IBM and Second Life have announced the ability to teleport from Second Life into Open Sim grids (an open source version of Second Life). They describe this as a first; well, my business partner Loki Clifton and others have been doing that stuff for six months. The big guys may have improved the scalability or reliability, but it is not a first and they know it. Must they lie to us?

Linden Lab hope to turn Second Life into a platform rather than a product. One that respects people’s intellectual property, allows transfer of assets and maintains LL’s control of the virtual currency. The benefit to corporates of Open Sim however, is that the virtual world can be SEPARATED from Second Life, avoiding the morality and security issues that send men in business suits scurrying into mouse holes.

The elephant in the room (nicely sustaining the metaphor here) is that the Open Sim versions allow other people to sell ‘virtual land’, currently LL’s major source of income. Already land is being sold at a fraction of the Second Life price. Undermining your own profitability is one of the less successful business strategies. The road to survival for Second Life probably involves transactional fees of some sort. Dare I say ‘tax’.

The ongoing problem for Linden Lab is the lack of platform stability. It crashes and it lags. Assets created within the virtual world are not stable. The monetary system is not stable. I lost several hundred dollars one week and I still don’t know why. Reporting these errors does not lead to remedial action or even attention.

Unless IBM can dig LL out of its technical hole, (unfortunately it’s a development partnership, not a rescue package) the thing doesn’t scale and business is not interested. IBM will host its own Second Life servers for clients; I wonder how solid they will be. I wonder how expensive they will be.

Although I’ve invested lots of time in Second Life and I believe that 3D virtual worlds will be a powerfully disruptive media in the future, I’m writing it off for the time being.

Inside This World has just completed a Second Life proposal to a company suggesting they follow the IBM model. IBM have committed a heresy, building their own multi-island facility using their own employees*. The result is a messy and incomplete build which challenges the orthodoxy of Second Life and threatens to succeed and set some precedents.

The beginnings of corporatisation in Second Life followed the agency-client model made famous by J Walter Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather and Leo Burnett and BBDO; that is to say, the client needs an image and by virtue of its introspection and inherent lack of creativity is unqualified to construct it. An agency is a specialist in strategic thought. They are custodians of the Menorah of creativity and the sacred maps of the media landscape.

In the tradition of this model, Second Life developers have brought many significant corporates into Second Life, influencing their strategy by virtue of their specialist knowledge of the Second Life culture and using their creative skills to produce slick, impressive looking buildings.

Readers of this blog know that I have been critical of some of these, arguing that there has been perhaps too much emphasis on a pretty shopfront and a press release and not enough on working out exactly what they’re doing here.

I spoke to a couple of the people involved in building the IBM environment and what was striking was their pride in their achievement. There was a real sense of ownership of the project and I’m telling you right now, this will be a thriving community. These people have a stake. On IBM 7, (okay they need an agency to give them a hand with the island-naming) there is a virtual community comprising IBM employees and ex-employees. It’s called Greater IBM.

This is a very sensible inititiative with or without Second Life as it extends the reach of the corporation among a very powerful alumni but it is an absolutely perfect application of Second Life, which generates sympatico like it’s going out of style. All that is necessary for this to succeed is to provide some social activity and allow people the space to collaborate on projects; doesn’t matter much what they are. I notice a machinima competition already exists.

So for companies such as IBM who understand the concept of a virtual community, are committed to a long term presence and have people with a relatively advanced skill set (my client has the same situation) this is a far better approach than an island handed over by a developer with a set of keys. Who has a stake? The developer has been paid (”call us if you need anything”) and the company don’t have the skills to evolve the facility. The buildings sit there like mausoleums but a Second Life site needs new content to an even greater extent than the web. You need new products/events/attractions/traffic to make people return.

If the IBM approach is as successful as I think, where does this leave the developer community? Will they cater for the less sophisticated companies? It’s a moot issue currently. Because of the Second Life growth rate all developers are in demand and for a couple more years there will be enough companies wanting impressive edifices to keep those with professional design credentials employed. I think that for some clients though, there is already sense in developers guiding, mentoring, consulting and training rather than developing, implementing and handing over.

IBM’s new Virtual World division will be doing Second Life development for their industry partners; Circuit City are an early sign-up. IBM’s stated goal is “to be a recognized leader in virtual world solution development”. I think the approach they have taken to their own islands shows that they are on track and it will be interesting to see the degree to which they apply their own approach to other companies’ projects.

* I note that Aimee Weber is assisting IBM with the House of Horizons project, which is not yet public.