What's the value of Second Life?

Second Life is gaining increasing amounts of publicity, from Bill Thompson at the BBC, to Neville Hobson, Shel Holtz and co at Crayon, to Dell launching Dell Island (I wonder what the customer service will be like and if it will sink or have some such disaster) and IBM's CEO using SL as the place to announce news of a $100 million dollar investment in China.

I have to say I'm still struggling to see what it's all about, although I did have an interesting chat with someone about where it might all lead too while visiting Crayonville island.

From one perspective I do have one big bugbear with it and that's usability. Intuitiveness and the general standard of computer needed to navigate the world effectively (i.e. quite a powerful one), not too mention a hefty broadband connection make for a fairly difficult learning experience. This goes against most pieces of software these days which are often intended to make life as easy as possible for the user. But I guess, Second Life is not just a piece of software, it's a full-on game, and games aren't supposed to be too easy.

The SL focus at the moment for big companies seems very much to be on marketing and getting your brand in there, although IBM did also use an island for a knowledge sharing exercise recently (an exercise that met with some derision at a KM conference I was at in October).

I can see a lot of opportunity for marketers looking at WOM and viral campaigns, but what about internal comms?  Well, if the idea of a CEO blog scares the heck out of you and your team (and maybe your CEO too), just imagine the look of sheer horror when you say to him or her - "we want you to do group-wide, virtual town hall presentation in Second Life using Skype."

Given the interest surrounding this game/software/next_level_of_web/lawnmower_man/matrix, it might not be too far off, but how good would it be to do it now, when this world is literally hitting the mainstream as I type?

Alex M

PS: Pictured above, IBM CEO, Sam Palmisano's Second Live avatar. Palmisano will be announcing a $100 million invenstment project in a joint presentation both "in-world" in Second Life and "in-Beijing."