The Los Angeles Times has joined the chorus of media outlets joyfully proclaiming “I told you so” as marketers begin abandoning Second Life. I don’t want to make too much of the article. After all, B.L. Ochman has already done a good job of articulating the points I would have made. I would only add that most of the businesses abandoning their efforts did them wrong to begin with. It makes no sense to me to proclaim Second Life—or any other channel, for that matter—a waste of time for marketers based on ill-considered approaches to entering a virtual world. I’m a fan of Coca-Cola’s approach, undertaken as a learning exercise and devoid of any island buying or edifice building.

Oh, I do have to comment on this gem from the LA Times piece:

Another problem for some is that Second Life doesn’t have enough active residents…Even at peak times, only about 30,000 to 40,000 users are logged on, said Brian Haven, an analyst with Forrester Research.

Uh huh. And what website, up to and including Amazon.com, wouldn’t kill to have 30,000 to 40,000 people visiting all at the same time?

Instead of dissecting what’s wrong with the Times piece, I find it a lot more interesting to look at the International Herald Tribune story about how banks, of all businesses, are experiencing some success in Second Life.

Banks, notoriously bad at establishing good relationships with customers, are finding that Second Life affords them the opportunity to do just that. For example, ABN AMRO opened a Young Professional Island to offer services to highly educated professionals in the 25-35 age range. Services include home buying assistance and job interview training.

The difference, when compared with conventional seminars, is that the avatars (online bodily representations, like Marty Dench) can be walked through the process, leading to a much deeper understanding than just looking at a piece of paper or listening to a slide show. Plus, the young professionals can easily do all this from home in the evening, notes Bas van Ulden, new business development manager at ABN AMRO.

In fact, it has been interesting watching the number of financial institutions—including venerable institutions like H&R Block—take a more strategic approach to Second Life than simply throwing up a building and proclaiming an in-world presence.
Those businesses that treat their Second Life experiences as learning opportunities—particularly how to be relevant with a population that resists the “army of old world meat-space corporations” (so dubbed by Second Life Herald writer Urezenas Sklar, the in-world identity of Toronto-based professor Peter Ludlow, quoted in the Times story)—rather than sales experiments will achieve much better outcomes.

That’s a particularly important concept as many observers agree that the World Wide Web itself will assume three-dimensional properties like those that characterize Second Life within the next five or 10 years. I’d rather make my mistakes now, when only 30,000 to 40,000 people can see them, than in 2012 when my screw-ups will be exposed to the entire global online population.

UPDATE: Just got an email pointing me to this Wired article that gets it as wrong as everyone else, concluding thus:

Companies say, ‘It’s an experiment’ ??? but what are they learning?” Tobaccowala asks. “Basically, they’re learning how to create an avatar and walk around in Second Life.” Which is fine if that’s what you want to do. Just don’t expect to sell a lot of Coke.

That’s Rishad Tobaccowala, by the way, CEO of Denuo, a consulting arm of the global ad giant Publicis Groupe, who evidently doesn’t see the value of figuring it out now, either. Clients of his more forward-looking competitors stand a better chance of being prepared when the scales tip.