A Second Chance for Second Life

My personal feeling is that virtual worlds are yet to have their real day in the sun. 3D web and mash-ups with AR are only a matter of time.... and bandwidth (please Australia, sort that out).

Thanks WSJ for this post.

Northrop, IBM Use Virtual World as Setting for Training, Employee Meetings

By SCOTT MORRISON

When American soldiers and police officers from across the U.S. want to learn how to operate Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Cutlass bomb disposal robot, they go to the military contractor's secure Space Park installation.

But they don't have to jump in a car or hop on a plane to get there. That's because Space Park exists only in cyberspace, or more specifically, in the computer-generated world called Second Life.

Virtual reality "is not a fly-by-night technology. It's not a passing fad," says Matt Furman, a Northrop Grumman software developer who helped build Space Park, where customers can spend hours training.

Launched in 2003, Second Life burst onto the scene as an escapist's three-dimensional domain where colorful avatars -- digital alter egos that users create -- could travel and socialize with other "residents." But it hasn't lived up to the early hype among consumers and marketers.

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IBM Corp.

IBM is among the corporations that have used Second Life to create venues where employees can gather.

Second Life averages about one million monthly users, a small number compared with other online services like social-networking site Facebook Inc.

But Second Life is getting a renewed lease on life as a setting for trade shows, employee meetings and other corporate events for the likes of Northrop Grumman, Cigna Corp., Intel Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co.

Linden Research Inc., the San Francisco company behind Second Life, is targeting business users with new products and services, including a feature that will let users call into virtual meetings from their cellphones. It is also testing hardware that companies can plug into their computer networks to create private virtual venues.

Such uses are a departure from Second Life's initial corporate appeal. Initially Second Life attracted the likes of Nike Inc. and Coca-Cola Co., which saw the three-dimensional world as a digital marketing test bed.

Nissan Motor Co., for example, built a virtual vending machine that dispensed cars that avatars could test drive, or even fly. But interest began to wane, Nissan says, and it pulled out of Second Life last year. "There were a lot of things competing for our marketing dollars," a spokesman says.

The marketers are being replaced by corporations that are using Second Life to host virtual conferences for employees or business partners.

Few have jumped in as deeply as International Business Machines Corp. Last year, IBM hosted an annual gathering of its leading thinkers in Second Life. The October event would have otherwise been scaled back because of the recession.

The three-day event, which peaked at about 250 concurrent users, helped demonstrate the promise of virtual reality to many IBMers who were still doubtful, says Neil Katz, one of IBM's distinguished engineers.

"We turned hard skeptics into skeptics and skeptics into true believers," he says, noting the venues have since been used for other IBM events.

After creating an avatar, Second Life allows users to gather in a virtual setting and speak using headsets or chat through text messages. Users can also share documents, watch presentations or draw on a white board.

Companies that don't have the technical capabilities of IBM can hire a virtual conference organizer like Dan Parks, a real-life conference planner who has created Virtualis, a Second Life "island" on which he has built a giant dome, various exhibit halls, ballrooms, an outdoor entertainment center and even a yacht.

"Anything your mind can imagine, we can create in here," Mr. Parks says. For about $7,000, he will run a two-day conference for 75 people from around the world. A similar event in real life would cost about $150,000, he says.

No one expects virtual events to supplant real life. Conference planners say virtual meetings work well when the aim is to share knowledge or train people, but they fall short when networking is the goal.

"Companies that are moving to virtual meetings need to think through why they are doing so. Saving money can't be the only reason to do so," says Joan Eisenstodt, a meetings and hospitality consultant at Eisenstodt Associates LLC.

The appeal of virtual events has strengthened in the recession. Event planners say a growing number of companies are using Second Life, as well as rivals ActiveWorlds Inc. and Forterra Systems Inc., to cut costs. IBM says it saved about $350,000 by hosting its October conference in Second Life.

While Linden isn't focusing solely on the corporate market, it is taking steps to make Second Life more business friendly, says Linden CEO Mark Kingdon.

For example, the company recently created a site to introduce Second Life to business users and it is redesigning the "first hour experience" to make it easier for users to create accounts. Linden is also planning to launch a service allowing people to call into virtual meetings from their landlines or mobile phones.

Social media stats

Nothing new here, but a nice video summary of some of the more interesting social media stats. Thanks Digital Buzz Blog



By Eric Qualman from Socialnomics. This is another great visualisation of the latest social media statistics that always makes for a few minutes well spent watching! It provides a range of great stats like these…

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers
• 96% of them have joined a social network
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year have met via social media
• Facebook added 100 million users in 9 months
• If Facebook would be a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
• In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world
• There are over 200.000.000 Blogs. 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily.

JC Penny - Doghouse

The “Doghouse” won the 2009 World Retail Award for Best Digital Retail Advertising Campaign. Web-only, it was launched ahead of the 2008 holiday shopping season in the US. The campaign was centred on a brilliant video, showing men who gave their wives thoughtless gifts being banished to the doghouse, a grim underground facility where prisoners are sentenced to fold laundry.



