How to Generate Registrations and Attendees to Your Virtual Event

August 11, 2011

Introduction

Successful virtual events start with the ability to generate registrations and attendees that meet or exceed your targets. I presented a webinar at AMA’s Virtual Forum on “Achieving Success with Online Events.”

My webinar was titled “How to Generate Registrations and Attendees to Your Virtual Event.” My presentation was divided into two parts: I first covered how to generate virtual event registrations and followed that with how to convert registrants into attendees.

Top 10 Tips for Generating Virtual Event Registrations

To generate virtual event registrations, I provided the following 10 tips:

  1. Leverage speakers
  2. Leverage exhibitors
  3. “Less is more” on your registration form
  4. Use social sharing buttons
  5. Promote via syndication
  6. Start early
  7. Create a LinkedIn Event
  8. Promote on Twitter
  9. Promote on Facebook
  10. Promote via content marketing

Top 5 Tips for Converting Registrants into Attendees

To convert registrants into attendees, I provided 5 tips:

  1. Spruce up the confirmation page
  2. More content marketing
  3. Game mechanics
  4. Automated email messaging
  5. Facilitate pre-event networking

View My Slides

Feel free to view my slides (below). They’re also available for download, if you visit the presentation directly on SlideShare.net.

Conclusion

The AMA virtual forum is available on-demand and you can view all of the archived sessions.  You can register for this free event on the AMA web site.

Leave me a comment below if you attended the session – or, if you have questions or comments on this topic. Thanks!

Related Content

  1. Blog Post: Virtual Event Audience Generation via Content Marketing
  2. Blog Post: How to Leverage LinkedIn for Your Virtual Event
  3. Download: Free eBook on Social Media and Virtual Events

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Social Networking and Seat Management with Social Tables

June 22, 2011

Introduction

Social Tables, a New York-based start-up launched in May 2011, bills itself as “a social networking utility (and seat management tool) for any event with assigned tables.” Social Tables is currently operating as a free public beta, allowing anyone to use the service for their wedding, charity dinner or dinner party.

Walking Dogs Led to Seating Guests

Co-founders Dan Berger (@danberger) and Matthew Tendler (@matthewtendler) met while walking their dogs, Leroy and Geri. The founders, both in their late 20’s, were inspired by the idea, “how could we see who was going to be sitting by us at the next wedding we were planning on attending?” Dan wanted to be able to see who he could network with at the wedding, while Matt wanted to avoid getting caught in awkward conversations.

Features for Event Planners

Pictured: A planner’s view of all tables.

For event organizers (e.g. a bride/groom or a wedding planner), Social Tables provides a cloud-based utility for managing your seating plan. If the event has multiple organizers, Social Tables has collaboration features to enable coordination of planning activities. In addition, it integrates with other sites, such as TheKnot and WeddingWire.

Features for Guests

Social Tables was founded on the principle of connecting and engaging guests before, during and after an event. They’ll be able to see whom they’re sitting next to and have an opportunity to connect with them prior. “We’ve coupled game mechanics and social networking APIs to make your event more fun and more powerful,” said Matthew Tendler, Social Tables Co-Founder.

Guests are encouraged to tell stories about the hosts, share pictures, and learn about each other. Connections can be made via real-time chat tools called “Table Talk” and “Event Talk.”

Social Network Integration

While Social Tables enables private social networks (centered around specific events), it also integrates with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Tendler notes that he wants to go beyond sharing and liking, to use third party social networks in a unique way. Said Tendler, “Our focus is on making the life of the planner easier and the life of the guest more fun. By using Social Networking in the right way, we nail both of these goals. Think ‘Seating Bots’ based on very sophisticated rules matrices that utilize social tools.”

Next Up: A Mobile App

Social Tables is planning to develop a mobile app that guests can use at events. Similar to how mobile Twitter clients have enabled vast sharing of thoughts, insights and content from physical events, Social Tables envisions their mobile app facilitating photo and thought sharing among guests. “It is important to us that we provide tools that capture, organize, and share things already happening, and not distract guests from the event,” said Tendler.

