I'm happy that Guy at The Project Factory contacted let know about the Brand Measurement they're doing in Second Life using dwell statistics.  

According to the TheProjectFactory blog -

"….Rising up from fifth last week to third is the innovative island produced by The Project Factory for ABC TV which is listed ahead of such major international brands such as IBM, NBC Universal, Sony BMG, Toyota and AOL. Popularity statistics will be produced each Monday and published on The Project Factory’s website at www.theprojectfactory.com "

I asked Guy for more details on how they measure Brand Presence in Second Life – but I see there's some of that information in the blog post:

"..Reporting dwell statistics in Second Life as a measure of engagement Traffic is a number allocated to each parcel which is based on the amount of residents who visited, and the time spent on that parcel out of their total time in world that day. Every user gets a set number of traffic points to give out during the 24 hours between midnight and midnight. The user's points are then evenly divided between those parcels. So, if I was online for 1 hour and spent 20 minutes on resident A's parcel and 40 minutes on resident B's parcel, resident A would get 33% of my points and resident B would get 66%. Alternately, if I only spent 5 minutes online and spent all of it on resident A's land, they would receive all of my points. "

Given the broad measure, using time spent (of all the time you could spend) on property A vs. property B or C (etc) this sounds like a good approach, as far as it goes.   

For TheProjectFactory to have done  more would have meant having something similar to Code4Software's V-Tracker tracking package in each Island (Property) and compare number of interactions against one another – and we're not there yet.

By the way, I will use the Brand Measurement to see if IBM gets Brand lift soon – stay tuned.

Here's the chart (see below):

There are a number of assumptions that are being used here – and I'm not sure they're 100% valid –  here's what I see as "open" to interpretation:

1. Traffic Points being set by user irrespective of how much time they spend in Second Life that day
2. The number of Residents of Second Life who visit an Island Property.

I think both of those "measurements" are open to interpertation, and if you did weigh them differently, the bar chart, above, would change. 

I'm not holding TheProjectFactory to an overall Web Analytics standard yet; the immaturity of Second Life from a standpoint of Metrics, overall, makes any kind of standard, sort of a moving target.   Let's think in terms of the next year or two for a "metrics standard" for 3D Virtual Worlds.

I have some additional information that was shared with me via Email with Guy:

"…Engagement (or Dwell) is a measure of how long a visitor has spent
interacting with that brand, normalised over a 24 hour period.  This gives as accurate a reflection as currently possible of the tactical success of the brand's strategic move into Second Life.

Pontiac overtook Telstra last week largely due to some major race events that pulled the crowds.  Microsoft launched their Second Life presence also so when the new stats are run on Monday I'd expect to see them to appear in the rankings as an 'interest factor'.  Whether the build of their world has been a success or not will be seen in the coming weeks."

Ok, we're in new ground – and just the attempt of measure Brand in Second Life gets my attention – and applause – but let's work on making these metrics better.

Some of my readers may know that I was just elected to the Board of The Web Analytics Association this week – and I was in San Francisco to sit in my very first Board Meeting. 

What you might not yet know, I'm will be working with Social Media, including Blogs, RSS Feeds, and I guess that could extend to "Second Life" and other 3D Virtual Worlds. 

In the near future I will be looking for 2 chairs (Web Analytics Association Members) to work on this with me – and volunteers (also Web Analytics Association Members) to do this work with me, which I'll facilitate in any way I can, and report back to the WAA Board on. 

I think, at this point, it's time to think in terms of rolling up what TheProjectFactory, Code4Software, ElectricSheep and RiversRunRed are doing -as well as other Second Life Virtual Development firms – into something that all works with Web Analytics (even if it's not yet considered a part of Web Analytics today – due to the shortage of metrics tools and defined metrics for Second Life and other 3D Worlds).

Hint: Join the Web Analytics Association if you want to be part of this – we can even help by coming up with the "standards" everyone is going to be asking for soon.