The media peddles two basic perceptions about Second Life, and Linden Lab has its work cut out for it if it wants to overcome even one of them.
The two problem perceptions are: “No one is there, not much is going on” and of course the classic stench-of-shame, that there’s some sort disgraceful stigma attached with being associated with Second Life.
And of course neither one of them is really true… but neither one of them is actually false either, and that makes it a tough sell.
Lisa Dilg said it best, I think,
Aside from [Mitch Wagner], I do not know ONE person who is on Second Life. Obviously someone is, but it’s no Facebook. They are going to have to really work hard to make people think its “cool” and be willing to try it again as it seems to me that the world has moved on. No one is there, not much is going on. I’m not sure people would even admit trying it – like going to a lame party and then hoping no one found out you were there.
That really resonates. Turns out quite a few people that I know offline have been Second Life users (and there may be more), but it isn’t something they advertised or even mentioned. Public perceptions being what they are, it isn’t really something you bruit about. Not unless you enjoy the disdainful looks that are so commonly given in response. That’s not the kind of brand-recognition most people want.
So it isn’t really the case that nobody you know is a Second Life user. If you’re an average, socially normal person in a first world country, the odds are that you do know somebody who is. You just don’t really know that they are.
Based on what people read and what people hear, they form one of a set of basic conclusions about Second Life: That it is a game that lacks any game mechanics; A theme park without rides and attractions; A social experience without anybody you know; A cineplex without movies or session times; A shopping experience where the people you know will never see your purchases; A tourist destination where you can’t find anything.
And while none of these perceptions is strictly true, at some level they’re all at least a little bit true, and that just makes them harder to shake. That’s the perceptual hurdle that Linden Lab needs to overcome, if it can. The Lab has never really focused its message and tried to sell it – or if so, that’s never really happened effectively.
And the sell keeps getting tougher. Every week, the hurdle gets a little higher.
On the “social experience without anybody you know”, well, there’s only one of two directions Linden Lab can go with that for Second Life, isn’t there?
Currently we have the concept of agents/avatars, which provide the same kind of anonymity as a Xbox gamertag or WoW character name. That’s kind of anti-social but fulfills its purpose of allowing as much disconnect and immersion as desired.
Were Second Life to become as social as Facebook, residents would have to become more accessible via their real names and identities. That’d mean doing something more useful with the First Life tab and allowing residents to be searched for via their real names and email addresses no different than social networks like Facebook.
There’s a whole host of reasons why residents would be resistant to that though I imagine, but that’s what it’d take.
User morale is really down Tateru… really down…Mitch Wagner summed it up in my last interview with him, that when he talks to Techi non SL users, the most common response is, is that thing still going? Unless you have been to a SLCC, there is no collective and obvious sense of pride I suspect amongst users right now, outside of being inworld, and not a lot of SL users who are happy to evangelise for SL. There was back in 2007-2008 tho. Personally I feel my company in SL has reached heights I never thought it would, I’m proud of its success, but do I talk about it outside of my SL contacts? not any more. A year ago or more I did, now I just say I’m in Digital Media if asked what I do… and I don’t discuss it. Why? because the reaction over the last year or more has been extremely negative, and people think even more than they did in 2007, that if you place any business importance in SL you are really deluded and a loser. I don’t actually think I am…but I do wonder some days, I guess we all do.
Linden Lab need to have pride in their residents, and I’m not sure if they actually do. I guess if they treated us with pride then maybe it might leak out to non-users. But in the last few years we have been treated by the company as a bunch of losers with no idea what we need or want, so its no wonder we have no pride about it. I’m openly proud with my SL contacts but its a secret pride in real life.
Very sad.
Paisley
I agree that Linden Lab needs to show more pride. Other than the current banner program with LinkShare, I have never seen a Second Life/Linden Lab ad. If Linden Lab does any marketing campaigns then they are not in any public venues.
But the Residents need to show more pride as well. I follow a lot of Second Life related blogs and tweets (way more than I should spend time on) and a large portion are negative in content. And usually the most vocal. Not only does the media pick up on these, why would anyone want to join Second Life after reading them? I do not always agree with Linden Lab but I also do not spend all my time bashing them in public. The more time we spend tearing down Linden Lab in public, the harder it is for Linden Lab to overcome. Of course that is the point of some of them.
I am proud to be a part of the Second Life community and I share that when I can. Sadly, most people I know just simply do not get Second Life. IMHO, it takes a unique type of person to truly understand and appreciate Second Life.
I disagree with the idea that LL needs to have pride in it’s users, I’d say it needs to have pride in it’s brand – and for that to happen they need to focus on further enabling content creation and distribution(whether that is virtual goods or services) and governance.
Content creaters need to be able to market their products and services (still very difficult in SL)
Users need to feel some level of protection from inappropriate and unwanted experiences in SL.
