People love their top ten lists. In keeping with our regular topic on corporate marketing and branding in Second Life, I've compiled a list of the top ten reasons that I can think of that you should stay away from setting up marketing in Second Life.

The top ten for you, after the fold. It is a list of deep and serious flaws that should give you pause.

1. You think Second Life is a game, a social network, all about sex, or some escapist fantasy where people go to escape the real world.
2. You don't care about [your target demographic|Second Life|the people who use Second Life] (strike out that which does not apply)
3. You don't understand who your target demographic is, and why they don't like you.
4. You aren't aware that your target demographic either doesn't use, or isn't well represented in Second Life.
5. You're going to come up with some notions without any substantive experience of Second Life, then pay some poor schmucks to try to fit your inappropriate plan to the realities. Hint: Those 'schmucks' will get more ROI than you do.
6. You're going to reinvent the wheel and claim to be the first to have one (this includes copying wheels already made by Second Life users rather than doing any actual invention)
   
7. You are going to build a site that is not interesting.
8. You are going to build a site without staff.
9. You believe that people will be so excited to visit that you don't worry about giving them a reason to.
10. You don't give them a reason to come back.

If you'd prefer to treat this as a quiz, then score yes for each statement that you feel correctly applies to you, and interpret the results as follows:

If you answered yes to three or more of these, you should definitely think three times about establishing a presence in Second Life (thinking twice would obviously not be enough).

If you answered yes to only one or two of these, there's hope for you. Lots and lots of hope.

What? You expected, maybe, that some of these reasons should be about Second Life, rather than you? Pff. People are always more interesting than numbers or technology.

Cel Edman brings us SculptyPaint. Currently at version 0.9, it already rocks so hard that strong men faint. You want a fast, free way of making sculpties without all that tedious mucking about with applications and exporters? This is it. This is totally it.

That said, you won't be going crazy with it in the first few minutes. Look at the tutorials, and fiddle with the tools a bit before you try to do much with it. The tutorials are simple, but will show you what you need to know to get going.

Grab it (for Windows, Linux, or MacOSX). You'll need Java 1.6 before you do anything, so get that too. If you like it, by all means go and feed Edman's tip jar - he doesn't have to just give this away, you know.

Why would you arrange a marketing event or site in Second Life and then make it difficult to find? Get yourself some land, set up your site or event, sneak out a press-release to the mainstream media that doesn't include enough information to find the site, and make sure it isn't in the search directory.

It gives the impression that the marketing team really doesn't want people to find out about the event. Maybe your marketing team doesn't agree with your decision to do something in Second Life. They're certainly showing less commitment and organization that you'd expect to find in the average garage sale.

It might seem that I'm a little down on marketing teams, that's more a matter of circumstance than any natural inclination. Being as I'm paid to review their efforts, I am finding the actuality of much of their work in Second Life quite substandard indeed.

It's easy to blame the MDC's, the Metaverse Development Companies who act as the virtual world equivalent of website developers, but in many cases their actual implementation is of exceedingly high quality. To be honest, like web developers, MDCs tend to be so low on the overall food chain that most or all of the decisions about concept, marketing and engagement are made long before anyone who has ever spent any time in Second Life is actually involved.

A Second Life event or site is a conversation. You are having a conversation with people. Well, okay, so most of you aren't - someone sketches a design on a napkin, people nod around the conference table, and some money is thrown at it. Maybe there's a launch event - the press release doesn't give a time or location for it, and any notice in Second Life itself is given on less than a day's notice (often less than five minutes' notice).

Then after some spotty attendance - if any - for the launch, the site is left to molder. Sometimes the place isn't even cleaned up after the opening party, leaving a litter of objects scattered around the place. It's even possible that people forget to even open up the land access to allow people to visit.

That's not a conversation. That's something else: negligence.

This isn't some "If you build it, they will come" sort of deal. In the real world not many people expect the target demographic to all cluster around your billboards all afternoon going "Ooooo!" - You know static advertising pieces don't affect people that way.

If you build a static advertising piece in Second Life (essentially, a billboard in more dimensions), you're not really going to expect people to flock in and spend their days crooning over it. Well - actually, apparently many of you do. Now that's just silly.

Then, on top of that, you don't make it easy to find. Indicative signage gets hidden, locations are not advertised, sites are left closed to the public. Your private island in Second Life goes down, and your own people don't even notice for a week.

It's like your marketing team wants it to fail. Now you've got to ask yourself just why that might be.

