usc faculty seminar 2.12.08

Faculty Seminar on Virtual Worlds

Episode 2 - Second Life - 2/12/08cory ondrejka - [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


a quick review

online versus virtualcommunity versus world

millions of reasonsOnline Game Online Communities Online Worlds

lots

a few

many

crapload

some rules of thumb forworld-wide numbers:

Virtual worlds: 20 millionMMOs: 50 million

Social networks: 100 million

(with lots of overlap)

gold in dem darn (virtual) hills

amateur versus expert

don’t make me use the baby seal slide again

(because I will)

participation

0

16.25

32.50

48.75

65.00

Web Wikipedia Sims Open SourceMainstream Media Second Life

any questions lurking?

it’s story time!

the second life story

good thing we’re in la

8 years so far

which isn’t that long

as mitch likes to point out

(who’s been through this)

think about the pc

think about the pc

1976

think about the pc

1976

1990

15 years

so we’re only half way

(maybe 2/3)

but, like all exponentials...


vaguely interesting


vaguely interesting

veryinteresting

plus, sl gives plenty of material

second life’s growthPopulation Money

2000

compression

2000

compression

gridcomputing

2000

compression

gridcomputingcellular

automata

2000

compression

gridcomputingcellular

automata

“the rig”

“the forest”

2000 scorecard:

no usersno exchange5 employees

2000 scorecard:


people signed upusers trading L$ and US$Linden Lab employees

2001

building

2001

building

avatars

second life was about people

even the most beautiful place

was not as interesting as people

scripting, too

2001 scorecard:


2002 was a very good year

2002 was about people!

2002 was about people!

Alpha!

and people meant...

creationcommunity

collaboration

virtually no screenshots from this era

2002 scorecard:

145(!) usersno exchange20 employees

remember 2002?

creationcommunity

collaboration

2003 had more people

creationcommunity

collaboration

however, sincecommunities

are not scale free...

creationcommunity

collaborationoften drove...

cheatingcombat

boundaries

do good fences make

good neighbors?

the jessie wall

this story only survives because of

james au

embedded in a virtual world

how to preserve the ephemeral?

Second Life launched onJune 23, 2003

June 23rd is now a holiday

in Second Life

Second Life launched withless than

400users

and didn’t grow much

evolve or else

we asked for help

“it’s stupid to askpeople to build a

worldand to not let them

own it!”

so we studied

so we studied

macro economics

so we studied

macro economics

creative destruction

so we studied

macro economics

creative destruction

“mystery of capital”

and evolved both theintellectual property approach

andthe business model

intellectual property

intellectual property

Yochai says “$#@%?@!!”

business model

enables two broad lines of study

ip rulesin the information economy

entrepreneurship in the information economy

2003 scorecard:

2743 usersno exchange25 employees

entrepreneurship

branding

breaking the magic circle

really breaking

2004 was about theindividual

using second life

2004 scorecard:

18,876 users$5,000/mo exchange

40 employees

three things happened in 2005

Second Life became free

as in beer

educators discovered SL

in a big way

particularly viaGLS and

Serious Games

and sl started growing

businesses followed

the people

but just a little

though virtually no real-world brands

(yet)

government

and music

tringo

broadcasting identity

2005 was a year of building

2005 scorecard:

123,438 users$500,000/mo exchange

60 employees

the knee in the curve

the year of “firsts”

auto company

hotel chain

clothing company

concert

cc concert

fashion magazines

news organization

harvard class

millionaire

where did this all come from?

despite popular perceptionit wasNOT

the Linden uber marketing machine

I wish we had that much power

distributed entrepreneurs

plus everyone else

gladwell would be proud

gartner, too

2006

2006 scorecard:

3,000,000 users$5,000,000/mo exchange

100 employees

and then things gotexciting

freedom!

(as in speech)

second life clientopen sourced

big business arrived

these guys got acquired/funded

csi:ny

fortune 500 bingo

mix of training, marketing, collaboration

lots of questions:efficacy of training?

impact of trust?brands and community

and how does voice mix in?

over the top

made more complicated bythe rest of the world arriving

and by increasing regulatory interest

gamblingadult activities

banking

all of cyberlaw’s shortcomings

plus the metaphor

and lack of standards

what does user mean?

2007 scorecard:

11,000,000 users$8,000,000/mo exchange

220 employees

rebounding

hundred of sl developers employing

thousands of peoplefrom all over the world

sl growth increasing again

5% weekly concurrency growth

emmy-tastic

so, what’s next?

Second Life’s progression has been

communitycollaboration

identityeducation

entrepreneurshipmarketingbusinessmedia

innovation

so I’d like to propose diving deeper into:

innovationbehavior (with Dmitri’s help)

educationlegal and regulatory issues

the big unanswered questions

stop talking now

[email protected]://ondrejka.net

http://ondrejka.net



http://ondrejka.net

usc faculty seminar 2.12.08

Technology