Revenue Model

While the service is in a no-cost beta period today, the eventual plan is a pricing model based around the number of guests, along with a set of premium features that are priced additionally.

Conclusion

Social Tables is an interesting service. I think they ought to focus on weddings, expanding upon their feature set to capture a large following from brides and grooms. In addition, I’m interested to see how they manage the “post-wedding” period.  All too often, we attend weddings, we meet interesting people and we never see or hear from them again. Social Tables has the opportunity to change that.

Video

The video (below) provides a nice overview of Social Tables.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Engagement Models to Build Audience Loyalty

June 4, 2011

Introduction

Behind every great event is great content.  To generate great content, event professionals need to be publishers as much as planners.  And like any good publisher, you need content that connects with your audience.  We often use the word “attendees” to refer to event consumers – when building a content plan, however, think of them as your audience.

Don’t Broadcast Your Content, Crowdcast It!

All too often, event content is delivered via one-way broadcasts.  Even when the content is engaging, it misses out on engagement.  Involving your audience in the event content (i.e. allowing them to contribute to a session) creates a more rewarding experience and builds audience loyalty.

So be sure to avoid the broadcast – instrument “crowdcasting” instead. Crowdcasting creates a loyal audience, which becomes an annuity of sorts. It guarantees “future payout” in the form of attendance (at future events), referrals (to recruit colleagues) and activity (further participation).

Engagement Models

Let’s consider engagement models that you can apply to your next event.

Asynchronous / Non-Synchronous

I’m a loyal listener of podcasts from ESPN Radio. In some of the podcasts, the hosts answer emails submitted by the audience. Listeners who hear their question answered (on the podcast) are more likely to submit subsequent questions. They’re also more likely start tuning in every day, to see if their latest question gets answered.

How this could apply to virtual events: in the weeks leading up to your event, invite users to submit questions (to the presenters) and provide input to help guide the content of the presentations. Once users see that “they have a voice,” they’re more likely to tune in to your sessions at future events.

Pseudo-Synchronous

I commute to work in a car and often tune in to the radio.  I’ve noticed that more and more, radio hosts are engaging with listeners via social media. Hosts will post to the show’s Facebook page, then read users’ comments on the air. They’ll ask a question via Twitter and read tweets from listeners who responded.

I call this “pseudo-synchronous,” because the dialog unfolds slower than real-time and while the channel is open in both directions, it’s not directly connected. Instead of an instant messaging session, it’s like leaving comments on a blog posting.

How this could apply to virtual events: Webinar presenters make the audience a central component of the presentation. They allocate dedicated segments to review (and discuss) audience feedback and questions submitted via the webinar console and via social media channels. Like radio hosts, they ask questions of the audience and read selected answers.

Fully Synchronous

I’m a big fan of sports talk radio. While the program host can make or break a show, the best part of talk radio are the discussions brought on by the callers. For sports talk radio, I love to hear different fans’ perspectives (as crazy as some perspectives can be) and listen to the host provide his/her response.

Imagine a sports talk program, though, that took no questions from the audience. It wouldn’t work! But that’s how some presentations are structured.

How this could apply to virtual events: For selected sessions, the webinar model should be turned upside down. The “presenter” provides a 5 minute introduction on a topic, then turns into a radio talk show host. Webinar viewers are “passed the ball” (i.e. the presentation controls) and provide their perspective on an issue. As in talk radio, a “call screener” is used to review topics that interested users would like to discuss.

Conclusion

Your audience should be a central component of your “event content.” Allow the audience to have an active voice and it’s a win/win scenario. You win, and your audience wins. Crowdcast, don’t broadcast.

Let us know your thoughts – what are additional ways to engage your audience?

