Filed under: News and developments by Digado

Its not often I find myself agreeing with religious institutions, but the Christian Science Monitor gives us a nice corporate take on Second Life in 2007. In their analysis of digital media over the previous year, they list in ‘the bad’:

“The danger of overhype: There is such a thing as too much good publicity, particularly when the publicity creates unrealistic expectations. Media fascination with Linden Lab’s virtual world Second Life was followed in 2007 by skepticism about the value of brand presence in a virtual world. The overhype of Second Life led to scores of companies investing in presence in the world with little planning or unrealistic expectations, only to be surprised by the underwhelming response. Myriad marketing and brand-building opportunities exist in Second Life, but only if carefully planned and appropriately scaled.”

I’ve been criticized by some for overestimating the backlash of Linden Labs over hyping in my predictions for 2008. And I agree it has done some good in terms of putting Virtual worlds in the spotlight again. But it turned the attention into something negative in the eyes of the mainstream audience. I think it has caused a lot of resentment, and disbelief in Virtual Worlds who’s credibility and social image were never its strongest points to begin with. Many brands and developers such as Heineken are holding back on even mentioning Second Life, so I believe it has certainly slowed down the integration of Virtual Worlds into the mainstream digital media.

Their (CSM) conclusion is companies need to understand the motives of the audiences before creating business models around them. Virtual Worlds but real people, so have realistic expectations. The entire article is worth a read, some good customer insights on opportunities and mistakes in marketing to Web 2.0.

Posted on: January 4, 2008 | Share on: