Categories: Articles

The Facts Of Second Life By Mitch Till

I’m still trying to wrap my head around Second Life. I read the BusinessWeek cover story, My Virtual Life, I’ve spoken with Joseph Jaffe (Divo Dapto) and I’m awaiting a grand tour from C.C. Chapman (Cleon Goff).
I’ve managed to spend a good twenty minutes trying to pick the right nose (that doesn’t sound right), and when I first learned to fly, I transported myself to a movie theatre that was showing Wedding Crashers. There was one Avatar (a resident) there… a girl, who after a short while told me that she was new as well, was looking for a job or to start a business in Second Life (but that most of the people she met didn’t have a job) and suggested that she would be open to being an escort.
That didn’t take long.
But, here’s what I do know about Second Life:
It’s a virtual world that was created by Linden Lab of San Francisco. Lots of people are busy in there socializing and actually buying and selling stuff with real dollars – well over 165,000 participants. People have actually started real companies (more than $5 million worth of transactions – each month). There are several thousand people running real businesses inside Second Life, and some are making enough to rival their real-world living.
It’s not a game, it’s a lot more than a chat room… and environments like this will matter to marketers. There are companies that have already held music festivals in Second Life and C.C. Chapman reported a BarCamp Second Life had already taken place.
We’re connecting in ways we never imagined possible.
Come find Mitch Till in Second Life… let’s explore the world of new marketing in a new world (sorry Joe, I stole and modified your Podcast tagline).
Check out the article here: BusinessWeek – My Virtual Life.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.