And frankly also I’m glad SL has fallen off the radar while we had Emeraldgate – a company that (for a while at least) sanctioned the dowloading of malware to users …well, that’s sort of inexcusable these days and would have killed the SL brand for good.
Right now as someone who, like Paisly is attempting to run a business in SL I’m seriously wondering if I will be here in a year’s time and keeping a very firm eye on alternative platforms. Nothing quite beats SL at the moment – but unless LL reclaims it’s brand and makes it easier to do business in SL something will look more attractive very soon.
@Vooper, See I think that L.L greatest asset is their users, and we are very much part of their brand. Without the users who created this world with the tools that L.L provided there is nothing to attract new users and to keep users from leaving. I have always thought that and am pleased to see that now Sims are being highlighted and showcased on the Front page of the Second Life webpage. Its a very good start.
I love to get people I know on to SL. .. or more accurately I used to.
It’s a hard sell when the platform seems to be undermined by the very people who created it, when we’re drowned in watermellon shiny over and over, features and directions that have to be sold back to the community. A PR machine that looks to guiding the existing residents to this weeks new goal.
There is a serious disconnect between the residents and the management and that makes resident marketing very difficult. SL is where it is because we, it’s residents moved in, got involved and then told everyone we knew. LL had the most powerful marketing machine in the industry, massive growth and buzz powered entirely by WOM.
We don’t talk about SL anymore, we don’t invite our friends, or get those who didn’t click to try again. We’re still here because one way or another, we are all committed. Meanwhile the people at the top are sounding more and more like politicians.
“That’s the perceptual hurdle that Linden Lab needs to overcome, if it can.”
Protestant puritanism and the atavistic urge to not suffer a witch to live?
Sadly, I think Paisley has hit a nail on the head. The declaration that SL residents were “pioneers” that now needed to step out of the way for the “real” users, back in 2008 (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SL5B/Transcripts) has had a long reverberation. It frames for me how LL’s top level management do tend to look at its users – an annoyance that stands in their way, versus being the actual consumer of their product.
As much of a fan I am of this world and its people, I too find myself a lot more reluctant to say, “Oh yes, you should check out Second Life” to my First Life friends nowadays.
While there has long been a friction between LL and its Residents, I don’t think anyone would argue that that friction became toxic over those last two years. IMO, ill-will towards LL did more to harm adoption of Viewer 2 (amongst other products) than any actual issues with the viewer itself. People simply lack the trust that LL has the best interests in mind, and without that… where do you go?
To the point of the article, yes, spot on. I think of how hard it is to tell a person just what Second Life is. How do you explain the place and what value it has? How can you say “It is this” without caveats and prevarication?
Funny that NONE of LL top management has any real experience in SERVING those masses they wanted to dump you pioneers for in 2008. Not one has ever been a head of a consumer products division or sold consumer goods or services outside of a few game company wage slaves who now are at the lab.
The best joke was trying to do marketing via the v.2 browser design. M certainly led this, since its precisely the type of thinking an agency like Organic of Rocket Science would bring to SOMEONE elses business. Not on their nickel.:)
I’ve always said LL doesn’t understand its customers. For instance, Philip Linden gave an in-world Q/A a while back, and the way you submitted questions was…. Twitter. Tweet your questions for the CEO of the company, please.
I’d love to find out that at least some of the people I’m interacting with are really Linden alts. I seriously doubt, however, that anyone at LL is actually using the product for any productive ends.
This is where OpenSimulator can do a better job: They can say they’re not Second Life. “It’s a technology similar to Second Life, but has x, y, and z added to facilitate n, o, p, and q. We call it Super-Biz-Data-Viz-Social-Net.”
David Bowie and Brian Eno both have avatars…Eno did an installation there back in the “hype” days but his attention span for new tech is as short as his brain in big. I’ve tried to friend them both but no luck for poor me.
As for the “normal” user base…LL just cannot promote some of the RP communities without reinforcing every media stereotype about SL. Sad.
“Protestant puritanism and the atavistic urge to not suffer a witch to live?”
L. Knoller, you nailed it down. And it’s a twisted society that generates such stupidity, when I can splatter blood on the screen in any score of games and that only gets the usual “corrupting our youth” outrage on TV without hurting sales one bit.
Shout out to Paisley: Well said, and better to have seen you than me on that BBC coverage of SL. You provide a reasonable and sane face for those who don’t know SL.
Thank goodness the Beeb does not come interview the academics
Paisley said: “@Vooper, See I think that L.L greatest asset is their users, and we are very much part of their brand. Without the users who created this world with the tools that L.L provided there is nothing to attract new users and to keep users from leaving. I have always thought that and am pleased to see that now Sims are being highlighted and showcased on the Front page of the Second Life webpage.”
