by: Gary Hayes
The Second Life builds I did for Telstra BigPond and ABC TV (interview with me at SLOZ and also here at CeBit about this) have been very successful (via The Project Factory) and I have been ’sucked’ into doing several keynote, panels and seminars about this exciting development.
The growing maturity (2nd generation) of brands, business and advertising in Virtual Worlds are very much in the zeitgeist at the moment (see previous Milia posts for example and from Brad Howarth) and for those around the Sydney area here are the event dates and some abstracts about some presentations I am giving in this space – (below them is some very interesting brand statistics from Second Life…)
May 1 – CeBit Keynote. “A Brand and Media Survival Guide to Virtual Worlds” (I will be speaking alongside Google and Mozilla amongst others)
Thirty minutes to get up to speed with a revolution. Gary takes you on a whistle-stop tour of three-dimensional virtual worlds and the opportunities for your brand development. He will attempt to navigate the complex maze that is the relationship between audiences in worlds such as Second Life and companies that are looking to create a presence there. What do people actually do here? How can you reach them?
A recent report by Gartner says that 80 Percent of Active Internet Users Will Have A “Second Life” in the Virtual World by the End of 2011 and Gary will explore the reasons why virtual worlds are transformative and immersive. He will analyse some of the key statistics about the naturally communicative audience and ask “Is this really a revolutionary web 3.0, the real-time, collaborative 3D web or another bubble about to burst?”.
May 2-5 – Delivering a “Business in Social Networks and Games” at the LAMP/CSB residential helping previous LAMP projects develop business models.
May 10 – “PR opportunities knocking in virtual worlds” at the 8th National Public Affairs Conference.
More than 850,000 users are spending real time and money in virtual worlds such as Second Life. But will the craze last, and how valuable will it become for PR?
– Abigail Thomas, Head, Strategic Innovation & Development, new media and digital services, ABC
– Gary Hayes, Director, LAMP and The Project Factory and architect of Telstra and AFTRS Second Life projects
– Mark Jones, IT editor, The Australian Financial Review
May 15 – “Business in a Virtual World” at an AIMIA Intimate. I am both moderator and panellist.
Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are getting a lot of publicity. Of particular interest is the bustling economy developing in these worlds. Business is booming and some people are making serious money. The ABC and Telstra both have presences in Second Life. Come along and hear industry experts from Habbo, Legion Interactive, KPMG, Swinburne Univ and others discuss:
– The popularity of a virtual existence.
– The appeal of setting up a business in Second Life, or any other virtual world.
– Doing business in a virtual world and the ramifications.
– The new virtual marketplace – what marketing principles have changed if at all?
– The future of virtual worlds – how sophisticated will these worlds become? What will be the ROI? What challenges lie ahead for the companies behind these worlds to maintain a vigorous economy and vibrant community?Date: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 Where: The Shelbourne Hotel, “Altitude” level, 200 Sussex Street, Sydney. 6.30pm for 7.00pm start 7.30pm your chance to ask questions and then back to mingling 10.30pm bar is closed.
May 20-25 – “LAMP: Story of the Future.” Directing and leading a special LAMP Residential for a week in Tasmania with eight cool projects with an emphasis on rich narrative, destined for Virtual Worlds, Games and Cross-Media distribution.
Phew, lots on. I will post my CeBit keynote here next week for those who can’t pop along to Sydney, Australia but before I go one thing I will be referring to is how branded ’spaces’ in Second Life are doing, comparatively. On Thursday morning I did a snapshot of the traffic across all the main brands in Second Life and came up with something surprising:
1. BigPond – 18139
2. Pontiac – 13832
3. IBM – 12850
4. Showtime (L Word) – 7233
5. ABC TV Australia – 6898
6. NetG Training – 6536
7. Mercedes-Benz – 5656
8. Nissan – 4269
9. Mazda – 2827
10. Dell – 2759
11. MTVN – 2317
12. Toyota – 2119
13. Sun Microsystems – 1728
14. Sears – 1596
15. Sony BMG – 1560
16. Cisco – 1521
17. Adidas Reebok – 1351
18. Sony Ericsson – 1242
19. PA Consulting Group – 1138
20. Circuit City -1089
21. Reuters – 1019
22. BMW 842
23. Intel – 829
24. AOL – 797
25. NBC Universal 745
26. American Apparel – 596
27. Starwood Hotels – 35
Statistics were complied at 11am 26th April and a little about how the traffic figures are calculated from Linden Lab.
Traffic is a number for each parcel which is based on the amount of Residents who visited, and the time spent on that parcel out of their total time inworld that day. It’s calculated using a complex algorithm. Every user gets a set number of traffic points to give out during the 24 hours between midnight and midnight. Any parcel of land that the user spends more than 5 sequential minutes on gets counted as a place that they spent time. 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, she would receive all of my points.
The images below are grabs a day or so later to show a comparative methodology, the only real way to compare like-for-like using the search/place traffic data built into the interface.
Lots more projects now in development via the Project Factory to build on the foundation of the Australian brands that are themselves moving into a third phase – keep an eye out here
Original Post: http://www.personalizemedia.com/my-virtual-world-brand-talks-and-comparative-data/