Some few physical world businesses are having a hard time in Second Life. They're getting cold feet, or pulling out, or just plain baffled. Though there are more arriving each day than leaving, hard lessons have been learned.

Chief among these is that the customers and would-be customers have learned that many of these businesses just don't give a damn about them. That's a widespread viral message that's very hard to shift out of the market.

It's not surprising. In the physical world, a big business doesn't really have to. They can afford to play percentages. Door-to-door salespeople can knock on my door three times a day from the same company, every day for a week - encouraging me to take up their product and/or service. By day two, you know their script better than they do.

When, in one day, I have three knocks on the door from representatives of company X, and four cold calls from the same company, sure, it pisses me off. Thing is, it doesn't matter to them. Playing the percentages, they can honk off a thousand people a day, if only a few of them represent conversions. In a huge market, they don't have to care about you, or understand you, or cater to your needs.

Now, imagine your market doesn't consist of a quarter billion people. Imagine it consists of about 200 people. In a big hall. That's your market. Can you afford to dismiss 99% of them to get a total of 2 conversions? Not even remotely. You've got to find out what they want, how to approach them, and act on that basis.

Second Life rides between these two extremes. There's no push or broadcast media. If you want to reach people, you need a customer-focused value proposition (and I'm not using the term ironically. I mean it).

We're not talking about interrupting someone's attention with a commercial - we're talking about making them want to put down what they are doing and come and see what you are doing, in preference to any other activity they might have planned. Are you frightened yet?

The rules for business and marketing are changing - we're not just talking about Second Life. Technology and the way it is changing society is creating challenges (or opportunities if you prefer). Your company has been having meetings about it for the last couple of years, but the odds are a lot of your people aren't really taking it seriously yet. I've been in some of those meetings lately, I know.

Second Life, and other virtual worlds are a communications platform, like snail-mail, email, the telephone, the fax, face-to-face communications. You establish a half-hearted presence on Second Life, and don't put any care into it. You don't give other people a reason to care either. Then you walk away and blame the tools, rather than your lack of interest in the target demographic.

Yes, we visited. We looked around, and we realised that you have no idea who we are, or what we want, and we didn't come back - but what we did do was talk with people we know - people in Second Life, and in the physical world. We talked about you - about your brand. We said, "Who the hell do they think we are?"; because frankly, it's obvious that you don't know - and quite possible that you don't even care.

Tired of fiddly manual downloading and installing the viewer under Linux? It has to be downloaded from the website, unpacked, and you need to set up a launcher, or change your existing launcher to the new version.

Well, I get tired of that sort of thing too, so I wrote and released a script to do all that for me, and it can do all that for you too. All you need is a standard python 2.2 (or later) setup (and face it, your Linux distribution probably relies on one already).

Grab it, unpack it, read and edit the source, use, share, enjoy.

1. Create a consistent experience
2. Run tutorials
3. "Think expressions not impressions."

This is the fifth in our 'Adjusting to a New World' series of articles for beginners - although some intermediate and advanced Second Lifers are also finding little tidbits that they didn't know in them. We've talked about movement, communication and clothing. We're going to divert a little and talk about places to go when you're new.

For a new resident (and even for people who have been around for some while), the sheer size of Second Life can be daunting. Where should one go, what should one do, when one is not familiar with what is available? Below I present (in no particular order) a small selection of useful and interesting places to visit.

NCI - New Citizens Incorporated

Kuula sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kuula/45/144/124
Hamnida sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hamnida/128/128/0
Fishermans Cove sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fishermans%20Cove/78/177/124
Dream City sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dream%20City/231/193/401

NCI is a fabulous place to start out as a new resident. There are all sorts of tutorials available to help you get oriented in Second Life, there's lots of free stuff to pick up, classes are run that cover the full gamut of topics from basic appearance settings to advanced building and scripting. Social events are run regularly. On top of this, there's often a group of friendly people hanging around to socialize with and to ask questions of.

The Shelter
Isabel sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Isabel/50/229/81
Swinside sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Swinside/221/104/42

Much like NCI, The Shelter has a long standing history of being welcoming to new residents. The Shelter also has freebies, classes, and social events. Both NCI and The Shelter have their advantages; it's worth checking out both to make sure that you're not missing out. If nothing else, the crowd tends to be different.

Svarga

Svarga sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Svarga/128/128/0

Svarga is a wonderful land of spirituality and serenity; Svarga means Heaven in several different religions. It has its own functioning ecosystem: flowers grow only under the right conditions, when there has been rain and sunshine; bees pollinate the flowers, then the bees are eaten by birds.

