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Do they really thing that a presence on SL will help them sell computers or services? Do they believe that a virtual conference room will properly replace other options? Do they believe anyone will take seriously a marketing proposal from a 3-D avatar? (And what will they do when the sim or platform crashes right in the middle of that important business meeting?).

I don’t deny there may be some things I’m unaware of or plans they may have which they’re not letting anyone know about. But to invest some $60,000 in a platform like SL… I have to believe either they have so much money they use it for TP… or someone lives in a bigger fantasy world than the elf lands ever dreamed of being.

Meanwhile the “commercial” or “educational” users of SL are more likely to be the ones outside of the “SL Economy” (i.e. not actually “trading”, but will just be renting land or islands from LL, and may be employing the odd builder or scripter to help with their sim). I think the argument goes that “commercial” users of SL (i.e. the IBMs and BMW’s of this world) will be happy to pay LL for the privilege of using their servers (i.e. rent for a private island) but won’t want to get involved in dodgy dealing of $L (as demonstrated by the World Stock Exchange in SL) particularly as there are no controls or policing of transactions. This extends further into how businesses permit employees to use SL….. again, would you like to sign off my expenses if I were to put in for e.g. “£50 to cover purchase of $L” when I then can’t show how the $L were spent (is a really good hairstyle for my avatar a good use of business expenses????… or can you prove that I’ve not been purchasing dodgy animations from virtual stringfellows??!)

The latter, I would contend, are not remotely interested in the to-ings and fro-ings of the L$, or its viability as a true currency. Whether we like it or not, it is still “play money”, tokens for use in SL that, for most people, have little or no relevance to “real money” or “real life”. Buying L$ is not so different from having a pay-as-you-go cellphone, in that the payment enables a service: with L$ you can buy fun stuff.

The big RL companies are in SL for all sorts of reasons, but making L$ is not one of them. It was interesting to see recently that Adidas had sold 23,000 pairs of customisable trainers @50L$ a piece. This is about 2,300 GBP – a sum that offsets a little of their build costs in SL, but that’s not the point. In their case, they have demonstrated a degree of tech-cool and made some kind of contact with a significant number of real people who might now part with real money in the real world for said trainers. The L$ raised in SL is incidental.

SL is a 3D social environment; it is not a 100% accurate simulation of the real world (thank god!) and as such its economy is “phony”. So what? It largely does what it needs to do. Th big companies are not so naive as to believe SL is a huge cash cow… and I am surprised that many journalists are so naive as to think they are.

Reference article: http://s183430029.onlinehome.us/Is_Second_Life.html

and in case anyone feels that this is just anti-SL propaganda, here’s a little more well-known source:

http://s183430029.onlinehome.us/PC_Mag.html regarding:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2089463,00.asp

LL’s hyping “residency” figures is well known. The liberal estimate is that SL retains between 5-10% of those who sign up. Which would be understandable if they required paid memberships for continued residency. But since they offer free memberships, the old saying holds true: they can’t even give it away.

Not badmouthing LL or SL. Just taking off the rose-colored-glasses and looking at plain ol’ facts.

Evidently the author lacks a clear understanding and knowledge of SL.

One for all:

“To become an entrepreneur in Second Life – to fulfil the business press’s predictions for the virtual economy – a user needs a premium account”

Please?

If this is an example his knowledge of SL, I would not trust the rest.

He should do better homework before writing

I think they said this figure was something like 3,000 awhile ago. I’m one of those people who is able to extract a small profit from way too many unpaid online hours accumulating zillions of micropayments and having to constantly suffer losses due to SL itself being down, griefing, blight, etc. I usually end up only subsidizing newbie communities or commissioning builds or whatever. Is it worth it? Probably not, but I love it.