As if we don’t have enough on our hands to try to figure out how to get the most out of doing research on what’s being written, spoken, and shared on blogs, wikis, and other consumer generated media like YouTube, we now have the decidedly mixed blessing of figuring out if, how, and–why–to tap into the online 3D virtual world, Second Life as a source of business information.
And indeed, some companies are setting up virtual storefronts, there are some virtual conferences, and there are even some second life libraries too, like InfoIsland, which says that it is “a virtual library providing real services to Second Life residents.”
So, this is all certainly fascinating for researchers, and some initial questions that I think about when pondering doing actual research in Second Life are:
- What new types of substantive business information is being collected and generated in Second Life, that is not being generated or available in the physical world?
- What kind of business information is ideally suited to be created and generated in Second Life?
- How is searching for data and information in Second Life a different experience or process?
- In studying the Second Life residents as a market, how much of what they say or do can be applied to the larger population, or even just to the population online
- How might a company’s Second Life presence impact its physical operation?
- What technology trends that emerge in Second Life could seep back out to the physical world?
- Are questions like these even important?
I plan to look into some of these issues for an article on business research and second life in an upcoming issue of The Information Advisor.
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Anshe Chung held a news conference in SL today to talk about the assets she has amassed in SL. This year, she surpassed $1 million in assets. I attended the news conference and found some of her remarks quite interesting. Obviously being in business online – and in the way she and others have done it – requires being a risk-taker, as well as understanding the rules (which may be very different from RL). She sees her work in SL as being different than what her RL persona does. And she asked that reporters in the crowd talk only about Chung and not the RL person behind Chung.
Perhaps most important is that there is no large body providing oversight in SL (no planning or zoning boards, for example). Does that make commerce and business in SL better?
Comment by Jill Hurst-Wahl — November 28, 2006 @ 3:43 pm
Thanks for the comment Jill. Well, if development of Second Life follows how development in physical life has occurred, right now we’re in that “wild west” period where there are few if any rules–but as the population begins to care about what happens to their virtual communities, I imagine we will see the equivalent of planning and zoning boards–though with the twists of what makes for a quality of life in the virtual, rather than physical world!
Comment by Robert Berkman — November 29, 2006 @ 10:59 am