The Second Life Zakim Bridge - Courtesy of Boston.com I was reading a recent top article on Boston.com about the plans for the City of Boston and Emerson College to bring the hub into the Second Life universe and it made me think about how far will these virtual world technologies will take us and where will real world Boston fit in?

Here is a test. In your minds eye, quickly create a picture of the typical Second Life daily user looks like in real life? Does a creepy basement in their parents house come to mind…do you think something seedy? That may be the picture that you have now but with many major companies and thought leaders looking to virtual world technologies as “the new, new media” that picture may morph quickly into a picture of yourself in the future.

Boston city officials are, according to the article, hoping that the novelty of Second Life will inspire people to take a more active part in civic life, help virtually imagine how they can improve the city and maybe even interact with the city offices in the future. They plan on building out parts of the city in Second Life as part of a joint project with Emerson College students who will handle the virtual construction. This is all part of a course that Emerson is offering called Hub2 that will be taught by Emerson professor Eric Gordon, who will run the course for Emerson students, and Harvard’s Gene Koo, who will teach the “open class” for non-students.

Other examples of brands and city governments experimental efforts in the virtual world;

As for the local virtual scene? The Boston world already has a decent footing the building of the virtual sphere. Active Worlds, hidden up in Newburyport, MA, is one of the grand-daddy’s of the space is that was started in 1995 and launched in 1997. They have quietly built out their own virtual world as well offering a license their technology for commercial or educational use. You can also include MMORPG (not sure if I can ever get that acronym right) game providers like Westwood-based Turbine who recently released The Lord of Rings Online which looks incredible but I refuse to get sucked in (I’m just too busy and I know it will kill hours of my time).

In addition, Second Life recently acquired Waltham-based Windward Mark Interactive to help enhance their 3D capabilities. The team from Windmark will join the also recently created Linden Software Development office in Cambridge, MA. [ Update: Thanks to Pathfinder Linden for pointing out that the recruitng party I had linked to here was for a party in the UK next week!...my bad! the Boston event was awhile back. ]

The interesting story on Second Life, outside of the local scene of course, is the debate over how “active” the popular online destination really is anyway and if it con be considered a viable marketing program. Second Life has captured almost 8 Million registrations in the pas 4 years but only, according to the debate, (a.) 40 - 50,000 active users or (b.) 500,000 active users. Just so you know (and would like to quote either of these in a meeting to make yourself feel cool), these are referring to 2 different numbers and the point is really moot anyway. The lower number is quote from the a Forrester analyst posted in recent L.A. Times article and is referring to a “peak usage” number or the number of users who are logged in at any give time. The later is an “active weekly user” number as reported by a recent GigaOm article where “active” is defined as users who have logged in the past 7 days. The number that I would like to investigate is user engagement or what avatars are actively involved in on a regular basis.

Marketers for the past year or 2 have been clamoring to build out a presence in this and other popular online worlds with very mixed results ( also read the release on Second Life customer satisfaction ) However, it is probably too soon to really use this platform as a viable line item in your overall marketing plan because the “world” is just not that large anyway. If you can think of some clever gimmick (like a virtual version of your city!) you can get good press and awareness externally for your message but do not expect the Second Life minions to embrace you or your product because you “care” about their world. You may even end up on the wrong end of the Second Life Liberation Army if you are not careful (I’ve tried to join with no success but the SLA is more hype/humor than reality anyway). Do they issue invites like Pownce?

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