Does a Business Friendly "Virtual World Platform" Exist?

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Permalink Reply by StarryNite on January 28, 2008 at 4:18am

We need Time......

There are a number of functional platforms in Beta and yet even more in the planning stages that are suitable for businesses to take root. There are principle architect meetings every other day on the needs and direction of virtual reality extending over the next 20 years.

An over-night solution is not feasible as many of the high performance engines that can support concurrent high population will not have development product ready until the late 3rd quarter of 2008. Even if you had the funds and personnel available to assemble a platform, you are looking at one to two years before it goes public.

There are a number of teams working very hard to provide for the type of environment that is business oriented and you can look forward to them as they are launched in beta form. For today there are few to none available like those that are privately owned who lack the incentive to provide a wider product model beyond the "founding master plan".

This is unfortunate but reality for today...... I would advise these companies to start using forward thinking over the next two years before more flexible platforms take hold and leave them in the dust of community and business prosperity.

StarryNite
cc: Virtual Worlds Advisors

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Permalink Reply by Jack Ryker on January 28, 2008 at 4:32pm

Hi here is one: http://www.virtualheroes.com/ . they create worlds for business and i assume at least some worlds are online, but private.

If you are wondering who will accept your business licenses... I don't know. I dont know much about paperwork. But if you had a product to sell, like a dress for example, i think a rotatable 3d view of the dress DIRECTLY on your 2d web site can be very effective. The question is... what technology to use?
it shouldn't be Second Life because the Client download is like 20 megs. However with something like x3d, the client download is abut 5 megs and it Is designed for anything from simple rotating 3d with effects on your page, to a full blown chat world you can place right in your webpage and be a competitor to second life.

As I previously posted, its almost time for specific worlds to come about: department store worlds etcetera. So instead of walking around and teleporting and searchin in second life, you would do a search in google, visite the department store
world just the same way you would in real life.
Perhaps..... we should start creating specific themed business areas and market it as such.
That way , for example, haraJakeU world is very very specific to young clothing. I would like to see this
world accessible as a stand alone world, and ALSO in the context of second life, or active worlds or,
kaneva or there...... so the flagship, original world would be right on their homepage...

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Permalink Reply by 9mmbooks on January 30, 2008 at 2:48pm

I agree that a rotate-able 3D item on a web page would add fidelity in any business.

AND I agree that the time is near to have special worlds like a Department Store World. The Deployment is certainly up for discussion. AND I think there is fertile ground for tool development to support those "Special" VR Worlds.

More on this in the next few days...

9mm

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Wong on January 30, 2008 at 1:06am

hi, this kevin from hong kong china. we are building a virtual reality world in china for the youth here. we love to share the ideas and opinion with virtual world pioneers. to build a local web, we are localizing soem overseas applications. yet i believe that the present needs of the users are not fully satisfed there are still many rooms to growth.

I did not realize the key problems of registrating a business in a virtual world. is there any legal or technical restrictions.

To build the best 3D virtual world in China we are looking for partners, both in business and in techical areas. we sincerely hope to work with states' talents in the second largest internet market

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Permalink Reply by 9mmbooks on January 30, 2008 at 2:16pm

My position is that the current "active" VR platforms do no adequately serve the Business Community because they do not recognize the business as a different entity than the individual. As you can see from this Thread there is resistance to the notion that business should be able to register as a business. This resistance doesn't come from companies but from individuals with a Stake in the Status Quo. This notion of allowing a businesses to register has not been discussed enough to understand all of the implications that might come out of this change in VR platforms. The current platforms didn't plan for -or- didn't think it was necessary. To go back an retrofit is expensive and thus they will not do this until a Competitive Platform shows up facilitating business. It is my prediction that the first Platform to register businesses as businesses will sweep into the competitive lead.

As far as legal and technical restrictions....

