Today I did another presentation about Second Life. It's funny to see how people get really enthusiastic about SL if you present them with all the possibilities. To prevent all these marketing pro's from asking my business card because "I want to do something in Second Life" I included a slide that literally says "Don't believe the hype!", but in vain ... they just keep asking (usually not ordering in the end).
The morning session was fun too, Clo, Christian and I did a completely improvised marketing café. We were literally at the bar answering questions about e-mail marketing, blogs & communities and ... Second Life (again).
And tonight I read this post by Steve Rubel which kind of summarizes my point of view:
So why am I still enthusiastic? The reason is that avatars tap into the human need to fantasize and socialize - most likely not as ourselves. Lots of gamers, for example, spend hours playing games like Tiger Woods 2007 so they can win bling for their virtual golf bags. Yahoo Avatars is another site that appears to be thriving, judging by the custom icons I have seen popping up over on Yahoo Answers.
Second Life is like Geocities was in 1998 - a big idea, but a little ahead of its time. I suspect that within a year or two robust 3D virtual worlds will eventually get far easier to use and run completely in a browser. Then they will become more mainstream.
And now ... leave me alone about Second Life unless you have something really interesting or a huge amount of money to get rid of :).
