Computerworld writer Gary Anthes was tasked to do a piece on Second Life, which, after spending nearly a week of his time within the simulation, he titled Second Life: Is There Any There There?
Within this piece, he is somewhat critical of the corporate presence within Second Life, having had a rather empty and underwhelming experience at the islands built by IBM and Cisco.
If you read the full piece, you see that he spends at least two days of his assignment just trying to learn his way through the interface and figure out how to find places. Out of desperation, and having wasted time through misunderstanding and bad advice from another confused newbie, he buys a book. Now, if he had me to help him out, I could have handed him a Notecard with some landmarks to visit later, maybe even checking out a couple places with him. I could have taken him to New Dove and New Citizens Incorporated (NCI) to get him started on his own look and get him hooked up with help resources, even classes if he was interested.
But Anthes didn't have me there to help him, did he. He, like most newbies, was left stranded in an empty virtual landscape having to rely on people just as new, confused, and ultimately as bored and frustrated as he came to be. Experiences like his are one of the reasons that though Second Life can claim millions of registrations, they can only muster an active user population of 30,000 - 55,000 on most days. People try it, go "huh?" and leave, never to come back.
In fact, I was one of those. When I first went to a meeting showcasing Second Life for uses at work, I dutifully created an account; I logged in; I then had my "Huh?" moment. I forced myself go through orientation and get onto the mainland. But my experience only degraded the more time I was there. Totally underwhelmed by the perceived function , the lag and abysmal graphic quality, I thought, "Are people serious? Someone has got to be kidding me, right? This is lame. This is a total waste of time." And I left, never to come back, or so I thought. Had it not been for an overdue promise to visit a co-worker's build in Second Life, I would never have given it another look. And the virtual light bulb above my head would have never gone on.
Truths out of the mouths of newbies
Yes, having a real person staffed in Second Life is a big overhead for a company. Server space (aka "land") is not cheap, let's face it. Tack on some employee cost tasked against really no revenue for most Second Life corporate uses, and how does one justify that on the books?
Well, I would ask, how much is your company image worth? Do you want to build a presence, which I presume has some underlying marketing potential, and then leave it to a a visiting anthropomorphic wolf or rabbit with no company affiliation to explain your presence for you? Even if you have staff in simulation, not being able to find them is just as bad. In a large build, teleport signs can be your friend, and the friend to visitors.
I wouldn't expect my local GAP store, even if they could lock down the goods, to just leave their store abandoned, hoping that I'll come in to admire the goods but not having anyone to talk to, and expect me to still walk away with my questions answered, a good feeling about GAP, or likely to buy something. The GAP doesn't have a virtual store that I know of, but if they did, I would ask: why treat a virtual space any differently? Insofar as how a person (and the force driving that avatar, at least for now, is a real human being) is going to react to your company, a virtual space can have the same impact, good or bad, as a real building. That's why companies staff people to help greet and guide visitors in real world lobbies.
If you have goods or services to sell, jobs to offer, information to give out, have someone there to do it for you that speaks for you and has your interest in mind. If you have a virtual space that you are using for a corporate function, do what you would for a real building when not in use - lock the doors (or in Second Life parlance, just restrict access). In the former, you're going to improve experience and maybe actually drive some use and results; in the latter, the lock will probably give the impression the space is important and actually sees use. In most corporate builds, I suspect that the space probably isn't and doesn't but they don't have to know that. Perception is everything.
Doppelganger cleverly controls perception by use of space in vSide, making it appear larger then it really is. In fact, restricting the overall space has the positive benefit of channeling people into the same area, giving the perception of popularity and a crowd, even with a small number of users. Let's face it, we're social animals and many people feel more comfortable in a crowd, even a virtual one. People imply popularity, that you're in the "right" place, and that there's something engaging to do there. Effective virtual builds, like real world buildings, are probably going to need to adopt architectural solutions for crowd management, but at least for Second Life, factoring in the ability to fly.
Nothing is more lonely or gives a sense of a places unpopularity in Second Life like coming into it and seeing that there's only one green dot on your mini-map - and it's you. Now maybe you are visitor number 2,001 that day and you just happened to come at a time when no one else was there. But you don't know that. Unlike web pages, we can see who's visiting at the same time we are. And it doesn't matter how many people were already there or who will come back later. If you're a newbie, you probably got the impression that the space is unpopular, and that feeling maybe carries over to the brand behind it, like there's something wrong with it maybe?
