Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably know that Second Life is a new communications medium in which people meet inside a computer simulation of a 3D physical space. But what you don’t know is that SL (as its devotees call it) is a potent forum for conducting business meetings and even medium-sized conferences. Meetings in Second Life are better than in-person meetings. Video conferencing experiences pale by comparison. Best of all, anyone can attend an SL meeting from anywhere on the globe, without leaving their desk. And as the SL population grows, its meeting-hosting prowess will improve.

SL is all about human interaction with other humans. SL represents the emergence of a brand new communications paradigm. But what’s new and important about SL is its synchronous communications directly among live human beings, not the asynchronous communications of email or the automated human-machine interaction of Amazon and Google.

WHAT SHOULD A BUSINESS MEDIA COMPANY DO?

The answer to this question will vary by market segment, as follows: the more technically savvy your audience, the more quickly you must move to develop in Second Life a community for your brand’s audience to form around. Otherwise, as history has shown through the rise of the Internet, someone else will provide a community for them. Many companies were blindsided by the sudden rise of the Internet. Don’t let it happen to you. Also, when I say “the more technically savvy your audience” I don’t refer only to audiences for technical subjects, but rather an audience for any subject that happens to be comfortable with the use of computer technology and networking. This includes most any audience under 35.

Want to know more about SL? You can download a PDF of a white paper written by Mike Azzara, a former CMP colleague, here.