I think Jared Freedman might be the one person who knows or has accomplished the most with Web Analytics in Second Life that I met at the Virtual Life Conference. In fact, Jared Freedman and his firm, Code4Software, did the work on Coldwell Banker's Second Life in 45 days and it has gotten a tremendous amount of Buzz.

"…Unlike almost every other big company, Coldwells offices in the virtual world will be staffed with real people (in the form of avatars of course). They will not only sell virtual real estate, but also answer questions about real world transactions."

"….Visitors to Coldwells sales office (in a community called Ranchero) will, if they choose, be flown by helicopter to view available properties. (Coldwell is also selling houses in the Second Life neighborhoods Crowfoot, Elboya, Gorbash and Scurfield.)

Coldwell has designed and built its own houses, which buyers will not be allowed to alter. They will sell for about $20 (U.S.) each, lower than the average for similar properties in Second Life, says Young."

I told Jared that if I am elected to the Board of the WAA, I'll take 3D Virtual World Metrics as one of my projects to develop a platform / committee at the WAA for this.

Jared Freedman Metrics system, which he calls "VMetrics", counts activity in Second Life by:

1. Visits by Minute
2. Visits by Location
3. Visits by Customer
4. Visits by Campaign

You can also pre-define sensors that focus on certain objects (we call that "Segmentation" in Web Analytics).

Another thing we discussed was Second Life overall Metrics through January 2007 which showed very low numbers of Chinese and Japanese using the Metaverse; Jared had the answer - LOCALIZATION.  The problem is developing the language interface/translation for both is not yet in place and the cost to maintain such interfaces as more and more are added becomes more than Linden Labs can afford. 

I'm sure this will be addressed in the future, but for the time being - the Localization issue has prevented Second Life and other 3D Virtual Worlds from spreading as much as they might, certainly in Asia.  Also, some countries, like Korea, have their own gaming communities that are very strong and are not, at this time, that interested in Second Life - but that could change with Localization issue being dealt with.

And Moore's law also holds true in Second Life - Jared Freedman thinks that hardware improvements speed the adoption of Second Life. I agreed, saying that I can't even run Second Life on my ThinkPad - I have to use my HP Laptop at home that is Dual Core, to run SL.

Getting into Jared's Second Life Activities:

As "Ancient Shriner" in Second Life, Jared Freedman is well known to many of the most accomplished Second Life programmers.

Jared also runs the biggest In-World Advertising system operating on the Second Life Mainland.

It was a pretty good interview and I'm looking forward to taking a closer look with "Ancient Shriner" on his Web Analytics for Second Life, perhaps as early as this weekend.