When Electric Sheep opened the Virtual CSI:NY presence in Second Life, I first peeked in after the show just to see what's what and to try out the OnRez viewer to see how different it was. Well, it was crowded, with a bunch of lost newbies who were tripping over their own interfaces. There was a clever use of audio media and a HUD to explain the CSI game. But the game wasn't the problem. It was Second Life. Even more sad was a veteran SL user who popped in to see and who was valiently trying to explain the interface. She didn't realize that all these newbies were using a different world viewer, the OnRez viewer provided by Electric Sheep, where buttons and functions could be in different places than the Second Life viewer provided by Linden Lab. I could just see the thought bubbles going up all around me: "Huh?" <-- brought back memories; "I don't get it"; "I'm so confused"; "How do I get my clothes back on?"; "This is silly." I tried to do my part and both help guide the newbies by giving them links to helpful places like NCI and New Dove, as well as help flag the veteran Second Lifer that there was a new viewer, hence the mismatch between what she was trying to explain and the reality in place. Well, after such a fiasco, you'd expect to come back to Virtual CSI:NY and expect to see few or fewer dots. But such is not the case when I've peeked back in. Why? I can't be certain but one of the things that I noticed was that there was a staffer, I presume from Electric Sheep (maybe CBS) to greet, answer questions, and help new users get started in the entry zone. Wander farther into the simulation, what does one find but more helpers. And those little green dots on the mini-map? There seem to be quite a few of them, all congregated in various spots. Just in case this was an aberration, I checked back a couple more time and the dots at a glance, seemed about the same. I don't know how profitable Virtual CSI:NY is given all that manpower investment, but I'd have to say in Second Life terms, it's popular. Green dots it seems have a way of attracting more green dots.
I know the avatar I'm talking to isn't real. But is she real?
Presence can be costly. It's a lot of overhead to consider. And one has to figure that the virtual world never sleeps. Logging into Second Life at different times, it takes on a European, Australian, or Asian tone. Companies have to figure that a visitor might pop in at any time.
Which is why AI avatar "bots" are being developed that can take on that overhead instead of having a real person. They work quite cheap - free in fact beyond their build cost and they don't take breaks. The initial ones are likely going to be fairly simple responders but there are rumblings of some very savvy ones (see Artificial Intelligence Applications in 3d Virtual Worlds) that can do a credible job of mimicking the responses of a real person.
This of course undercuts one of the basic presumptions of virtual worlds, that an avatar represents a real person. One of the interesting aspects of virtual worlds and MMOs is that people tend to treat an avatar at face value, as if they were what they appeared to be. If that avatar appears to be a human man or woman, you, as a virtual world user, would probably respond accordingly. This probably belongs in its own post, but imagine a virtual world where someone can seed avatars to make a space seem more popular as if other people really found it engaging, making you think twice about stopping to take a look around at the offers. Or that person chatting you up and that seems so interested in your latest real world shopping adventure could be a bot mining you for buying trends. Or your new "friend,", taking advantage of how viral marketing works, just swears by Eau'dee'doh perfume or MuskOxen deodorant.
Let's forget about the ethics of AI bots for the moment. Until such bots are available to help "staff" virtual builds, companies who are going to spend a lot of money and time investing in virtual worlds need to consider the whole experience if they want to make it a success, imho. That means considering staffing such builds as if they were real locations, at least to the point of offering someone to help answer questions and take down contacts. I pity the poor person stuck in an empty Second Life island all day but hopefully such exposure will help that person suggest ways to bring traffic and make the spot a purposeful destination point with the intention of conducting business or inquiry of some sort.
Otherwise, just hope that the visiting furry using your sandbox is polite and friendly (I have to say, they often are) while she tries to answer people's questions. I'll conclude with the rest of Anthes' advice:
Within this piece, he is somewhat critical of the corporate presence within Second Life, having had a rather empty and underwhelming experience at the islands built by IBM and Cisco.
"Knowing my editor would ask me about practical IT applications, I sought out a virtual island owned by IBM. To get an idea of how exciting this place is, imagine a 1950s-era IBMer in a starched white shirt and tie with a "THINK" sign hanging on his wall."Part of his frustration was his failure to find any company representatives to talk to about goods and services, or to just answer questions.
"I returned to IBM's main island determined to find an IBMer who could answer some questions. I didn't find such a person, but I had a long chat with a well-dressed wolf who said he was from FurNation. He said he was only there to use the public "sandbox," which is provided by IBM, to build things."And failing that, finding any person was a welcome respite and at least a chance to ask some questions.
"I told him I was trying to find out if companies in SL made any money. Virtual companies make real money, he said, 'selling furry avatars, sexual bits, weapons and the like,' while real companies like IBM only advertise and recruit. The wolf was not applying for a job at IBM, it seemed, but he thanked IBM for providing the sandbox."And of course, all of this begged the question of what function did all this corporate presence provide?