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Introduction to HuzuTech: A Social Media Software Company

January 17, 2011

Note: The following posting was submitted by Graeme Harvey, Managing Director, HuzuTech

Graeme Harvey is MD of HuzuTech, a social media software company. He’s been involved with HuzuTech since 2009, and before that he started up a successful digital publishing division within Harpercollins publishers, concentrating on online, desktop and mobile application development. There, he developed a digital business that underpinned the Collins Language division – the first of its kind within Harpercollins UK (it included the first e-commerce, e-book and mobile app presence).

Introduction

HuzuTech is a British social and virtual technology company. We’ve just launched our white label virtual world platform, HuzuVirtual, which lets brands, publishers and film or TV production houses create their own branded virtual worlds and online environments – at a fraction of the cost of building one from scratch.

We also white label our own social networking platform, HuzuSocial, which lets brands offer secure social networking facilities (including within a virtual world, through full integration with HuzuVirtual) and the ability to link to Facebook.

Branded communities

We announced the launch of HuzuVirtual at AdTech New York recently, and the response was fantastic. We know that virtual worlds are a huge growth area for publishers and media companies, but what was really interesting was the appetite for brands to create their own communities.

As online communities become integral to brands’ marketing campaigns, there is a reluctance to hand over control of customer data and relationships to a third party like Facebook, and requirements for more sophisticated or bespoke technology to manage those relationships effectively.

Customisation

As a result, our technology is completely customisable, with functionality that includes things like the creation of different virtual environments, rooms or ‘levels’ to the world; avatar creation; virtual (or real) goods shop; fully moderated chat functionality; custom-branded avatars; and special events such as online meetings, concerts, and VIP areas. It’s cloud-based, because it is designed to be able to cope with rapid growth, when the community grows exponentially.

Monetisation

There’s also the thorny issue of monetisation. More and more, brands are seeking to monetise their online environments. Sales of branded goods are expected to grow by more than 100 per cent over the next three years. We’ve included virtual shopping features in HuzuVirtual, and the feedback we’ve had so far has been that brands definitely want to control an environment where customers are paying for their goods.

Demonstrating the Technology

We’ve developed a site to show how the technology works, including some really great features like routing technology (which means an avatar will always follow a path – rather than walking ‘through’ obstacles), and ‘motion’ sensors (see how the car alarms going off when the avatar walks past them) here: http://paperworld.huzutech.com/.

Note: this isn’t a virtual world in itself, but shows the kind of technology we can use. We’re constantly tinkering with it to make it better, and we’re always interested to know what other people think of it.

The first full virtual world built on our platform will be out in around June 2011, and is for Scholastic’s Horrible Histories™ – it’s a great one to be working on and shows how the publishing industry is one of the first to adopt these new technologies to market books.

If you’re interested to know more, visit our website: www.huzutech.com.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

What Virtual Events Can Learn From Groupon, Quora and FarmVille

December 18, 2010

Introduction

Successful web sites provide a great opportunity: the chance to study what makes them successful and apply those learnings to your own websites or applications.  In 2010, three of the “most talked about” web sites were Groupon, Quora and FarmVille (though FarmVille is more a discrete app, rather than a web site).  Let’s consider how some of their concepts can be applied to virtual event experiences.

Groupon


Groupon is said to be in the local advertising space, but they’re really much more than that.  They’ve hit the mark with a group buying phenomenon (using bulk purchasing to drive down prices) combined with creative and entertaining email copy that keeps subscribers eager to receive the next day’s email.

Groupon, which serves local businesses, segments their offering by geography.  So I might subscribe via San Jose, CA and receive offers from merchants who are near me.  But the Groupon model could certainly apply to national or even global brands.

Group Viewing at Virtual Trade Shows

Now, let’s consider a common dynamic at virtual trade shows.  Exhibitors (sponsors) would like to get their message across to attendees, while attendees are resistant to hearing unsolicited product pitches.

