Businessweek cracks business code for Second Life

In the past weeks the Second Life blogosphere (me included) has complained a lot about 'Old Media' being cranky on Second Life and not understanding it. There's one notable exception though, which is Business Week, where Mitch Wagner posted an excellent article, Five Rules For Bringing Your Real-Life Business Into Second Life, which probably sums it all up.

Mitch wrote:

"Second Life is one of the most controversial technologies to hit the Internet. Praised last year as a platform that would turn the net upside down, this year it's being dismissed as an overhyped fraud and a waste of time and money.

The truth is somewhere in between last year's hype and this year's backlash. Second Life is revolutionary, but the revolution will take a few years to play out. For now, the virtual world is rough around the edges, and at times very difficult to use.

Nonetheless, you can get a lot out of bringing your real life business into Second Life. You can use Second Life for effective marketing, building relationships with customers and partners, and creating business value."

Then there's his Five rules:

1. Do Like Captain Picard Said: Engage
2. Add Value To Second Life's Communities
3. Don't Believe The Backlash
4. Be Smart About Keeping Out Trouble-Makers
5. Think Of Second Life As Beta Technology

This article was also the input for last thursday's Metaversed - Live session

"On this week's Metaversed Live, Metaversed.com's weekly business and technology talkshow hosted live in Second Life and on Talkshoe, Cisco Systems Christian Renaud, SLNN's Aliza Sherman and UgoTrade blogger Tish Shute join Metaversed Nick Wilson to talk about what the second wave of businesses coming into the virtual world are going to have to do to succeed, and hear how Cisco turned around their entire virtual worlds strategy based on hands on experience in Second Life. "

The podcast from the session is available here at Metaversed.

The MindBlizzard Crowd

A little earlier I gave you some clinical stats on april's visits to the blog, here's a more personal touch:
When I was checking some things I noticed the MindBlizzard blog was mentioned at the Spotfire site... good to know :)

Aside from that some people like to keep stats of where Business Week is mentioned, this past week I scored 2 points. And there's Reuben Steiger, CEO of Millions of Us who reacted to my blog on his 2007 predictions for Second Life and Paul Verhoeven who turned out to be a well metaversed SL-savvy director and kind enough to take half an hour to sit and have a chat with me on his new movie Black Book and auditioning in SL.

In the past month I've gotten to know Aleister Kronos, who's employed at a competing corp, a passionate blogger at Ambling in SL and 57 miles, professional bloggernaut at Metaversed. A month blogging like a lunatic earned me some nice friends, some scoops, some sleepless nights and some nice credits.

The road to Web 3D

Earlier this week I made a blogpost of the Business Week SL special. Here's another article (read the full version here) that discusses the future of the internet and NVE's (Networked Virtual Environments a.k.a. virtual / immersive worlds) in general.

"All these developments have one thing in common: They suggest that before long, the Internet of the future, and the vast wealth of information and services on it, will look different: slicker, more realistic, more interactive and social than anything we experience today through the Web browser. "Three-dimensional virtual worlds will, in the near future, be pervasive interfaces for the Internet," says Bob Moore, a sociologist who studies virtual worlds at Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, the legendary Xerox (XRX) lab in Silicon Valley."

It's an excellent article that really gets you going, written by Robert Hof.

Virtual Fortunes

As Lordly already posted, businessweek is doing an SL special, here's the interesting part:

"Meet the virtual world moguls. The number of Second Life residents generating more than $5,000 in monthly income has more than quadrupled to 116 in the past year."

The millionares:

1. Phillip Rosendale (the guy who did SL)
2. Ailin Graef(Anshe Chung real estate)
3. Reuben Steiger (Millions of Us)
4. Sibley Verbeck (Electric Sheep)
5. Alyssa LaRoche (Aimee Weber)
6. Adam Frisby (real estate)
7. Kevin Alderman (Strokerz Toys & Amsterdam Sim)
8. Peter Lokke (clothing)
9. Christiano Diaz (snapzilla SL)
10. Adam Anders (whatever, over 100.000 sales a day)

To wrap it up: No 1 is the one who dunnit, 2 real estate owners, 3 big builders, 2 clothing &kinky toys and 1 sidekick. So if you're not good at actually doing something, you can always invest in real estate.