Jul 29: BMW Leaving Second Life

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BMW announced today that they will be leaving Second Life. They have had a presence in Second Life for nearly two years, and were an early enthusiast about the potential for Second Life and virtual worlds. Their reasoning for leaving is that the platform itself is not yet ready for complex B2C scenarios.

According to Munich Express, who made the announcement to a group this morning:

we felt and still feel that virtual worlds have a big potential, not only in terms of marketing, but a lot of work and development remains to be done. We are convinced that the combination of 3D environment, global communication in real time, the 3D wiki functionality and the creative element can lead to a fascinating experience.

However for a B2C company like ours some elements need to be developed further. An automobile is a rather complex product - at present it is not possible in sl to do a static and dynamic product presentation that you would expect from a company like ours.

From a pure marketing perspective the user base is not big enough yet, then there are the usual copyright issues that you're all aware of. So at this point in time we felt that stepping out from a marketing perspective is the right decision. We leared what we wanted to, we think we have defined the issues that need improvement and we will of course contnue to watch the development because we believe in the potential.

Munich Express went on to say:

If sl develops further in the right direction, there is no reason why we wouldn't come back. Our strategic goal was a bit different, the goal was not to compete with the 'party islands. We wanted to learn how this virtual environment works and to see where possible future applications lie, [and] there is much more than marketing involved in the long run. ...a solution that would enable us to have something running on our own servers.

Photo from the conference:

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What all this points to is that SL is probably not going to be the enterprise 2.0 solution, but rather OpenSim will develop as the enterprise class solution. Linden Lab cannot continue to expect that B2B and roleplay can co-exist on the platform without some architectural changes made, however the train has already left the OpenSim station and for Linden Lab the window of opportunity is closing... fast.

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Posted by: Allison in

: Events in Second Life, SL Places, Technology: Enterprise 2.0, Technology: Immersive Web, Technology: OpenSim, Technology: Second Life

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BMW leaves Second Life
Earlier today I made a trip to the BMW New World1 island in Second Life after an invitation from Munich Express to hear an announcement. I have hardly spent any time in virtual worlds lately but I’ve had many interesting conversations about them ...

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At the moment we see how the new CEO of Linden Lab keeps repeating how much money SL is generating for them and what a great place it is for education. The economy created by it's residents is currently getting trashed by Linden in their attempt to generate even more revenue from their players by dumping huge amounts of cheap land onto their grid. Linden Lab has never done or cared much about companies who wanted to establish a business in SL, no effort was made at all and today still no effort is made.
Who can blaim companies to leave SL, you are also very correct that Opensim has a complete different vision on how virtual worlds should be and will be in the future. The Opensim platform also offers companies freedome to develop their own custom application without being trapped by Linden Lab and their TOS and 5 million rules which are always tend to be in their own advantage.
Virtual worlds do have potential, when you look at a video of SL from 5 years ago and compare it to how SL is today you will notice there is a very minimal difference.

(Reply) on Wednesday, July 30. 2008

1.1

Second Life faces several issues. From the social aspect which stems from its roots as an RPG while also trying to be a platform. But the Lindens have created a closed platform, and therein lies the problem.

As a business architect, I want an open interoperable platform, and that will only happen if Linden Lab opens up the server code or if OpenSim gets there first.

Right now my bet is on OpenSim because I doubt the investors in LL will allow the server side to be opened up.

Bill (Reply) on Wednesday, July 30. 2008

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