"Still fretting about bandwidth, I traveled next to the Cisco Virtual Campus and walked into the Cisco Training Center. A sign indicated that it was for use only by Cisco partners and employees, which raises the question of why it's on the public Internet and not on a Cisco intranet.Though he did have a relatively better experience at Sears, the author I take it was not impressed with corporate presence within Second Life, or that much with Second Life itself for that matter. Some of his advice:
In any case, I found neither partners nor employees in any of the training rooms, and no books, computers or training materials of any kind. Never had it seemed so reasonable to ask if there really was a there there."
"Each major company location in SL should be staffed with a real person, at least during business hours. If some friendly and attractive avatar at the Cisco center had approached me and said, "Yes, sir, how may I help you?" and then had given me useful answers to my typed in questions about training, employment opportunities or products, I would have fallen out of my chair with amazement and delight."So what do I make of this? I'm not sure where the subjective "attractive need play into this. Well-groomed would do for me. Otherwise, I think it's a good piece. And it's original. As far as negative criticism goes, it's not some regurgitated bit of anti-hype backlash. Nor is it a piece written to reclaim credibility damaged by over-reaching optimism by riding the pendulum swing going the other way. I wouldn't even argue that it's all that negative. I don't think this writer had any axes to grind. I think he came to the assignment with a fairly neutral standpoint. What Anthes is describing here is a very typical regrettable newbie experience. (And it probably didn't help his experience that some web links were broken).
If you read the full piece, you see that he spends at least two days of his assignment just trying to learn his way through the interface and figure out how to find places. Out of desperation, and having wasted time through misunderstanding and bad advice from another confused newbie, he buys a book. Now, if he had me to help him out, I could have handed him a Notecard with some landmarks to visit later, maybe even checking out a couple places with him. I could have taken him to New Dove and New Citizens Incorporated (NCI) to get him started on his own look and get him hooked up with help resources, even classes if he was interested.
But Anthes didn't have me there to help him, did he. He, like most newbies, was left stranded in an empty virtual landscape having to rely on people just as new, confused, and ultimately as bored and frustrated as he came to be. Experiences like his are one of the reasons that though Second Life can claim millions of registrations, they can only muster an active user population of 30,000 - 55,000 on most days. People try it, go "huh?" and leave, never to come back.
In fact, I was one of those. When I first went to a meeting showcasing Second Life for uses at work, I dutifully created an account; I logged in; I then had my "Huh?" moment. I forced myself go through orientation and get onto the mainland. But my experience only degraded the more time I was there. Totally underwhelmed by the perceived function , the lag and abysmal graphic quality, I thought, "Are people serious? Someone has got to be kidding me, right? This is lame. This is a total waste of time." And I left, never to come back, or so I thought. Had it not been for an overdue promise to visit a co-worker's build in Second Life, I would never have given it another look. And the virtual light bulb above my head would have never gone on.
Truths out of the mouths of newbies
Yes, having a real person staffed in Second Life is a big overhead for a company. Server space (aka "land") is not cheap, let's face it. Tack on some employee cost tasked against really no revenue for most Second Life corporate uses, and how does one justify that on the books?
Well, I would ask, how much is your company image worth? Do you want to build a presence, which I presume has some underlying marketing potential, and then leave it to a a visiting anthropomorphic wolf or rabbit with no company affiliation to explain your presence for you? Even if you have staff in simulation, not being able to find them is just as bad. In a large build, teleport signs can be your friend, and the friend to visitors.
I wouldn't expect my local GAP store, even if they could lock down the goods, to just leave their store abandoned, hoping that I'll come in to admire the goods but not having anyone to talk to, and expect me to still walk away with my questions answered, a good feeling about GAP, or likely to buy something. The GAP doesn't have a virtual store that I know of, but if they did, I would ask: why treat a virtual space any differently? Insofar as how a person (and the force driving that avatar, at least for now, is a real human being) is going to react to your company, a virtual space can have the same impact, good or bad, as a real building. That's why companies staff people to help greet and guide visitors in real world lobbies.
If you have goods or services to sell, jobs to offer, information to give out, have someone there to do it for you that speaks for you and has your interest in mind. If you have a virtual space that you are using for a corporate function, do what you would for a real building when not in use - lock the doors (or in Second Life parlance, just restrict access). In the former, you're going to improve experience and maybe actually drive some use and results; in the latter, the lock will probably give the impression the space is important and actually sees use. In most corporate builds, I suspect that the space probably isn't and doesn't but they don't have to know that. Perception is everything.
Doppelganger cleverly controls perception by use of space in vSide, making it appear larger then it really is. In fact, restricting the overall space has the positive benefit of channeling people into the same area, giving the perception of popularity and a crowd, even with a small number of users. Let's face it, we're social animals and many people feel more comfortable in a crowd, even a virtual one. People imply popularity, that you're in the "right" place, and that there's something engaging to do there. Effective virtual builds, like real world buildings, are probably going to need to adopt architectural solutions for crowd management, but at least for Second Life, factoring in the ability to fly.