How can you “arbitrate” this situation?  Consider Groupon, where the “daily deal” only registers when a certain number of users agree to purchase the item(s).  Here’s how it might work with sponsor presentations (webinars) at a virtual trade show:

  1. Five sponsors list their webinar title in the trade show Auditorium
  2. Each sponsor is “on alert”, ready to begin broadcasting their live presentation
  3. No presentation begins until it receives 50 (or more) viewers
  4. The presentation continues, only if it can continually sustain 35 simultaneous viewers – if it drops below 35 viewers for more than 5 minutes, the presentation closes

Benefits

  1. Puts portions of the presentation agenda in the hands of attendees
  2. Forces sponsors to present on relevant topics
  3. Forces sponsors to “deliver what they sold” with regard to the presentation
  4. Ups the overall quality of sponsor presentations, as sponsors need to both “sell” the topic and sustain the audience

Quora

Quora is “a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.”  Question and Answer (Q&A) services have been around for some time. Quora has picked up steam in 2010 due to the quality of the members participating (e.g. some of the leading thinkers on the web – and in Silicon Valley).

In virtual events, experts and leading thinkers in a particular industry have gathered online.  They can listen to featured experts (e.g. the presenters), but the event doesn’t fully extract and share the collective knowledge of those assembled. If done right, a Q&A service layered on top of a virtual event can be quite useful.

In fact, let’s consider a related Q&A service, Aardvark, which is now part of Google.  With Aardvark, “you email or instant-message your question to Aardvark, it figures out around half a dozen people you know who might have a good answer, then emails or IMs them for a response and sends what they say back to you.” (source: VentureBeat article).

A virtual event platform could implement a “Quora meets Aardvark” model, whereby questions are distributed to online attendees – and answers are fed back in semi-real-time.  Questions (and their answers) could be shared not only with the requester – but, all attendees, based on their selection of particular topics.

FarmVille

On the surface, FarmVille is about planting your virtual crops and tending to your virtual farm.  But below the surface, its “power” is in the psychological reward of achieving success in something you take pride in.  It’s the same dynamic that fuels entrepreneurs (who take pride in their businesses) and Twitter power users (who take pride in their following).

As virtual events shift from “point in time” live events to “365 day communities”, the challenge becomes how to sustain an ongoing and active community – who will visit the environment on days where absolutely nothing is scheduled.  It’s the same challenge Zynga had – how do you incent farmers to tend to their virtual farm each day?

Virtual Farm Meets Virtual Community

For virtual communities, there needs to be a parallel to that virtual farm – an abstraction that allows members to feel psychological reward when they’ve done something meaningful.  Ideas include:

  1. Elevated  member profiles. Turn the “vanilla” user profile of today into the parallel of the virtual farm
  2. “Pimp my space”. Exhibitors get to build booths – now, allow attendees the freedom to create their own spaces and receive ratings on them
  3. Leverage “status badges” on the profiles – but ensure that demand consistently outstrips supply
  4. “Rate the ratings” – allow members to rate the worthiness of a rating (a la Amazon.com, and “Was this review helpful to you?”) – top rated members receive elevated status in the community
  5. Prominent Leaderboards related to particular activities, games, etc. – these can be a tremendous draw, as users continually return to check on their position on the board

Conclusion

Groupon, Quora and FarmVille have taught us some valuable lessons.  The rising demand for virtual events tells us something as well.  Aardvark may have hit upon the right model – in which they combined social collaboration with a real-time (or semi-real-time) component.  Perhaps Grouopon and the like have something to “learn” from virtual as well.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

The Future Of Book Publishing

December 11, 2010

Introduction

I recently published a book, “Generate Sales Leads With Virtual Events“.  I wrote a prior blog posting that described the process of self-publishing the book.

Like other industries (e.g. newspapers, music, entertainment, etc.), the web will have a transformative impact on book publishing.  In fact, my belief is that the coming 2 years will see dramatic shifts – the book publishing industry will never be the same.

