second Life?

Most of the companies we surveyed/interviewed entered SL in 2006. The decision to enter SL varied from an innovative mentality to jumping onto the wagon under competitive pressure. Usually, an individual or a small team of employees were personally involved in SL at first, and they eventually became champions within the company. Interestingly, European companies’ decision to enter SL were driven more by potential for media exposure rather than by the actual functionality or use of the virtual world itself, suggesting important cross-cultural differences in corporate innovation.

2. What Companies Use Second Life for?

Below are six ways the companies have been using SL, ranked by their popularity. The list makes it obvious that communication and learning represent important uses of SL.

3. How Do Companies Benefit from Second Life?

Most companies considered their SL venture to be worthwhile, although only one-third of them acknowledged realizing financial gains. Here is a list of the benefits companies believe they have received from their SL presence, ranked from most-often mentioned to least mentioned:

What do you think about these findings? Has your company ever experimented with Second Life?  I’d love to hear about your experience.

My previous blog “Rethinking Second Life Demographics” has attracted quite some search engine traffic from people who are looking for Second Life user demographics.  Since the original demographic information that I linked to was a little old, I would like to point my readers to a newer and more authoritative demographic information source: Linden Lab itself.  If you visit this Linden Lab’s Economic Statistics page, on the right side of the page, there is a link that allows you to download key metrics in an Excel (among other) format. The Excel file contains a worksheet called “Demographics” that provides information on SL users’ country of origin and usage hours by age and gender.

To give you a flavor of what is included there, here are some sample pieces of information provided by the latest (July 2008) key metrics:

1. Top 10 Countries by active user hours: US, Germany, UK, Japan, France, Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, Italy, and Spain.

2. Ranking of age segments by % of active hours logged: 25-34, 35-44, 45+, 18-24, and 13-17.

3. Males logged more active hours than females by an approximate ratio of 60/40.

The same Excel file also provides information on key SL economics, such as SL land ownership, business transactions, and LindenX currency exchange activities.

A recent real-life encounter with Second Life turned out to be a big disappointment. For an academic research project, my co-author and I were looking for a list of real-life brands that have a presence in SL. The natural point of contact seemed to be SL’s press inquiries: Lewis PR. Being a geek, I tried email first. More than a week (or a year by Internet standard) went by, and no response. So I digressed to the more traditional way of telephone. Luckily, I reached a lady named Christen from Lewis PR. After explaining the situation to her, she said she would send me something related to what we were looking for. I was reaching the point of happiness and almost convinced myself that telephone is the tool to use when you really want to get things done. But not so fast! A few days later, I still did not receive anything from Christen. I called again, afraid that she might have written down the wrong email address. I only got her voicemail and left her a message with my email address and multiple phone numbers. After another few days, it’s still dead silence from the other end. Repeated calls to the contact number resulted in nothing but her voicemail (this is the curse of Caller ID technology).

It makes me wonder: is an academic project too ivory-towerish to deserve proper attention from SL or Linden Lab (the company behind SL) or Lewis PR? I did mention to the lady that the project will eventually turn into a journal publication. Is that not worth the same efforts as compared to, say, a prominent article in New York Times? I teach Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). One of the main principles of IMC is that no matter whom a firm is communicating with, whether it is customers, internal employees, or the general public, the firm should always keep a consistent brand image. The fun and cutting-edge image of SL in my mind certainly does not match up with the disappointment and ill-will I felt during the recent encounter.

Ironically, the following quote from the SL marketing team was featured prominently on Lewis PR’s front page:

“It really does feel like our marketing team has four more members — I sometimes almost forgot that the LEWIS team isn’t actually part of the Linden Lab.” — Catherine smith, director of marketing and brand strategy, Linden Lab

Maybe that is the reason why we did not hear anything from Lewis PR. They are spending too much time functioning as Linden Lab internal employees and not giving enough attention to real-life external audiences…PUBLIC relations. Alas!