Why I'm excited about Second Life

[Just unlocked my Typepad account after some billing hassles. Normal posting now resumed!]

Couldn't get to sleep last night for thinking about Second Life. I'm still not personally blown away by this virtual world as it is right now (as my comments on Will's blog atest), but it's slowly dawning on me just how significant virtual worlds are going to be in the future and it's the excitement of these possibilities that's keeping me awake at night.

The big shift in my position on SL came when I stopped thinking about it as an enclosed space (like Compuserve, AOL and other 'online services' once were) but as a new medium in its own right, like the Web.

Linden Labs made a brave and wise move to open source the SL browser software, so I think it's just a matter of time before it becomes seamlessly integrated into Firefox and other web browsers. This will change around the paradigm from 'going into second life' to just a new method of browsing. I think users will flip between an SL view and a regular web browser interface depending on the task in hand. It sounds less exciting to think of SL as a user interface rather than a virtual world, but I think it's this change that will take SL into the mainstream, and for me, that's what is really exciting.

As a shameless marketer, my interest in SL is what it means for business.
Seeing the clumsy efforts of big companies entering SL reminds me of the Web in the mid-nineties when so many business realised they had to get a website, but they had no idea why, or how they should go about it, and used out-of-date metaphors (treating it like TV or a magazine) to guide them. In 2007, companies are building grand company headquarters in SL, but they don't actually DO anything useful or engaging for the customer. Just like the pointless Flash introduction on the typical 1997 corporate website.

In the late nineties, best practice for website development began to emerge. In particular, user-centred design grew in popularity and has become standard practice today. A successful website design would think through who the target audience were and the tasks that they are trying to complete (Buy a book; get a date; find a good restaurant; pay a bill etc) and then a user experience was designed that would easily allow the user to complete those tasks.

This same thinking now needs to be brought to the virtual world. Businesses need to think about the tasks that users want to complete, and identify those tasks that are not well suited to the web, that can be catered for in a virtual world.

Tasks like online shopping are already well served by the Web. Whilst a 'virtual shop' in SL is novel, it's never likely to be as powerful as a website which can help a customer to search for, filter and compare products.

I believe that tasks where human interaction is key will be the ones that thrive in virtual worlds. A Second Life version of Expedia or Lastminute.com? probably not all that useful. But for boutique, bespoke holiday planners where the interaction, advice and service from your advisor are key... possibly.

There's going to be a hell of a lot of action in this space over the coming months and years. I'm looking forward to seeing where it all ends up. Like the web, it'll probably turn out to be something different to what we all expect and we'll all marvel at how obvious it was, and how we missed the point for so long.