Production / Printing

Self-publishing has arrived and it’s here to stay.  Moving the book publishing process into the cloud significantly empowers the author.  Now, authors “prepare the print run” via the web, making tweaks and edits as they see fit.  The cloud has ushered in an era of on-demand printing – or, what I call “agile printing“.  With traditional book publishing, the Second Edition of a book may come out a year later.  With agile printing, it’s possible for the Second Edition to be published the next day.

This does not mean that traditional book publishers will face complete disintermediation.  Instead, I believe savvy publishers will incorporate “cloud technologies” into their publishing process, streamlining the process for editors and authors.  Publishers will rightly conclude that the publishing process could leverage a lot of the same convenience of blog publishing.

Crowd-based Editing

You can put the power of the crowd to work for you and sustain results as good as a single expert. That’s just what Facebook did to enable Facebook.com to be available in 64 languages.  You can add the Facebook Translations application and “join our community of translators and make Facebook available in your language”.

I see a similar opportunity for basic copy editing.  Authors can tap into crowdsourcing providers to have a network of hundreds (or thousands) of “workers” collectively provide copy editing of their manuscript.  To cut costs, traditional book publishers may look to crowdsource copy editing, with a smaller staff of editors in place to “quality check” the resulting work.

Collaborative Writing


What’s better than one author?  Two or more authors.  The beauty of “publishing from the cloud” is that your social graph can be invited directly into the manuscript.  I published my book via FastPencil and it gave me the option of inviting in project managers, co-authors, editors and reviewers to collaborate on my project.

I believe that authors will increasingly bring their social graph into the publishing process.  Survey the suitability of your book to a prior generation by inviting your aunt to review Chapter 2 and then invite past business partners in to write a few chapters.  With self-publishing, we’ll see more “chapter books”, where a collection of experts each write one chapter.

Migration to Digital Readers


While some will insist on sticking to the printed format, we’ll be reading more and more books via digital form.  The combination of digital plus “online” will dramatically change the reading experience in the coming years.  Already, the Amazon Kindle 3 allows readers to copy a selection from the book and share it on Twitter or Facebook.  With digital devices, the reading experience moves from solitary to social.

In the early days of Facebook, I interacted with friends, but it was asynchronous.  I’d post, then an hour later, they’d respond. With Facebook Chat, I’m now noticing that certain friends want to interact in real-time, directly on Facebook.

Book reading will take on similar dynamics. I’ll carry my social graph onto my device (if I choose to) and see which friends are reading the same book as me – right now.  I can start a chat with my friend to discuss Chapter 3.  Or, I can perform a “scan” to see a list of other online users who are reading the same book right now.  The “book of the month club” becomes virtual and global.

Subcription (Rental) Model

On college campuses, Chegg is innovating with a textbook rental business.  With digital books, someone will come along soon (Netflix more likely than Amazon) to disrupt the market with a cloud-based subscription model.  I think the days of “purchasing to own” digital books are numbered.  I think of a digital book like a DVD – I consume it, I enjoy it, I move on.  I don’t need to own it.

With a subscription model, I may get up to 10 digital books per month.  The book content is served up from the cloud, which means I can read it from any device – and I can bookmark the page and move from my laptop to my smartphone.

When I’m done, I “return” the book and can access my next book.  Of course, the challenge will be in the licensing agreements with book publishers – something Netflix has been working through with movie studios for their streaming service.  And, we’ll need an “offline reading mode” for times when users are not connected to the net.

Conclusion

As a new author, I’m excited to see what lies ahead for book publishing.  Based on the web, the cloud and social media, it’s never been a better time to be an author.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

Trends from Enterprise 2.0: The Move to Social Business

November 11, 2010

Introduction

I attended Enterprise 2.0 in Santa Clara, CA this week.  I predict that in 2011, “business as usual” will move to social business.  As usual. Meaning, social tools will be enabled across the enterprise and they’ll quickly be ingrained as the “new way to do business”.  Here are specific trends and observations from Enterprise 2.0.

