Second Life Tries to Go Mainstream in Part 3 Of The WSJ’s Podcast, “How To Build A Metaverse” — And What I Wrote at the Time

Streamable above or at the links below, part 3 of The Wall Street Journal’s “How to Build a Metaverse” podcast mini-series just went up. Featuring Jeska, Daniel, and Yoz Linden, along with Electric Sheep Company founder Giff Constable, it tells the story of Second Life’s entrance into mainstream awareness, with a whole episode on CSI: New York, major companies entering the world, and the every-recurring problem: How do I use this thing anyway, and what’s even in the point? 

At the time, my concern wasn’t so much on scalability, but that marketing campaigns and big brands. were overshadowing the grassroots creative community. Which as I wrote on GigaOM at the time, defeated the purpose of big brands even being there:

To play in Second Life, corporations must first come to a humbling realization: in the context of the fantastic, their brands as they exist in the real world are boring, banal, and unimaginative. Car companies are trying to compete with college kids who turn a virtual automotive showroom into a 24/7 hiphop dance party, and create lovingly designed muscle cars that fly, and auction off for $2000 in real dollars at charity auctions.

Fashion companies have it even harder. A thriving homegrown industry of avatar clothing design (free of production costs and overseas mass production) already exists, largely ruled by housewives with astounding talent and copious amounts of time, and since the designers are popular personalities in Second Life (whose avatars become their brand), they enjoy– and frankly deserve– the home team advantage.

Faced with such talented competition, smart marketers should concede defeat, and hire these college kids and housewives to create concept designs and prototypes that re-imagine their brands merged to existing SL-based brands which have already proved themselves in a world of infinite possibility.

There is of course much more to the story behind the episode, some of which was featured here at the time: