An interesting article in VentureBeat was brought to my attention tonight by Sebastian over at www.WebAnalyticsBook.com on IBM sees big future in 3D, but probably not in Second Life.
I have been providing the metrics for this project.
"..IBM has been eager to try out 3D marketing, for reasons we’ll get to. Like other companies, it created a virtual Business Center in Second Life (you’ll need to have an account at SL to go there), staffed by live sales avatars during business hours. It had more than 2,000 visitors in the first two weeks it was open and IBM’s island was rated first among corporate islands by at least on study. It has led to at least two sales leads, the company says. Visitors can pull down technical manuals and click to download PDFs straight from Second Life.
However, it chose Second Life only because it the San Francisco company is the most popular virtual site; other companies were trying it out too. "
Sounds right… it has as much to do with the way messaging is set up as the technology … which is still immature:
"…His comments come as Forbes publishes an article suggesting that corporate islands haven’t had many visitors. Erik Hauser of Swivel Media, Wells Fargo’s digital agency, says in the piece: “Going into Second Life now is the equivalent of running a field marketing program in Iraq.” David Churbuck, Web-marketing vice president for computer maker Lenovo, the company that bought IBM’s personal computing division and which doesn’t have a presence at Second Life, adds: “There is nothing to do in Second Life except, pardon my bluntness, try to get laid.”
At this point, I think the real benefits of 3D Virtual Worlds is in collaboration - internal company collaboration - different teams and individuals making contact, finding opportunities that would not have happened if they had not been brought together in a 3D Virtual way.
Like anything else … it's all how you use and leverage the tools.. Second Life is just another tool
"… IBM has twice the content of Google, Dierdorff says, enough pages to fill an average small town library (37,000 80-page books). So far, the 3D experiment has worked in Second Life, but he’s looking for something easier and more open. "
My own observations is that more events on the islands help.. the more you get Avatars to your "island" and get interaction going .. they better your results are going to be in site click through (called "punch through"); there are all kinds of things you can do to increase the effectiveness of an island… a whole book could be written about that, in fact.