Nexus Prime
Gibson and Bonifacio sims - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gibson/192/233/106

"Cyberpunk City of the Future." However hackneyed the phrase describing it, the city itself is decidedly worth a visit or two. You will find that it consists of several levels, each quite different from the others. If you are able to get into the sewers under the city, you may be able to find some of the secret rooms tucked away down there. If you go for no other reason, at least go to admire the craftsmanship, and the planning that must have gone into this city's manufacture.

Independent State of Caledon

Caledon sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon/128/128/0

Once a single sim, Caledon has vastly expanded to cover sixteen sims at this time. Here you will meet some of the most well-spoken people in all of Second Life; it's not a place you can just nip into and out of, you will find that due to excessive politeness on the part of the residents here it may take you quite some time to say farewell. The overriding theme of the Caledon sims is "steam-punk", so you can expect to see all manner of amazing gadgetry and folks kitted out in long dresses and fine suits.

Abbotts Aerodrome - Cubey Terra Aeronautics
Abbotts sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Abbotts/128/128/0

Cubey Terra has been a part of Second Life since the middle of 2003, and since then he has developed all sorts of fabulous flying vehicles. It's well worth stopping in and trying out your skills as a test pilot; it things don't go so well, you can always bail out and try your luck at sky diving with one of Cubey's parachutes!

International Spaceflight Museum
Spaceport Alpha - http://slurl.com/secondlife/SpacePort%20Alpha/23/51/22/

Stop in here to see the replica space rockets - all made to scale. This sim is also part of a large complex of sims, all devoted to science and education.

Info Island

Info Island sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/89/122/33

Info Island and its neighbor, Info Island II, are packed full of learning experiences. Each features art galleries, libraries, and a host of other repositories of knowledge.

Ivory Tower of Primitives
Natoma sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Natoma/210/164/27

The Ivory Tower contains an entirely "self-paced, self-guided, comprehensive building tutorial." It won't tell you everything you need to know about prim torture, but it will give you a solid background to work from.

Particle Laboratory
Teal sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Teal/180/74/21

Like the Ivory Tower, the Particle Laboratory has a vast collection of information, this time about working with particles. New scripts and tutorials are added at regular intervals.

The Lost Gardens Of Apollo
Apollo sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Apollo/128/128/0

A romantic garden sim in which to roam, or to spend time chatting with your nearest and dearest, significant others and friends alike.

If you visit these places, you'll have definitely gotten a good grounding in Second Life, save only that you keep your eyes and ears open, and that you are willing to explore and discover.

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New Citizens Incorporated's classroom in Disturbing World was host to the Starting a Business in Second Life class yesterday, taught by Nancy Villota.

If you have a desire to go into business in Second Life, especially if you are not familiar with the process of setting up a real life business, then you'll greatly benefit from attending this class.

It was the first day that Nancy Villota took this class, though it has run regularly on a Saturday previously with different instructors. Relying on real life business knowledge, previous class material, and some experience garnered from her time as a Second Life businesswoman, she put this class together in a professional manner, despite the time limitations (she only had two days to put together her own interpretation). She plans to work on these notes for improved polish and performance in the future.

The class covers the basic aspects of starting out in the business world in Second Life, beginning with determining what product or service to sell, moving on to planning considerations and details about permissions and legal considerations, and finishing off with a section on advertising.

The pace of the class is swift, in order to cover all the material; this is mitigated considerably by the handing out of a notecard with the class notes. It also allows plenty of time for questions to be asked and answered.

The only things lacking from this class are visual aids. Particularly letting newer residents know what the permissions system looks like and where it can be found (for prim objects, and for scripts and notecards) would enhance the class for visually oriented people, perhaps also giving demonstrations of acceptable and unacceptable quality in advertising.

Although she is still a comparatively new resident, Nancy is knowledgeable in many aspects of Second Life; she was able to answer off-topic questions as well as questions in her field of expertise. Additionally, if you need to know about land, be sure to catch Nancy's other NCI class, Basic Land Ownership, on Thursdays.

From a Marketing and Public Relations standpoint there are a number of things that your marketing team has to be able to do to run a campaign successfully in Second Life - and it can be done - the fact that there are failures should be no deterrent. In the physical world marketing efforts fall flat all the time, but that doesn't stop people trying and succeeding.

If a few efforts don't go so well as they ought to, that's no reason to assume that the platform is a bust any more than a few failed physical world marketing campaigns are a reason to consider human life and civilization a loss (debates as to whether they are or not should wait until the end, please).