Start-ups on Equal Footing with the Technology Giants

Social business, by way of its “newness”, evens the playing field.  In fact, it actually provides an advantage to the start-ups, who built their business (from the ground up) on a foundation of social features.

The established giants, meanwhile (e.g. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.), need to retrofit existing offerings – adding social into (or on top of) what already exists.  Or in some cases, the giants are developing new social platforms that live in parallel with their legacy systems.

Commenting on a T-shirt that poked fun at “jive talking”, Christopher Morace (@thinkoutloud) said it well when he tweeted, “How in a space with IBM, MSFT, & SFDC did Jive become ‘the man’? I’m still in my 30’s!”

Social Business UI – New Models Needed

During the event, I tweeted that if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Facebook should be quite flattered.  In other words, everyone’s social business UI looks and feels like Facebook.

Conference attendee Robert Lavigne (@RLavigne42) agreed and tweeted back, “good from a cross training point of view, bad from a breaking that mindset in the sales cycle though. Need innovation not UX copy”.  Robert continued, “Time for something innovative in terms of UX”.

If we do not see UI/UX innovation and differentiation, then the market will face commoditization, where everyone’s platform looks the same.  And that’s not good for the market.  Expect to see fresh, new looks in 2011, especially as some of these platforms evolve to version 2.0.

The Intranet (As We Know It) Is Dead


The Intranet, as a self-standing web site, is now dead.  In its place will be social business platforms.  Do you really use your company’s intranet?  It’s good for routine activities (e.g. look up phone numbers, find the expense report template, etc.), but it doesn’t significantly improve employee productivity.

The typical intranet doesn’t get much activity and it’s hard to find what you need.  Now consider the likes of the Socialtext, Yammer, Salesforce Chatter and others. Common features they provide are:

  1. Follow and be followed – people, documents, sales opportunities, etc.  Need to track an important document?  Follow it, and be alerted to all updates on it.
  2. Crowdsourced answers – need to find a nugget of information or an obscure document?  Ask your followers via a status update and you’ll likely receive an answer within minutes.
  3. Polls – want to know how Marketing is doing with sales collateral?  Create a poll and invite employees to participate.  Publish the results via a status update.
  4. Collaboration via 140 characters – OK, most social platforms don’t impose Twitter-like character limits, but you get the idea: status updates are the new water cooler conversation.
  5. Mobile – access to social business is enabled on your smartphone, via apps provided by the social platforms.  How often did you access your intranet from mobile?

What This Means for Virtual Event Platforms

In my 2011 predictions for virtual events, I wrote about “Market Expansion”.  Guess what? Social business platforms do, in fact, look a lot like virtual event platforms.  Some striking similarities:

  1. A move from point features to a “platform”
  2. Presence
  3. Private and group chat
  4. Collaboration

Some social platforms provide capabilities not found in virtual event platforms today, such as wikis and real-time collaborative document editing.

Virtual event platforms will continue to have the upper hand in supporting live/scheduled (online) events, but will face expanded competition in the area of “virtual communities”.

Conclusion

(A tag cloud generated from the session descriptions at Enterprise 2.0 – using wordle.net)

It’s an interesting time.  2011 could be a year of battles, shifts and migrations.  With the move to social business, along with the larger shift to cloud computing, expect 2011 to be  The Year of the Shakeout.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

How To: Generate More Effective Virtual Trade Show Booths

October 19, 2010

My local farmers market had a “Vote 4 Your Favorite Booth” contest.  While the contest was active, I noticed that the fruit vendors were much more engaging and the amount of free samples increased dramatically.  The fruit stands had become more customer-friendly as a result of the competition.  This was a great thing.

I immediately thought – virtual trade shows are a lot like farmers markets – how about creating a similar contest?  Let’s consider a “Vote For Your Favorite Booth Contest” at your next virtual trade show.  The benefits:

Attendees Take Notice

The contest causes attendees to take notice, especially if you offer up prize(s) for voting.  The contest provides attendees a framework (and context) for their booth visits.  Now, when they enter any exhibitor booth, they are paying more attention to what’s there, to judge the current booth to other booths they visit.  Ultimately, they will need to determine their top vote, which requires a certain level of engagement and awareness as they move from one booth to the next.  And that’s a good thing for exhibitors.