@Paisley, I agree wholeheartedly, LL are on the right track there – but they need to step-back much more and promote the users and content creators of SL rather than themselves. Far too often LL are “the story” rather than SL and its users these days. When I’m browsing the internet I’m not constantly made aware of W3 Consortium’s latest standards or my browser developer’s new strategic plans. LL need to be more invisible so that users of SL get to the content they are interested in without even being aware of the technology/platform/organisation used to deliver that content.
I’ve actually had the opposite experience. I started out as an SL basher when I first got an avatar five years ago (six now, maybe). I took a look around, decided it was a cool idea in theory but a waste of time in practice, and left.
Today, as a result of running my company offices in OpenSim I am actually actively recruiting people from my real life into SL. I’ve done demos of OpenSim and SL for my networking groups, and every time I’m at a local business event, it’s all I talk about. And people are enthusiastic — they’re trying out the platform, creating avatars, setting up virtual offices, and planning virtual-worlds-based business projects.
For them, long term, OpenSim is a good bet — full control, own your own grid, set your own TOS, own your own content, control of your users, control over access, easy to switch between hosting providers, lower prices, etc… etc…
But short term, I recommend that they all start out in Second Life. SL is where the people are, if they want to run pilot projects involving other people. SL is where all the training programs are. SL is where all the cool content is. For many, SL will continue to be the place to be for some time to come.
Of course, all my real world friends are business owners and entrepreneurs, so they’re looking for different things in a virtual world than social users. They don’t think that I’m lame and have no life because my company has a virtual office — they think I’m cool and cutting edge, and saving a bundle on travel costs (all of which is totally true!).
Or if they do think that I’m lame, they keep it to themselves, which is just as good, as far as I’m concerned.
Plus, they see the way that things are developing. All the kids are playing 3D games — eventually, we’ll have 3D immersive interfaces everywhere we turn. Might as well get ahead of the trend, so we’re ready to make money when it hits, rather than being late to the game.
The key is not to get so far ahead that you get burned out and frustrated — which is what might be happening to the early generation of SL adopters. It would be a shame if they gave up and went home just as the technology was taking off.
– Maria
@Vooper Absolutely! Look we all know that Philip is gorgeous and he is really doing a Steve Jobs, which is all fine and dandy, but Philip is not building our world, we are. And although he is certainly providing the tools. His appearances are only interesting to Tech people, and us. NOT new users.
New users will overcome the clumsy first hour, if they know “What’s To Do Here!” My kids scream and yell at their video games when they first get them and often storm out of the room in frustration when they cannot figure it out, but their determination to BE in the game pushes them on to get it and learn it….There is none of that for SL right now, No Cool factor as Tateru said, the desire to learn the platform because you MUST get in here just isn’t there….The only way you can change that is to make The content very obvious and exiting for people to be driven to learn how to use the platform.
When people thought they could make money and meet stars from their desktop at home in SL we all overcame the frustrating first few days let alone the first hour to be part of this…now its like…hmmm why should I bother…whats in there?
Promote the talent in here, the incredible opportunities and L.L for goodness sake use the platform! not just for meetings… really…..Mentor a Linden is something I asked Philip and M about at SLCC 09 in my interview….Dylinda Dyrssen is taking up the cause for it at the moment, if L.L can get over their pride and admit we the users possibly do know what we need and know the full use of the platform better than they. Then maybe they will thrive.
A car salesman does not just take a car for a drive in the showroom, and think he knows all about it. He reads the breif, he drives the car properly, puts it through its paces. takes it home, reads the Motoring journalists critiques, he has to know his product and how its used.
Ok lecture over
Paisley
The hurdles to get Second Life adopted by a major wide stream audience aren’t so much hurdles any more as they are huge wrought iron fences with barbed wire on top.
When I first came into Second Life I knew one person who was looking at it as a marketing tool and that was it, everyone I talked to about it couldn’t understand the appeal of pretending to be anything when there’s no objective or quest or goal at the end of it. Add to that the issues surrounding visuals, lag and controls within SL and a lot of people walk away after 40 minutes of trying it.
Philip’s “Fast, Easy, Fun” tagline while opening himself up to mockery is exactly the kind of thing that SL should be implementing. There’s a lot of great communities in SL that would appeal to a great amount of people if they only knew a) that they were there and b) how to get there in the first place. I’m talking about game communities, there’s MMO’s inside SL, there’s Virtual Sports, there’s a whole breadth of content for “non-developers” to just go and do.
And that’s not even mentioning the Music and Theatre experiences in SL which are both entertaining and interesting on higher levels. How do we get that across to people or more importantly, how do LL get those things out there without seemingly supporting one group over another.
The elephant’s in the room; The Gorean community and BDSM communities are a part of SL and honestly both communities do more good than harm to SL as a whole, I know for a fact that the Gorean community worked and donated huge sums to the inworld Relay For Life events and that they are highly intelligent and creative people but you can’t advertise that in any huge way without having the stigma there.
It’s an interesting debate and there’s no Fast, Easy, Fun answers to the problem.