First, your team must understand the goal. If you don't understand the goal, you can't put apply your efforts properly, monitor progress or measure success. You may as well be putting up billboards for all the feedback you're getting.

Second, your team must understand the target and collateral demographics. Every other thing can go perfectly, and you will gain nothing (or even lose ground) if you don't understand who is getting your message, and how they will react to it.

Third, your team must know the medium, or know people who do. You don't use print-specialists to do television commercials. You don't use television specialists to drive viral campaigns. Do not try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig. Your team must come to grips with the limitations, potential and conventions of the media before they try to use it seriously, or partner with people who do.

Fourth, given these things, it's time to think, create and innovate. You have the goal, the demographics (both those whom you are targetting and those who will be unavoidably exposed to your message), you have the mastery of the medium. Craft your message, and the means of delivery, and monitor execution and delivery.

There's just one thing about these four points. This is what you pay your marketing team to do in the physical world already isn't it? These are the fundamental principles that underpin any campaign, so none of this should present a problem, right? If you think that your team can't handle these basic four points, maybe you should consider refocusing the team.

That said, one thing is worth repeating. The best planned and executed campaign can fall flat. It doesn't matter if that's in the physical world or a virtual world, in print, radio or television. It's going to happen. More campaigns fail than succeed. So why would you be willing to toss a whole platform away because you didn't get it right the first time? Expecting perfection is unrealistic.

In First Life or Second Life your principles are the same. Understand the goal, understand the targets and risks, know the medium, create and tailor the message and delivery. And monitor everything so you can take advantage of both your successes and failures for the next time. If your team can do that, you can create and drive successful campaigns. If they can't, perhaps you need a less complacent team.

import clr
import sys
import time
import string
 
clr.AddReferenceToFile("libsecondlife.dll")
import libsecondlife
 
# Replace credentials with the firstname, lastname and password of an SL account
credentials=['BotFirstName','BotLastName','BotPassword']
currentname=""
 
class EventTracker:
 def __init__(self):
 self.data=False
 def Clear(self):
 self.data=False
 def Set(self):
 self.data=True
 def Wait(self):
 while not self.data:
 time.sleep(0.1)
 
# Show a UUID in a familiar, friendly format
def format_uuid(id):
 return "%s-%s-%s-%s-%s" %(id[0:8],id[8:12],id[12:16],id[16:20],id[20:])
 
# Handle the results of the people search
def DirQueryHandler(queryid, results):
 global currentname
 global event
 print currentname,format_uuid(results[0].AgentID.ToString())
 event.Set()
 
event=EventTracker()
client=libsecondlife.SecondLife()
client.Directory.OnDirPeopleReply += libsecondlife.DirectoryManager.DirPeopleReplyCallback(DirQueryHandler)
 
qlist=['Tateru Nino','Torley Linden']
 
if not client.Network.Login(credentials[0], credentials[1], credentials[2], "example", "yourname@here.com"):
print ("ERROR: " + client.Network.LoginMessage)
sys.exit(0)
 
for i in qlist:
 i=string.strip(i)
 currentname=i
 (fname,lname)=string.split(i," ")
 event.Clear()
 queryID = client.Directory.StartPeopleSearch(libsecondlife.DirectoryManager.DirFindFlags.People, fname+" "+lname, 0)
 event.Wait()
 
client.Network.Logout()
 

Sculptable prims were released onto the main grid yesterday. Before you run out and spend $3000 USD on a copy of Maya (or $7000 USD for the Maya Unlimited package), or worse steal a copy - you may want to consider a few things.

First, if you aren't already familiar with Maya, actually having it isn't going to make you any more able to create sculptable prims than not having it. We're not talking easy here. If you're going to scale the learning curve anyway, though, there are better ways to learn it than Maya.

What the hell is a sculpt texture?

It's a three dimensional displacement map that is applied to a sphere. Basically the sphere is made of lots of little triangles. The point where those triangles touch at the corners is called a vertex. A sculpt texture has the X, Y and Z position of each vertex laid out in a flat sheet, relative to the center of the sphere. That tells it where every vertex goes and will form the final shape.

This is not something you work out on paper, this is where you make a shape with a modeling tool and then use it, or other tools the make that sculpt texture for you. Lots of those tools aren't really intended to do this, so there's bonus learning involved, and there are all sorts of non-obvious things you can't do if you want it to work at the end. If you want to charge around trying to learn Maya off the top of your noggin to get sculpties to work, don't expect to succeed. Learn Maya first, then learn to do sculpties with it; or use some other tool.