Exhibitors Boost and Optimize their Presence

Ever sell a home or condo and host an open house?  I bet your home was de-cluttered and nearly spotless.  And I bet some of you baked cookies for the occasion.  A booth contest is a lot like the open house: the host knows that its visitors will be evaluating the space.  This results in:

  1. More captivating and refined booth imagery
  2. Booth content that aims to please (the visitor)
  3. A higher level of booth staffers
  4. More engagement from booth staffers (just like at the farmers market)

With everyone “raising their game”, this means that exhibitors win and attendees win as well.

SaaS: Sampling as a Service

In the picture above, a fruit stand placed a large assortment of samples in labeled bins, allowing visitors to sample for themselves. I call this Sampling as a (Self) Service!  The idea here is to allow “prospects” to sample your “products” (on their own) and then have a “staffer” come by to see if they have any questions.

The same could be done in a virtual trade show. Place your products in your virtual booth and allow visitors to take them on a test drive.  Let them do their thing, but check in with them from time to time to see if they need assistance.

Logistics

Here’s how the booth contest could be run:

  1. Heavily promote the contest prior to the event
  2. Educate and inform exhibitors on the ground rules
  3. Create meaningful incentives for attendees to vote
  4. Announce the winner two-thirds of the way through the event. This leaves the remaining one-third of the event for the winner to receive the benefits (traffic to their booth)
  5. Create a badge or logo that the winner can place on their web site and share via social networks

Conclusion

The virtual booths at some events can be underwhelming.  A contest can encourage and motivate the exhibitors and create a win/win/win for attendees, exhibitors and you.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

“It’s All Virtual” On Virtual Worlds

October 3, 2010

Introduction

Given Microsoft’s rumored interest in acquiring Linden Lab (developers of Second Life), I thought I’d assemble some recent virtual worlds content.

Related: “Microsoft Buys Vivaty For New Project, May Be Looking For More,” from Virtual Worlds News

Virtual worlds have taken a hit, as Twitter, Facebook and other services have become media darlings.  And while I love social networks as much as anyone, I do think the market is under-considering (if that’s a word) the potential of virtual worlds technologies.

At A Crossroads: Where Does Second Life Go From Here?

I analyzed different directions that Linden Lab could take Second Life.  Of course, one that I did not cover was an exit – if the rumored exit (Microsoft) were to happen, I’m very curious to see how and where Microsoft folds the Second Life technology into its business.

On a slightly related topic, I wrote about how virtual worlds can be more like Twitter and Facebook – that is, more social and more open to the rest of the web.

Related: Guest Post from Pooky Amsterdam, “The Business Benefits of Second Life.”

Conference Coverage: FountainBlue Virtual Worlds (September 2010)

  1. 3 Virtual Worlds Technologies To Watch
  2. Trends In The Virtual Worlds Industry
  3. Hear From A Panel Of Virtual Worlds Entrepreneurs

Conference Coverage: Stanford Media X Virtual Worlds (August 2010)

  1. Stanford Media X Event: Virtual Worlds Entrepreneurs Show The Way
  2. Stanford Media X Event: IMVU’s Online Community

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

At A Crossroads: Where Does Second Life Go From Here?

July 2, 2010

Crossroads

June 2010 will mark an important month in the history of Linden Lab and Second Life.  On June 9th, the company announced a restructuring that included a 30% reduction of their staff.  On June 24th, the company announced that CEO Mark Kingdon was stepping down and named company founder Philip Rosedale its interim CEO.

Second Life is clearly at a crossroads – it will be crucial for Linden Lab to determine the best path forward.  To do so, they need to identify the right questions to ask and then determine the right answers to those questions.

