To kick off the SLCC's business track, Sibley Verbeck, CEO of the Electric Sheep Company, outlined some of the Sheep's projects, but focused on exhortation of business developers to think cooperatively about the future of the world. "We’re all in this together," said Verbeck. "We do compete, and we should, and we should really be pushing each other. But we’re all going to sink or swim together. And there are lots of things we can do to swim."
Keynote: Business in Second Life
Sibley Verbeck, CEO, The Electric Sheep Company
Thinking about this really generally, I have to ask why are we here. Why are we in SL business? I would love to hear answers to that question. Why are you here and what got you here. There just aren’t enough of us here. I’m here because the world is changing very quickly, more rapidly all the time. And the driving force is technology.
If you care about it and want to influence it with whatever foresight we have is to get involved with whatever technology you think is best early. And one of the best ways is business. It’s not just about money, but about finding resources to cobble something together.
I look at virtual worlds as a communication medium more than anything else. This is the first communication medium ever invented that allows two people far away to interact together just like they would in person.
We’re all in this together. We do compete, and we should, and we should really be pushing each other. But we’re all going to sink or swim together. And there are lots of things we can do to swim. One of those is to think about the messaging out there. What was one of the major press stories during last year’s SLCC? There was a general panic that corporations were coming into SL and they were going to ruin everything. Most of us here at SLCC were saying that’s ridiculous. If Coca Cola buys an island, you don’t have to go there.
Here we are a year later and the major story is that corporations came into Second Life and nothing happened. It’s terribly. We had about six months in between of talk about SL is the coolest thing out there.
It’s understandable, partly because SL is a niche thing. It’s not the job of most reporters to get into a microscope mode. We do have to get the right messages out there. Part of that is admitting the problems that exist. I really liked Philip’s talk today. It’s about not overselling it.
At the end of the day, the only thing that’s going to solve the issue is having millions of people doing something and being interested in SL. The most important thing for us to do is to realize it’s all of our responsibilities to make Second Life work. It’s up to us t increase the user retention level.
There’s nobody else that’s going to do that. It’s up to everyone in this room to grow business. I believe that all the best business opportunities are going to solve these problems. Where your business is going to be successful is making Second Life stickier.
What can we do? The first thing is we do need to grow this community. Last night I got here, and I was exhausted. The first person I met was Brian Meeks. He told me that last year he came and had only been in world for a few months. He met a bunch of people and asked them questions, and now he’s here as an entrepreneur.
Beyond all the work of Linden Lab, I think the people who help increase the chance of Second Life are the people who organize this conference. I hope we all specially take on the responsibility of learning about Second Life and inspiring people.
Concretely, what can I do? I’m not an in-world business entreprneuer, but a lot are here. What are the businesses I think people can start that will be successful? Someone needs to create business communication tools to make it successful. SL has the potential to be the thing that video conference was always aiming at. It’s got to be easier than a HUD. Same thing with education. Education is obviously in second life, but they don’t have the tools that they need.
We need customized software. Linden Lab isn’t going to do it. We have to inspire people.
Third business. Someone should make a dating service. Someone should go out and partner with one of these huge dating sites and bring it in. There are people dating in Second Life, but not in the millions that are using these sites.
Second Life will outpace the Web, but one of the ways its that I really think that in a few years, there will be more consumer shopping in Second Life than the Web. People love to go shopping with other people. They love to browse. Right now, from the point of view of a mainstream audience, shopping is terribly.
ESC is doing things within that opportunity, but we need way more. We could go on and on, but one of these last opportunities is that we need directory service of cool things to do in Second Life for new people to do coming in. That’s something that someone could just sit down and write it on a Web page. Not an open thing that’s going to be spammed. I know it’s a scary word, but we kind of need to AOLize the thing here. You just need to push a button, maybe you get the software by accident in the mail, and you’ve never seen it before, but all of a sudden you’ve got entertainment, learning, socialization right there in front of you.
We need to go further than anyone’s gone with it. I’m not here to advertise the ESC, but one thing we have upcoming is a project with CSI. We’re going to get a chance to bring a pretty good portion of that audience into Second Life. We need that, but it’s a little scary. We need to make that experience really good. We don’t want them coming in and having SL immediately crash. They’ve got to have a way better orientation experience that immediately brings them to the content they want and then gets them out into the world. If you’ve got ideas, all we care about is getting these people into second life and having way more than 10% sticking with it.
Last year in the middle of that mess on corporations and griefing, a lot of us were saying that even if the projects are terrible, those big names are going to drive audiences in. That happened. Even though only a small percentage stayed, that same small percentage steadily kept coming.
I think we’re going through that same cycle now of addressing all the criticisms, some of which are valid, that are out there in the press. We need to make it work in a way that’s successful for all users. I think that can be a focus for the business track. How do we all get better at what we do for users.
Q&A:
Q: I keep hearing the limit of 72 avatars in an area. How do you deal with that?
A: Because the VW uses the metaphor of place, we can only have so many people in this room. One thing you can do is put people in a lot of places. It might be nice to have everyone in a baseball stadium and you can see all the avatars in the difference, but it’s more important to have thousands of baseball stadiums with 50 people in each. That’s all you can really talk to anyways.
The problem is that if you have to pay for the server for each 50 users, there are only some applications that make sense. That’s a design issue, a business issue to make sure what you do makes sense within that context.
Q: Most of what I’ve heard you speaking on here is how to bring people in. Most of my interest is in supporting owners that are there. How do you see that growing?
A: I’m speaking to what I know about, but I do think that’s the relative gain for all of us. If you’re one person and that’s what you want, that’s still relevant. Linden Lab won’t exist if Second Life doesn’t keep growing.
So it concerns us all that we make SL successful. If you’re an in-world business focusing on how do I make X number of dollars in a year, we’re all in it together. We all need these services. ESC is trying to do what we can to make SL easier for existing and not-yet-existing users. We want to make the actual software easier to use.
Certainly we need to make the whole ecosystem easier to use. Most of what we build we’re giving away for free, so we have to find a way to make money. One way we can do that is advertising, because it’s very difficult to get people to know about your in-world business.
Q: WHow do you think that current business owners can prevent issues like Enron>?
A: Well I don’t think any of these issues are specific to Second Life. There’s going to be a certain amount of fraud. We need to get away from the cat-and-mouse game that we can’t win. There’s a lot of anonymity which is really good, but also really bad for preventing fraud. There’s a lot of opportunity there with technology that can verify who people are and provide credibility.
Q:You spoke a little bit about not overselling SL. You’re in the business of selling SL. What do you find useful in a pitch when you’re talking to the general public about selling SL?
A:Trying to be humble is great. If they know what SL is, then in the first two minutes you have to say, “Look, it’s in a very early stage. It’s hard to use. It’s hard to learn to use.” That’s the concern. If everyone says we can’t show it to our audience because they won’t stick around and it’s a bad experience, we say here’s what you do. You engage the community, and here’s what you can do with the external community. Really hold their hands. Spend more of your tiem and dollars getting people in successfully and then use what the community has to keep them engage. And you admit that people can come and grief., but here’s what you can do about it.
Joey Seiler
www.VirtualWorldsNews.com
joey (at) showinitiative.com
(512) 535-8650
skype: joey.seiler.vwnews
I wish someone had asked about the return on investment (ROI) that businesses should expect, and some cost analysis. It seems like most of this was (literally) stupid money in many cases.
Posted by: Nobody Fugazi | August 25, 2007 at 02:46 PM