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By Strange Ranger A recent opinion post by the so-called "technology writer", Russell Shaw says that "for business uses, Second Life is a fad and a crock" . While I know that there have been quite a few RL businesses that set up shop in SL, only to close their doors, soon after, I also believe that there are ways that RL businesses will use (and are using) SL.
One of the problems that I have seen, first-hand, is that when people from RL businesses come into Second Life, they think of it the same way that they think of their real life business. They use the technology in the same way that they would use a web page, creating objects that link to their web site and other information, rather than providing the information "in-game".
In Shaw's article, he says that Second Life is "cool" and "fun", and that he even has his own avatar there (though he doesn't mention his SL name). I don't think that he's seeing the full spectrum of what virtual worlds are all about, though.
The same as many of the companies that have come and gone, it seems that he thinks Second Life (the only metaverse he talks about) should be used for "advertising" by businesses. He doesn't talk about any of the other possibilities for doing business in Second Life.
I do know that not "all" businesses will have a place in virtual worlds. Just flip through the yellow pages and think about how many types of businesses could benefit from being in SL. The last time I did, there weren't a lot of them that I would think could do anything in a computerized 3D setting.
On the other hand, though, I may not be able to imagine what a plumbing & heating business, shoe store, or other types of non-typical SL businesses could do in a virtual world, but other than "advertising", I'm sure they could use the platform for something.
A couple years ago, there were buzzwords like "micropayments" and "the long tail". What happened to these ideas? In my opinion, they are still valid economic structures. Maybe "big", high profile businesses are the ones that get noticed coming and going, but I guarantee that there are many other, smaller businesses that are doing just fine. I'm also sure that there will be many more to come.
SL 2006 was just like Web 1994. Give it a few more years and we'll look back on some of these naysayers comments and just laugh.
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