What is your audience and customer segmentation?

Second Life takes quite a broad approach today – there are a wide assortment of communities [audience] (see their Destination Guide) and an equally wide assortment of land owners [customers].  Having cut 30% of staff, the question at this juncture is whether the company (and the platform) is well suited to cater to “anybody and everybody” or whether it’s better to narrow the focus.

One “focus area” may be in evolving the platform to cater to the hobbyists and loyalists who helped grow the Second Life community from the early days [consumer focus].  Another focus area, while unlikely, may be in catering to corporations for business use (I say “unlikely” because the Enterprise group was let go in the June staff reduction).

Yet another focus area may be in catering to particular categories (e.g. Music, Art, Education).  If Second Life focused their resources around building the #1 immersive music experience, would that have a larger impact than evolving the broader platform to meet everyone’s needs?

So the question really comes down to “narrow vs. broad” – by identifying narrower segments to target their service, can Second Life create a more rewarding and enjoyable experience for both residents and land owners?

What is the revenue model?

Today, the Second Life revenue model is based around a virtual economy, whose currency is the Linden Dollar.  Residents purchase Linden Dollars with real money (e.g. US Dollars) and can then buy land (in-world) or buy virtual goods from in-world merchants.  One of the challenges inherent in this model is its dependence on others to sustain a viable audience (community).

The model works when the audience is growing and the community is thriving; however, when the audience declines and becomes less active, purveyors of virtual land find the ROI less compelling and the audience decline snowballs (since users have fewer residents to interact with each time they login).

Are you a media company or technology platform?

Second Life can go one of two ways here – they can morph into a media company (and have direct influence over the audience) or they can move to a pure-play technology platform provider, which shifts the audience generation “burden” to licensees of the platform.  As a media company, they’d be similar to Facebook, Zynga, IMVU and Slide, with revenue being a mix of advertising, sponsorship and the sale of virtual goods.

Today, I’d say that Second Life is somewhere in between – they’re a technology platform that has no explicit and associated “force” to drive audience (like a media company does).  Resolving this “grey area” will be important.

Where do you take the technology?

To some degree, the technology vision was shared in the June 2010 restructuring announcement – the company will migrate Second Life to a web-based experience, with no software download – and, they’d look to integrate popular social networks to be more accessible and relevant.  Of course, there’s a delicate balance to manage here, since a core component of the Second Life community uses the service for the immersive experience that a downloaded client can deliver.

Here, Second Life can take a page out of OnLive’s book – if OnLive can deliver immersive, action-rich, multi-player video games from the cloud, then one would imagine that a 3D immersive virtual worlds can move to the cloud as well (though, of course, it’s not trivial to achieve).  Second Life needs to think beyond the web as well and determine the viability for apps running on iPad/iPhone, Android and related mobile operating systems.

My Answers (Recommendations)

These are obviously complex questions that require a lot of analysis – in addition, there may be other questions that need to be asked.  The answers to these questions are interrelated and need to be answered together, not individually.  Here are my high level answers / recommendations:

  1. Audience and customer segmentation: Go narrow – you’ll lose segments of your user base, but the core segments you choose to focus on will see solutions and experiences that are more targeted and relevant.  Build upon these small successes and grow outward again.
  2. Revenue model: Move to a SaaS licensing model (priced in US Dollars) – keep the Linden Dollar currency system in place for the purchase of in-world virtual goods.
  3. Media company or technology platform: Become a pure-play technology platform that partners with media companies as a sales channel.  Give media companies incentives and easy-to-use tools that foster growth in virtual real estate – encourage them to be your sales champions and bring their audiences into the community.
  4. Technology evolution: Complete the transition to a 100% web-based offering (no small task!) – and, on the journey there, have plans in place for iPad and Android apps.

Times of turmoil give companies the opportunity to throw convention out the window and reinvent themselves.  Consider another company whose original founder returned to transform them from a “has been” to the most valuable technology company on the planet:

Apple Computer.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

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