Second Life: the stupidest WEB2.0

The intermediary transaction SEO diagnoses Taobao guest stationmaster buys the Cloud host technology Hall

On an ordinary weekday afternoon, click on the current popular online game "Second Life" (Life) page, into the brand area.

At this time, Toyota's virtual showroom is empty. At the same time, the real-world car dealers are busy, no one can afford to wander into the virtual world. Reebok's virtual shops are also littered with disturbing emptiness, the wall is a huge publicity poster, however, it is disappointing that a pair of sports shoes have been quietly placed on the shelves, in addition to occasionally a certain horned monster fly in for a moment, look around, shake a long tail, and then quietly leave, There is no trading activity here at all.

Once upon a time, multinational giants such as Coca-Cola and Nike put on "road signs" on the important "terrain" of the virtual world; The famous Reuters also built a "division" in the virtual world; even the virtual American Capitol Hill is officially open in Second Life, And has a resident spokesman ... now here is like abandoned park as the deserted, nobody.

Famous's network rookie "Second Life" to the people who are optimistic about it to the continued confidence?

The birth of more than 7,000 ways to earn money

Behind the growing scale, the virtual world is creating real business value.

"We're not doing a game, we're building a country." Philip Rosedal, founder of "Second Life", always Rossdall to the outside world.

In June 2003, "Second Life" for the first time, the new virtual world is still a wilderness, and "Warcraft" and other virtual worlds, Rossdall boldly decided to let "Second Life" to reproduce themselves. None of the scenes in the game was built by his Linden Lab, but by the "residents" of "Second Life", which built every villa, skyscraper, golf course, virtual Forbidden City, digital chain store, and even adult stores ... and built this powerful virtual kingdom.

To get through the virtual world and the real world, Linden Labs lets the "Second Life" currency, Linden Dollar, trade freely with the real-world dollar at market prices--now, about $1 trillion can buy 186 ringgit, And 285 ringgit can be exchanged for 1 dollars. This means that virtual citizens can create, own or sell their digital goods for real gold and silver. It can be said that from the moment of the birth of Linden coins, "Second Life" began to become a real economy.

Real estate developers to invest in virtual real estate, design virtual image and apparel designers, even for the "Second Life" residents of the business of the virtual consulting company, all rely on this platform to earn real money, "Second Life" is the birth of a virtual economic industry chain. At present, based on the "Second Life" platform, there are more than 7,000 ways to make money, the annual amount (equivalent to GNP) reached 64 million U.S. dollars, and is still in the monthly growth rate of 15%.

Behind the growing scale, the virtual world is creating real business value, one of the first game companies to achieve the "r&v concept" (i.e. the virtual economy and the physical economy).

Those already in second Life have boldly predicted that the most difficult challenges in the real world from marketing and sales will be addressed in the virtual world. Want to improve the brand awareness of a new refrigerator? In the virtual world to open a "storefront", so that buyers can realistically browse your products, and then the buyer to cultivate your loyal customers? Want to turn this "browsing" behavior into a real dollar? Add a link so customers can log on to your site with a click of a mouse, where they can shop with credit cards.

It looks beautiful. The question is, how far are businesses ' shops and people's imagined booms in the virtual world?

Smart or stupid?

Now, many manufacturers are in the online game "Second Life" to put ads regret, this is not a secret.

Recently, the United States "AD weekly" ranked the Internet stupid list, "Second Life" led WEB2.0 top. Internet media is inherently Darwinian: the threshold for entry is very low or non-existent, but no one knows which model will succeed. For this reason, corporate chief marketing officers are facing a double-edged sword: if they refuse to try new things, the old-fashioned way, their network marketing plan will be stalled; if too many wrong bets are invested, their work will be precarious.

"It's a lot of space and there's not going to be so many people, it could be a very lonely experience." Nicholas, a full-time research scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, who studies virtual worlds, has commented on the virtual world of Second Life. "Big companies want to be concerned about selling their products, but unfortunately their shops are almost empty." ”

According to statistics, in the popular global multiplayer Game "Warcraft" of the 8 million users, 33%-40% are 24 hours online, and as of the end of January this year, the number of users who have 3 million residents in "Second Life", while maintaining a monthly growth rate of 35% per cent, does not mean that active users are growing fast. Data show that users who live online account for only 1% of the total number of users, that is, by the end of January this year, only 30,000 users were online for 24 hours, while other users just came here to spend their short leisure time. Two-phase comparison, visible "Second Life" to the user's stickiness is far from enough.

They're here to play.

As the new business model of "Second Life" is still immature, the market here has not overcome the inherent flaws.

Of the "Second Life" user base, only 145 users earned more than $5000 in July this year, and only 865 users made 1000 dollars. For the second Life, the number of 450,000 user registrations per month is really a small proportion. For the "Second Life" on the tens of thousands of small businesses, they need to face, not only the brand awareness and quality control and other traditional sales problems, but also to face the technical problems of the smooth arrival of customers, as well as from the world's top 500 competition pressure.

In the virtual world of Second Life, the merchant Brown is a successful fashion designer and investor who designs clothes that are well marketed and business-wide. But her headache is that her clothing store has been unable to find reliable employees. Most of the "Second Life" players will not take their virtual work seriously, and the people who really want to do business here want to be their boss, no one is willing to give others a job.

For most players, the goal of landing Second Life is simple: they're here to play.

As the new business model of "Second Life" is still immature, the market here has not overcome the inherent flaws, so if the purpose of making money, the business here is destined to face more problems than the real world.

Of course, for the entire "Second Life" of the business environment, only credit is not enough. As a large number of businesses and consumers into the virtual market, such as credit records and business management systems have yet to be introduced to promote the establishment of the market legal system.

Compared with the real world, "Second Life" also faces a series of network vulnerabilities. Technical problems seemingly unrelated to the overall situation may put the market in an awkward position, after all, the solution of these problems is beyond the control of the business. Due to the technical impact of the network, Brown's clothing shop often become a decoration and can not be profitable. When the customer comes to her shop, because of the delay of the network, it often takes 15 minutes to download the whole store in order to see all the items on display. And the customer obviously won't sit there and wait, this time their choice is often to leave here, stroll the next one.

"People landed ' second Life ' because they were bored and wanted to find something to do." "This is Gouni Graff, the famous" Second Life "the richest man Irene Graff's husband, but also her partner. However, the reality is that because too many customers complain that they cannot receive orders on time, the merchant has to spend a lot of time on the fault of the network technology.