Second Life will become even more important in 2007 as it has become in 2006 - I just predicted it in my last post. Here's one example - I have some pretty innovative ideas for my one Architectural House Plan client but I have to admit - many of my best ideas have already happened.
My Cost to Build Search Engine must have been on Better Homes and Garden's drawing board when I thought of the idea - and my idea for Architectural Island - where an Architect (ie: my client) has recreations of their most popular (and eventually - all their stock house plans) in Second Life has been done already by Crescendo Design .
I visited Crescendo Design's office in Second Life tonight to see how it was implemented - and while I did not run into anyone - my idea is totally correct - what I see for my architect is not only viable - it's here now and totally the right direction. Gee..and I thought I was original …think again. OK, I'll settle for being right and forward thinking.
A house in Second Life, recreated, is much superior to CAD Virtual Reality Movie; some architects have this on their sites, including Mascord.com - but you can't really "Live" in a virtual reality CAD movie - even if the recreations look more "finished' than a house Second Life.
Here's a YouTube Movie of what Jon and Kandy Brouchoud have done in Second Life.
I don't know if the Brouchoud's have sold more house plans because of their work in Second Life - I would imagine they have.
In my opinion, most stock house plans are viewed as a commodity - you have to find one you want to build (if you even want to bother building - given the current housing market - it might be easier to just buy an existing new home on the cheap than build your own) because it has the features you want. It's hard to wade though - that's why many architects don't do that well with online sales of stock house plans (I know this for a fact - I've pulled data on 3 or 4 top architects and this is one of my specialities in SEO/SEM).
The bar is always being lifted - it has to be - people's expectations change. Right now, there's only 2 million residents of Second Life - next year I predict there will be 7 million by year end (that's going to make life very tough for Linden Labs - keeping Second Life up…..will be a major task - one they will be all to happy to do - as they will rake it in - all the money they'll make on Second Life).
Even if a customer comes to an architects site and has never been on Second Life - the possiblility of viewing and moving in a plan they will consider - will research - will often induce them to try it - to install Second Life and go on and take a look.
Yes, there needs to be good metrics to track all of this activity on an island - but the if the houses are built in Second Life - people will come. I predict, more people will buy a plan they can interact with, and learn about in Second Life - than if they did not have that opportunity.
Incidently -
it appears AutoCad drawings can be exported into Second Life and built there (I did some research tonight on it - but it appears to also be something fairly new - maybe still full of bugs - I don't know). By the way, House plan are send as CAD files on disk (as well as printouts) - it's not too hard to see where this all is going.
What the Brouchoud's did with
Crescendo Design is exactly the right thing - this is the future -
this is now. However most of the architects I have worked with (several now) have shown themselves to be conserative by nature - most are not as ready yet for what the Bouchoud's have done (which is good for the Brouchouds - by the time the light goes on for many Architects minds - Crescendo Design will be way ahead - they already are.
I did not get tagged for 2007 Predictions (I think there's another tag game going on for 2007 Predictions) but I'm going to go ahead and give my 2007 Web Predictions now.
Web Predictions for 2007
1 - Google buys FeedBurner and Quantcast - merges both platforms into it's own - providing the first Web Analytics Platform/Product that provides RSS Feed/Podcast data and Audience Measurement/Geo-Demographics data in one place.
Google Analytics becomes the De Facto analytics package/platform for small and midsized businesses. The remaining big 4 Web Analytics vendors (Visual Sciences/HBX, WebTrends, Omniture and Coremetrics) will fight over the high end customers while giving up entirely on the low end customers. ClickTracks will be stuck in the middle to fight it out and will have a harder time.
2 - Google Fatigue starts setting in for many as Google's growth continues to lead it to act similar to Microsoft, HP and IBM. Google's motto of "Do No Evil" is slowly continuing to erode, and this has already been noted this year; Google becomes too big to be as revolutionary as it has been (yet this is what people expect Google to be). Nothing much changes but people start looking for the next big thing - which may not be Google.
Google's shares stay in the 400 dollar range. Google considers splitting itself into 4 divisions to maintain nimbleness - but waits till 2008 to restructure (and lays off about 10% of it's workforce in the restructuring - again, in 2008).
3 -Certain Web 2.0 Widgets become very popular in 2007 (ie: 3D Avatars from Gizmoz - everyone wants their own) - Widget Analytics comes into it's own and the Page view is no longer considered a metric worth looking at (it's already dead and buried but people still collect the data - we'll no longer bother to collect pageviews by end of 2007).
4-Online Video continues gain importance and YouTube becomes crucial as communications medium for Politicians running for office, as we're already seeing with John Edwards - and this is just the start - Much more to come. RSS Feeds will become crucial (which is another reason why Google must buy FeedBurner - see prediction 1) to politics and FeedBurners' metrics for Feeds and Blogs are the most widely used.
5 - Second Life becomes crucial for many businesses (which it's more of curiosity for most now); right now most Large Corporations are in the process of creating presences in Second Life and in 2007 many more small and medium businesses will do so. By the end of 2007, there will be close to 7 million residents of Second Life - almost triple the current population of 2 million+.
6- Ultra Mobile PC's begin to replace mobile phones in 2007 as the dominant device people use to collect information. Certain Ultra Mobile PC's have mobile phone capability added to them - and the price of Ultra Mobile PC's continues to drop with a major Ultra Mobile PC being available for 399 by next Christmas.
That's it. I think many of my predictions have a good chance of happening. I hope to get 4 out of 6 (or better) a year from now. I don't have any predictions for Social Media right now, or Net Neutrality, or Governmental Controls of Media - or anything in particular for Blogs - I think it will all continue to grow - won't set any marks as to where all this will be at the end of 2007.
I'm reading "Second Life" The Official Guide - which is pretty helpful to me as I don't have much experience with Second Life and there's a lot I want to find out about.
The other book I just ordered was a tip from Steve Rubel (BTW, I tried to add my blog to his list on del.icio.us (but I don't know how to add webmetricsguru.com - or for that fact, artnewyorkcity.com).
The other book I just ordered today is called Start Your Own Blogging Business (Startup)
Let me be clear - the last thing I want to do is start a blog network - or anything like that - but I'm curious to see what Entrepreneur magazine says you need to do to make money on blogging. I already make money on my blogs - but I don't control the advertising directly (except by the topics of what I write about, I suppose).
I'll review both books once I finish reading them. The Second Life book is pretty good so far - but it's just about the only book on Second Life now, and it was just published a couple of weeks ago.
