I’m going to be attending Virtual Worlds Hollywood next week (any readers who are going to be there, as well, contact me and we can meet) to assist Code4Software (speaking at the Technology Track), which is a sponsor for the show.

Virtual World Advertising: Lessons Learned
Marketing and advertising inside of virtual worlds can represent a challenge on many levels. Drawing upon over two years of practical in-world advertising experience, Jared Freedman of Code4Software will present hard statistics showing the results of advertising inside of one of the most popular Virtual Worlds, Second Life TM and some important lessons for those seeking to monetize their virtual world venues. Code4Software created the system that currently runs the largest centrally controlled advertising network in Second Life that logs over fifteen million impression minutes per month.
- Jared Freedman, President, Code4Software LLC

And that reminds me, BusinessWeek has a story on Second Life this week – Business, and Startups, in Second Life, which says that virtual worlds are succeeding as a prototyping tool for business projects:

“… The crucial advantage to working in virtual worlds is that they offer much more potential for customers to interact with new products, even ones that don’t exist yet, says Brian Mennecke, associate professor in information management systems at Iowa State University. The cost of entry is low, too. “It’s open to everyone from day one,” says Paul Jackson, principal analyst with technology researcher Forrester Research (FORR). In a report that was co-authored by Jackson and released earlier this year, Jackson points out that, even with collaboration software, sharing 3D or CAD models “has proven tricky, especially when much of the required data lives in proprietary design systems.” Working in virtual worlds helps solve that problem.

Curet is a fan of Second Life because it saved him time and money and made it easier to meet with his engineer in China. But other businesses are using Second Life to offer services not readily available in the real world or to build products they couldn’t otherwise afford to prototype. And some entrepreneurs are using Second Life to test ideas—such as a mass transit system with individual pods for riders—that aren’t feasible to prototype any other way.”

I did a lot of work with Metrics while I was working at IBM and on the Virtual Business Center – and while I don’t spend a lot of time in Virtual Worlds right now – I do see that has an application of Social Media and worth studying.

In fact, the Web Analytics Association is in the process of drafting a standard for Virtual Reality – metrics wise (what we can measure and how we can measaure it) and it will be released, in draft form, later this year.