Nothing is more lonely or gives a sense of a places unpopularity in Second Life like coming into it and seeing that there's only one green dot on your mini-map - and it's you. Now maybe you are visitor number 2,001 that day and you just happened to come at a time when no one else was there. But you don't know that. Unlike web pages, we can see who's visiting at the same time we are. And it doesn't matter how many people were already there or who will come back later. If you're a newbie, you probably got the impression that the space is unpopular, and that feeling maybe carries over to the brand behind it, like there's something wrong with it maybe?
When Electric Sheep opened the Virtual CSI:NY presence in Second Life, I first peeked in after the show just to see what's what and to try out the OnRez viewer to see how different it was. Well, it was crowded, with a bunch of lost newbies who were tripping over their own interfaces. There was a clever use of audio media and a HUD to explain the CSI game. But the game wasn't the problem. It was Second Life. Even more sad was a veteran SL user who popped in to see and who was valiently trying to explain the interface. She didn't realize that all these newbies were using a different world viewer, the OnRez viewer provided by Electric Sheep, where buttons and functions could be in different places than the Second Life viewer provided by Linden Lab. I could just see the thought bubbles going up all around me: "Huh?" <-- brought back memories; "I don't get it"; "I'm so confused"; "How do I get my clothes back on?"; "This is silly." I tried to do my part and both help guide the newbies by giving them links to helpful places like NCI and New Dove, as well as help flag the veteran Second Lifer that there was a new viewer, hence the mismatch between what she was trying to explain and the reality in place. Well, after such a fiasco, you'd expect to come back to Virtual CSI:NY and expect to see few or fewer dots. But such is not the case when I've peeked back in. Why? I can't be certain but one of the things that I noticed was that there was a staffer, I presume from Electric Sheep (maybe CBS) to greet, answer questions, and help new users get started in the entry zone. Wander farther into the simulation, what does one find but more helpers. And those little green dots on the mini-map? There seem to be quite a few of them, all congregated in various spots. Just in case this was an aberration, I checked back a couple more time and the dots at a glance, seemed about the same. I don't know how profitable Virtual CSI:NY is given all that manpower investment, but I'd have to say in Second Life terms, it's popular. Green dots it seems have a way of attracting more green dots.
I know the avatar I'm talking to isn't real. But is she real?
Presence can be costly. It's a lot of overhead to consider. And one has to figure that the virtual world never sleeps. Logging into Second Life at different times, it takes on a European, Australian, or Asian tone. Companies have to figure that a visitor might pop in at any time.
Which is why AI avatar "bots" are being developed that can take on that overhead instead of having a real person. They work quite cheap - free in fact beyond their build cost and they don't take breaks. The initial ones are likely going to be fairly simple responders but there are rumblings of some very savvy ones (see Artificial Intelligence Applications in 3d Virtual Worlds) that can do a credible job of mimicking the responses of a real person.
This of course undercuts one of the basic presumptions of virtual worlds, that an avatar represents a real person. One of the interesting aspects of virtual worlds and MMOs is that people tend to treat an avatar at face value, as if they were what they appeared to be. If that avatar appears to be a human man or woman, you, as a virtual world user, would probably respond accordingly. This probably belongs in its own post, but imagine a virtual world where someone can seed avatars to make a space seem more popular as if other people really found it engaging, making you think twice about stopping to take a look around at the offers. Or that person chatting you up and that seems so interested in your latest real world shopping adventure could be a bot mining you for buying trends. Or your new "friend,", taking advantage of how viral marketing works, just swears by Eau'dee'doh perfume or MuskOxen deodorant.
Let's forget about the ethics of AI bots for the moment. Until such bots are available to help "staff" virtual builds, companies who are going to spend a lot of money and time investing in virtual worlds need to consider the whole experience if they want to make it a success, imho. That means considering staffing such builds as if they were real locations, at least to the point of offering someone to help answer questions and take down contacts. I pity the poor person stuck in an empty Second Life island all day but hopefully such exposure will help that person suggest ways to bring traffic and make the spot a purposeful destination point with the intention of conducting business or inquiry of some sort.
Otherwise, just hope that the visiting furry using your sandbox is polite and friendly (I have to say, they often are) while she tries to answer people's questions. I'll conclude with the rest of Anthes' advice:
"Yes, I know that would cost serious bucks. One or more real people would have to be paid real dollars to do that. But if a company can't make its virtual experience substantially better -- and I mean really head-and-shoulders better -- than its existing Web capabilities, it might as well not bother.
Because my wolf friend isn't going to buy an IBM computer because he spotted it through the window while playing in the IBM sandbox. The IBM island must be a destination deliberately sought out by people with an interest in IBM, with the knowledge that they will have a really cool virtual experience there while being treated like a real human by a real human."
No comments:
Post a Comment