Live a Second Life

Ever thought of marketing to virtual avatars? As I write this, I'm downloading Second Life - an online realty game (can I call it so?). People use real dollars and buy Linden money to buy virtual property and then they go about leading (not-so) normal lives in the Internet world - they buy land, date and have relationships, protest against things, work, create things. Second Life (Business Week article) has 65,000 paid users and 100,000 unpaid users - it's very sticky because you tend believe that that life is also true. So, what's the business angle. At least 3,000 people have quit their jobs to play second life full-time - they create online goods and and sell it in the virtual world (sometimes in the real world - an Australian programmer wrote a game for second life and sold it to cell phone companies in real-life!) - at some point, they can also cashout for real dollars. Unbelievable?! Too sci-fi? Not really, marketeers including Coke are beginning to take notice and planning on ways to use virtual worlds to market their products so consumers see them and buy them in the real world using real dollars. Back to the future, eh?