PixPol

Our evening post at Pixels and Policy was about how companies are moving increasing portions of their business online, to worlds like Second Life. Operating costs are much lower, information can be sent quicker, and companies can operate with less overhead.

I'm interested to hear what all of you think about the role of virtual teleconferencing, Second Life sims, and all that wonderful techno stuff in the evolution of businesses. Vermont now has a law that says you can register a company without any real-world address - it can be entirely virtual. Will the rest of the country follow suit?

In a time when small businesses are struggling to keep up with the cost of renting office space, this could open up entrepreneurship to millions of people.

Sid Nagy

The internet will grow as a marketplace for RL bussines. More and more people will find it convinient to order goods online.
I don't see any role for virtual worlds in that. For consumers websites need to be full speed, easy to access and simple to navigate.

Of course companies can save a lot of money and time (travel) by using any kind of virtual conferencing. I don't see a big role for SL. Stand alone business grids on the company own servers maybe. But they will have to be more fool proof and have a lot less lag than SL and the open sims are ATM.

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Jesse Barnett

You can't build a house or a car using the internet.

I agree with above poster. It would be asinine for a company to use Second Life as the base for their meetings. One major stumbling block would be having to upgrade most of the computers when there may be no other applications that need this much. There are just too many other ways that are cheaper and more reliable for the minuscule amount of companies that have the actual need for internet conferencing.

Oh, and that no need to have a physical address? I purchase about $50K worth of products online every year at work. It is much cheaper then using local dedicated stores where you have to also pay for their overhead. But I always check and refuse to do business with any company that does not list a physical address and phone number to contact for problems and instead just list an email address..

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Gigs

Not when there is no way to display text on a prim, or powerpoint on a prim or anything even remotely useful for business.

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"It is the paramount duty of governments and of politicians to secure the wellbeing of the community under the case in the present, and not to run risks overmuch for the future" - JM Keynes

PixPol

Even then, though, won't companies just develop their own virtual worlds (the same way IBM did) instead of using SL or SL Enterprise? It seems to me that a lot of the cost-cutting measures being implemented now will stick even after the recession is over.

Phoenix Psaltery

Apparently some businesses see it as viable.

P2

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Beebo Brink

Go-to-Meeting or any number of other similar applications offer all the tools I need for an effective online conference. I can easily share my desktop with people who have browsed to the meeting with a variety of computers, none of which need top-of-line graphics cards. Learning curve for participants is about 2 minutes if you've never used the interface before, maybe as much as 10 if you're the presenter and not too fast on the uptake.

Excuse me if I keep on laughing my head off at the suggestion that SL offers anything even remotely as useful for a business meeting with clients.

ETA: Using it as a coworker bonding experience is only possible if you have significant resources to spend on getting them the right equipment and training for using the SL interface. That may work within an organization, but is not practical for one-offs with clients.

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Jesse Barnett

And of course we believe everything that LL says......................

Sid Nagy

Well I'm a teacher for almost 30 years now
Maybe they count me as an educational institution as well.

Siggy

Which ones?

I didn't see any named in the article.... past IBM, who developed their own solution and don't use SL.

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And as it was in the beginning, so too shall it be in the end. That bullshit is bullshit, it just goes by different names.

Siggy

But..but...but...but the GOATSE! and the PN...and the PRIVACIES!!!111!!!eleventyone!!!