Is Second Life Ready for Business?

CASE STUDY
1. How can Second Life provide value to businesses that use it?
Second Life can be a birthing ground for new industries and transform business, commerce, marketing and learning the same way that the Web did in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It also can facilitate internal communications and to position themselves at the forefront of the digital landscape in order to recruit tech-savvy employees. Second Life is a low-cost business tool and also a new marketing tool. Companies can use Second Life as a business tool for online conferencing, online collaboration, knowledge management and prototyping. Also companies can test new products using Second Life s 3-D rendering programs, experiment with new marketing and advertising campaigns to see how people react, receive feedback on real-world products or services.

2. What kinds of businesses are most likely to benefit from a presence on Second Life? Why?
Retail businesses that are already used to doing business online may have an easier time of establishing a viable presence on Second Life. They are used to advertising and marketing to customers online and have the systems built for taking orders, accepting payments, and shipping products. Other companies, like IBM, that have established online collaboration systems and online knowledge management systems will probably have an easier time using Second Life as another outlet for these activities.

3. Considering what you have learned about Second Life, how could you, as an individual, create a modest start-up business on the Grid? What goods would you sell? Why would this be a good choice of product? What, in simple terms, would your business plan be? Why would it work?
There are several ways to start up business in an online virtual server. Second Life as of now harbored few to many online companies that does business online as a form of advertising or even setting up their virtual business inside the server by buying up lands in the so called Grid world. Of course, to do that, you have to buy the virtual land to start up the virtual business by subscribing to the premium

membership on the website. By subscribing, several bene ts can be enjoy including owning a house and rights to own a land. The current subscription cost according to the game website - secondlife.com - is USD$72 for an annual subscription, USD$22.50 for a quarter subscription or USD$9.95 for monthly subscription. Personally and hypothetically, the initial cost for me to setup an online business on the lands of the Grid would be a monthly subscription of USD$9.95 as uncertainty in conveying the business over a decade plus old virtual server especially these past two years have been radically risky with mushrooms of similar online servers like gaiaonline.com and social networking sites like facebook that has been rampaging in this fast-paced information system industry. Also, there are questions about its current popularity against the other fast information changing platforms and how it cope with the current market segment. A typical online business would be an online auction/selling business. Speci cally, i would set up a small business that deals with money changing/transfers between users and other online games that offers online services to its users. For example; an online game offers cash-shop items that is only available when you bought it online usually using credit/debit cards, often through sites like paypal. What i am offering here in my business is variety of online payments especially in terms of Foreign Currency exchanges through local banks and also a much more user-friendly interaction between me and the customers due to the live chatting system and in-game atmosphere in Second Life. A simple explanation why this might be a good choice is that, Second Life offers a casual sims like platform that does not stress up their users like those of a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) that needs hours and hours of training to achieve a better standings in the game. Another good point is that online gamers that plays particular games tend to hang out in the same channel or platform to which, the simple Second Life which has quite low speci cations offers a range of 3D avatars to the players. This is especially true when the online game that they are playing having their routine server maintenance which usually comes up once per week. During these one to several hours of maintenance, they could log on to Second Life and have chat with their online gaming friends from another game. Thus, simultaneously advertising my business over to them during these times. In summary, an online based business would be a good addition to set up in Second Life. Though prone to risk and currently, the power of substitutes are increasing like facebook and other networking sites, the opportunity to set up a small business within Second Life is still feasible due to the nature of online gaming and rapid increase in gaming communities. Considering what I have learned about Second Life, I, as an individual, will first start up my business by figuring what products are mostly used in Second Life. The product that will sell in Second life will be furniture. This will be a good choice because customers or people in second life will need furniture for their new homes and offices. My business plan will be to invest in other products and services and wait till my investment grows before cashing out.

4. Visit eBay on the Web and see what Second Life items you can find listed for auction. How would you rate the activity surrounding these items? Are you surprised by what you see? Why or why not?
Obviously the information for this question will fluctuate. As of this writing, eBay offered 211 items. They included how-to manuals for making money on Second Life, a guide to selling land, and business opportunities on the site. One item in particular was a vending machine business package available for $4.99. The individual offering the item was an eBay Power Seller with 6,483 feedback postings. He was obviously an established eBay seller. Other items for sale include a Gym Workout package for $4.99 and a macro that makes navigating the skies of Second Life easier. It sold for $12.99. Answers to the last three questions will vary by student. The point is to have them realize how advanced and pervasive sites like Second Life have become.

5 . W h at o b stacle s d o es S e co n d Life h av e to o verco m e in o r d e r to b e co m e a m a in s tre a m b u sin e s s to o l? D o e s it fa ce fe w e r o r m o re o b sta cle s to b e co m e a m a in stre am e d u ca tio n a l to o l? T o w h a t d o y o u a ttrib u te th e d iffe re n c e ?
Second Life needs to overcome the idea and perception that it s just another game site. Other obstacles include ease-of-use, interoperability between pre-established business systems and Second Life s proprietary system. It needs to create ways to import and export data between its system and external business systems don t require data to be re-input into either system. Second Life faces more obstacles in trying to become a mainstream educational tool. Educators are inherently opposed to online, distance education because it supposedly lacks the face-to-face communication between teachers and students. However, as more education is carried online, Second Life has all the tools in place to make it easy to conduct classes, especially its online collaboration tools.

6. Would you like to interview for a job using Second Life? Why or why not?
Obviously the answers to this question will vary from student to student. Some may prefer interviewing for a job using Second Life since they may see face-to-face interviews as extremely nerve-wracking. Other may prefer a face-to-face interview rather than trying to create an avatar that adequately represents them.

7 . Is Se co n d Life a p recu rso r o f h o w b u sin e ss w ill b e c o n d u c te d in th e fu tu re o r a co rp o r a te e x p e rim e n ts ? ju stify yo u r a n sw e r.

The rise of online based game platform is pretty much everywhere in the sense that not just to provide a very tedious Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) but also platform that attracts various kinds of people and organization to spend time with their applications. Flocks of online game companies and even the already established ones like Square-Enix, Konami and Maxis has been developing their games to suit the interest of world needs. Likewise, Maxis with their Sims, develop a 3D like human avatars that can be customized from up to bottom and has a near same platform like that of Second Life. Then there comes online social networks that provides very cheap and almost invisible cost. Although most of them only uses texts and pictures without 3D effects of avatars, however the pattern is mostly the same. A good example is like facebook. In facebook, you have the chatting bar that lets you talk to your peers within the browser itself. New Facebook layout has group functions that helps you pull in interested customers and let them see the product more privately. In any case, a free browser online social networking is quite cheaper to setup an online business than paying a premium subscription fees though nonetheless, less excitement in having your 3D gure runs around the background like in Second Life. To say that Second Life as a stepping stone for a way a business to conduct their activity is a bit blunt. Meaning that, the popularity of this virtual game itself has been over shadowed over various other type of easy-to-setup business over the net. More simply are like facebook, twitter, and other popular games like The Sims which are more attractive than Second Life itself. Overall, virtual games and platforms nowadays depend on the popularity itself to promote themselves in the online virtual community. Without the popularity, the community of the game won t develop to an extent that companies would advertise their business in the game itself. Moreover, Second Life has been going on for a decade and seemingly reach a maturity stage to which more and more virtual game platforms have been develop along the way. Lastly, due to this, organizations and companies can use Second Life as a test platform for their advertisement and such but in a long term, it is preferable to switch to a more popular platform