Social Networking and Virtual Worlds

Alan Belniak (RL)/Aybee Quinnell (SL) F Gerard Murphy (RL)/FranG Thursday (SL) Toshi Motoyama (RL)/BabsonMBA Thursday (SL)

SNS connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them
Businesses use SNS for marketing and recruiting
Users can easily cross geographical and other borders
Ultimately, this could pose a threat to incumbents like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo — virtual worlds offer slicker, more immersive experiences, which are attractive to the Millennials. -Paul Jackson

MySpace
Emphasis in music/video sharing
Owned by News Corp. – $580M July, 2005
Facebook
Popular among college students - networking
Automatically generates friendship invitations
Microsoft buys 1.6% share for $280M (valued at $15B)
LinkedIn
Great for recruiters and job search
Professional uses
Others

Live avatar is clear advantage over legacy chat
Friend-making has areas of improvement
Friend-of-a-friend (FOAF)
Real-world analogies: networking events, exchanging business cards
Similar concept of groups
Who bears the cost of the group land?
Second Life Grid seems great for group collaboration
Personalized Space
Incumbent SNS provides a personalized page

Facebook
MySpace
LinkedIn

Creation of a virtual ‘den’
User starts by creating a public display of limited, non-specific information that relays general identity
Once visitors are inside den, they see user’s content based on groups to which visitor has been added or granted access
Visitors would not see other content in den
This permits ‘selective personality exposure’ to visitors, based on user’s preferences

Appearance of Second Life avatar could change
Multiple avatars could be created and rendered differently to other avatars, dependent upon their user group or other contextual information
Example: one user could have a different avatar (and therefore appearance) for people in their Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn groups
Could reduce or prevent inadvertent character judging during critical first impression phase

Companies working on this project include:
IBM, Cisco, Google, Linden Lab, Sony, Intel, Multiverse, Microsoft, Motorola, Philips
Formed Architecture Working Group
Issues include allowing third party providers to provide: web services, identity, security and usability
Standards Debate
Google Open Social/ Web3d.org/ SL / ECMA / The Metaverse Project
Advertising Standards
Web 1.0 banner, leaderboard, skyscraper
Now, for every world I touch I have to build an avatar. It’s an obstacle to the development and spread of virtual worlds, both in the consumer and corporate space. Colin Parris IBM VP of Virtual World Technology

IBM views itself as a “transformation leader”
Experience with other Open Source Environments
Red Hat/Linux
First major partner with Linux
Systems and Services
$6 Billion+ in revenues from OS
Selling “storage service” in SL
Believes in open standards
Once more we have the very strong feeling that this will have a huge impact on business, society and our personal lives, although none of us can quite predict what that impact will be. It will be fascinating to see where this ride takes us in the future. -Irving Wladawsky-Berger Vice president, Technical Strategy and Innovation, IBM

Fragmentation or consolidation
Best to keep worlds separate? Or will standards dominate?
“ Reality mining” vs. "Consensual hallucinations"
Killer maps: genocide maps, NASA World Winds, romantic spots, geo-tagged flickr, traffic, house hunting, JFK assassination
“ Mobile Augmented Reality“: World of Warcraft, xBox Live
Can Second Life be both?
Fulfils the basic needs of friendship in new ways

Questions?

Social Networking and Virtual Worlds

by Alan Belniak on Feb 19, 2009

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