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I have read articles at work about businesses using Second Life to conduct trainings and meetings with people so that no travel is necessary. People seem to say that it works as well as using NetMeeting or Web cams and it features cool avatars and a 3D world which makes it…technologically hip. I can understand why using Second Life would be useful, especially in this economy. It is more efficient to have an employee sit at their computer and learn than pay for their travel and put them up in a hotel. However, I do not know how useful it would be to put advertisements in the game in order to sell products. Do enough people use it? If a user is looking at an advertisement in a “fake” world, does that transfer over to the real world? Is it too soon to tell?
I joined Second Life today to figure out what it is all about. I loved The Sims in high school…and I thought maybe the two would be similar.
I first decided to head over to London, England. Before finding London, though, I found a couple of “Islands” that provide help to organizations on various topics. Seeing this made me think that perhaps Second Life is a little more helpful than The Sims…
I ended up in London’s Hyde Park and began walking around. There are not very many people in London, so I tried flying, reading signs, “eavesdropping” on conversations and tried to figure out what else to do.
The end result: I got bored and quit out of Hyde Park. I then found another community “Avatar Island,” but had to download another viewer. Is that always the case, or am I missing something?
Somehow I stayed in London and never transferred to the other island…and then I started hearing voices.
No, not in my head, at least I don’t think so. I think they were coming from Second Life. It sounded like there was an American and a Portuguese man talking to each other…about…golf.
Someone then IMed me and welcomed me to the crazy world after I desperately typed out “What is going on?”
Apparently there are red lights going up from a chess board, white waves go off when someone is talking, and I learned a lot about Portugal…such as…there are a lot of men and roundabouts in the country.
Second Life is wild. I consider myself to be pretty technologically savvy, but this is a whole different ballgame.
I suppose that Second Life could be very practical, but how will it become popular? Is it considered to be an innovative tool that only some companies use? Will it just always be a game that people use when they are bored, or want human interaction?
I’ll admit, even in the 10-15 minutes that I spent in Second Life, I learned a lot about a random country! And it does seem like an interesting place for people of different cultures to interact, which could be useful. I found out that the helpful person that IMed me is from Sweden, and we had a lengthly discussion on Ikea furniture.
I decided to leave after the American commented that an avatar “had a big ol’ booty. A big ol’ ass.” Hysterical, but ridiculous at the same time.
There I am… Looking confused!
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