Because it was aired on the web, the video wasn’t subject to normal commercial constraints – it ran for nearly 5 minutes, rather than 15 or 30 seconds - and was really more of a mini-film rather than an ad.

The video was hosted on a site called www.bewareofthedoghouse.com and invited women to put their partners into the virtual doghouse as a way of reprimanding them for bad gift choices. Men could also be emailed a warning that they may be uploaded to the doghouse if they didn’t do the right thing. And the only way out of the doghouse? Purchase diamond jewellery from JC Penney.



The campaign also made great use of social media. Facebook users visiting the site could easily select “doghouse” candidates from their friends list and upload their names or send warnings.

“Beware of the Doghouse” logged more than 7 million visitors and more than 14 million total video views through the holiday season. But more than that, Ruby Anik told the National Retail Forum that jewellery sales (in the midst of the recession mind you) went up 8%.

House of Hoops

House of Hoops


House of Hoops is a new concept that Nike started up a few years ago
that's designed to focus on urban basketball culture. While Nike
designs the stores, sets the event agenda, and selects the product,
the concept is actually run by and under the marque of Foot Locker,
the largest sporting goods retailer in the US. Nike feels that it's a
way to benefit both themselves and their partner, and a great way to
build a core business in a very specific market without requiring new
product. Interestingly, the concept also does not have a website of
its own since Nike believes (rightly so) that tapping into the host of
sneaker freaker sites and publications is a better way to maintain
street cred and build buzz for limited edition releases and celebrity
appearances.

Mobile augmented reality application - furniture

OK... without implementation, an idea is nothing. But still, is it annoying to see someone else create something you've presented (almost word for word), and had rejected in the past.
Nice work IKEA and thanks MobileAD news

IKEA Uses Mobile Augmented Reality To Engage Shoppers’ Imagination

Earlier in 2009 IKEA launched a new line of furniture, IKEA PS, whose objective was to stretch the idea of design, to think about empowering people, and to minimize the impact on the world.

With such unusual designs, IKEA felt they had to do something special to help customers imagine how this furniture would fit into their houses, so they turned to a mobile augmented reality solution.

The Portable Interior Planner application gives customers the ability to see exactly how the new designs will look in their home, without the need to actually move any furniture!

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Mobile Augmented Reality has become a hot topic recently. An “Augmented Reality” system deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data, and generates a composite view for the user that is the combination of the real scene viewed by the user and a virtual scene generated by the computer

The beauty of the IKEA application is the simplicity and strong appeal of the basic proposition: wouldn’t it be nice if you could bring all these new furniture designs home to see how they might look in your own house. While this would be very difficult to do in the physical world, it is a perfect application for mobile augmented reality.

In fact, technology advancements in mobile handset cameras, screens, and processing power are enabling lots of new and interesting consumer applications in the entire field of mobile visual interactivity (see MobiAD article Visual Interactivity: The Next Great Way To Engage Consumers and NIKE PHOTOiD: Using Color To Connect With Customers)

The Application

To help overcome a customer’s lack of imagination, IKEA worked with Ogilvy and Mindmatic to design and build a mobile application that is a portable interior planning tool.

Here’s how it works:

• In the application are images of many of the pieces of furniture from the new IKEA PS line. The customer selects the product they are interested in, and then selects “Take a Picture”.
• The customer aims the camera of the phone at the area of the room where the furniture might be placed. The image of the room appears on the phone screen, along with the IKEA furniture. The furniture can be scaled larger or smaller to make it fit better in the scene.
• Once the image is the way the customer wants it, they use the camera to take a picture of the scene.
• If the customer likes the photo, they can either save it on the phone, or send it via MMS directly from within the application

How it looks

Here are some images of the IKEA application in use.

Distribution

The IKEA PS made the mobile application available to consumers in three ways:

1) In-store posters urged customers to send a free text message to IKEA to receive a link to download the application.

2) Customers going to the IKEA website were able to enter their mobile number and receive a download of the application.

3) Bluetooth pillars were installed in IKEA certain stores. These would periodically sent out signals to nearby phones inviting the subscriber to download the application.

Conclusion

We believe that the IKEA interior planning tool application is a great example of applying the unique attributes of mobile to a specific customer situation. In this case, providing customers with an easy-to-use means to understand exactly what a piece of furniture would look like in their home.

A couple of key points to take away from this campaign:

• Sometimes simple, single use apps are the best. As Magnus Jern, MD of Golden Gekko told us when discussing how to develop great marketing apps, “Prioritize just the key functionality, avoid the temptation to make the app do too many things, or you will never finish.” (from MobiAD article Mobile Applications: The Next Big Thing In Mobile Marketing?)

• The relatively low development costs for mobile apps means that this type of app can be build economically for a specific campaign (although this sort of capability could certainly be an ongoing part of IKEA marketing).

• Emerging technologies, such as mobile augmented reality or visual interactivity will be an important force in enabling new opportunities for brands to communicate with their clients, especially with branded utilities. The key will be to marry new technologies with real customer needs in a simple to use way. The proper application of mobile technology with a good user interface to offer a specific solution is what’s really important.

17.08.2009 Tags: campaign, germany, mobile application