Rokuro Rocks!

First up, there's Rokuro. It's fast, it's free and it's designed specifically for creating SL sculpties. Granted, it only handles radially symmetric shapes, but if you want a champagne flute or a wine-bottle, or a table-leg, Rokuro will do it for you in under a minutes, and take less than that to download. Get Rokuro here. If you're new to sculpties, start with Rokuro.

Wings3d

Wings3d is a cross-platform subdivision modeler that handles simple texturing. If you've never pushed a vertex or face around in a modeler, wings3d is the modeler for you. It's also free (available here, for free), but like just about everything (other than Rokuru) it just wasn't designed for sculpt textures, so there's some finicky things you need to pay attention to. The export plugin and requirements are all listed here.

Pov-ray

Pov-ray is free, but is only going to be useful to you to make sculpt textures if you already know how to drive it. If you do, Johanna Hyacinth completes the puzzle for you here, and you can grab Pov-Ray here - though trust me, if you're considering using Pov-ray for this, it's because you already have it.

Blender

Blender's not all-singing and all-dancing, but it certainly sings and dances right up there with a lot of very expensive tools. You can run it on nearly anything and it's free. Two tutorials exist here, and here for generating sculpt textures without a special exporter or script. You can get Blender itself from here. You can also use it for creating complex animations if you get tired of using it to create sculpt textures.

One of the big rallying cries of marketing over recent decades is to Stand Out. Stand out from the crowd. Stand out and be heard. Differentiate. Think different[ly].

In the relative mundanity of the physical world, that's not so hard. Round corners, unusual designs, and a bit of the old shiny often does the trick. If that doesn't work, well sex generally does. The keystones however are the different, the innovative, the unexpected, the unusual, dichotomies. And then you bring your brand or product to Second Life.

In Second Life, the Linden Estate (the mainland in local slang) is a welter of everything you want to be to make your brand stand out. Different, innovative, unusual, paradoxical.

Why would you think your shoe with its air cushion and LED strobes is going to stand up when people are walking around with rockets, sharks and ferrets on theirs? With fuzzy dice, rocket launchers and built-in fish-tanks (wet bar optional).

Will your '70s retro-iconic brand image stand out when a goodly percentage of residents already resemble your innovative concept? Big? Second Lifers make it bigger. Shiny? Second Lifers make it shinier. Weirder and more out-there? Second Lifers corner the market on weird.

Faced with this sort of thing, it all might seem a little daunting. What do you do? What you already do in the physical world just isn't going to cut it. You'll be lost in the noise.

Remember your basic marketing principles. First of these is knowing who you are marketing to. If you don't know that, then your message isn't going to have any impact. Second, is that differentiation thing we mentioned earlier. It's just that your habitual forms of physical world differentiation aren't going to work. Clinging to them by denying who your market is isn't going to score you any points.

If you want people crowding around your towering marketing icon in Second Life, you need to find out what your market wants, but isn't getting. And give it to them.

If you think shoes in Second Life, you're likely not thinking Adidas or Reebok. You're probably thinking Moopf, Shiny Things, Simone. Why? Because they're giving you what you want. Adidas and Reebok are trying to give you what they want. That's a whole different game. Give them a cohesive, and interesting experience. Lord knows, the chaos of the Linden mainland doesn't have a whole lot of that, so that's where you drive your wedge.

[Small footnote for those that missed it. I am lauding Moopf, Fallingwater and Simone, not for their products being unusual in and of themselves, but for their commitment to their customers and products which may be considered an unusual commodity in some quarters.

Let's try this again - Yay: Moopf, Fallingwater, Simone. Boo: Adidas and Reebok. Everyone clear? Great.]

This is Second Life, a communications medium that presents itself as a virtual environment. You, as a business, can afford to be different, innovative, even cool. Even if it isn't the same image your business uses in the physical world. Dare. Show Second Lifers that you can think outside the cube, and that you are thinking about them and what they are interested in. Virtual worlds, unlike the World Wide Web are personal experiences, not impersonal ones.

It's a bit like dating. Show some interest and some individuality. Don't turn up on my doorstep with your resume, and a product catalogue and expect me to entertain myself over dinner leafing through them. Find what you have in common with me, and let's talk about it. Maybe we can find something fun to do together. I'm here to interact with you, not with your paperwork, brochures and display stands. Show a girl a good time, huh? Interest me.