First I am expecting that some sort of Law Suit will stimulate the formulation of National and International Laws regarding VR Platforms and the way they handle Brands and Trademarks. Can you imagine an individual registering on a VR platform as Pepsi or Coke or General Electric....

I can only speak on how American Businesses obtain Business Credentials - Essentially they are tied to Business Bank Accounts where you are required to submit to the bank your credentials like a Doing Business As (DBA) Name that you filed with the County in which the business is in -OR- your Papers of Incorporation you filed with the state. Eventually you end up with several numbers like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employers number and perhaps a Dunn and Bradstreet number. The point is the Platform should require some sort of business credentials to register as a business. Along with that - a registration of your Brands and Trademarks. So individuals can not use those Brands and Trademarks in their Character names.

There is so much to talk about regarding this notion... This is only the TIP of the Ice Berg.

9mmbooks - lol

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Permalink Reply by Brenda Archer on March 19, 2008 at 11:22pm

I think a fruitful analogy can be made here with 2D. Consider a well-known hosting company that offers websites in various classes, all the way from small personal sites which are nearly free, to large online stores with revenue in the millions. The truth is that from a software and hosting point of view, it is feasible to host the small stores, the large stores, and even the personal websites all on the same server farms. While you must have a business identity to have a store, the boundaries are blurry between individuals, small businesses and established retailers.

This is how it should be. You must earn your place in the hearts of the shoppers and cannot command it with authority. Users instinctively recoil from being coercively pushed into content. The question is: what can I as a merchant do to make my online destination desirable to my customer? This question must be asked in 3D as much as in 2D.

One of the mistakes businesses new to the Internet make, both in online retailing and in Second Life, is the belief that "if you build it they will come." Not at all. What will you offer me as a consumer?

A great example of doing it right is Amazon. They have an asynchronous social network interlaced directly with the shopping experience. It's possible to spend hours schmoozing on Amazon as if it was a forum. The equivalent in Second Life would be a sim with events, meetings and/or roleplay games to keep people coming back. The L Word sim is a good example of a corporation doing it right in Second Life. The residents are at home there.

Finally, I resent a little the suggestion 9mmbooks is making that the homegrown in-world businesses are not real. The largest ones are as businesslike as any software or design development company in the real world. They may have started small, but they didn't stay there. It is possible to brand an avatar as a business in this way: for examples, Aimee Weber, or Anshe Chung.

Owing to NDA I cannot tell you who I am currently working for, but I do technical support for large online 2D stores. I've seen plenty of new merchants burn out on insisting their RL status must carry into the virtual along with all the reputation they have built up. The fact is, any business is starting over a bit when going online. Selling in a new market is best done in a spirit of exploration.

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Permalink Reply by 9mmbooks on March 20, 2008 at 4:47pm

To go back to the original question in the original post - "does a business friendly virtual world platform exist?" I suggest that the first test in the analysis of the platform is to ask - Does the platform allow you to register as a business much the way the phone company allows you to register as a business. Its a simple logic test - If you are not allowed to register as a Business - THEN the platform is NOT BUSINESS FRIENDLY.

To date there is not a virtual world platform that will allow you to register as a business. Hence it can be said that there does not exist a business friendly virtual world.

To comment on the "the suggestion 9mmbooks is making that the homegrown in-world businesses are not real." I am not suggesting that a homegrown in-world business is real OR not real. These homegrown in-world businesses are essentially involved in Swap-Meet style commerce. I seek to avoid this style of commerce.

The test assessment of a real or not real business has to do with did you file a DBA (Doing Business As) record with your county and do you file a Schedule-C form in your tax return. If these are done then the IRS recognizes you as a business otherwise you are recognized as a hobby. Its ok to conduct hobby activities in commerce - I just want to be recognized by the virtual world as a business rather than a hobby.

9mm Books

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Permalink Reply by Brenda Archer on March 23, 2008 at 5:56am

I am quite sure the larger American companies in SL are filing with the IRS as businesses and not as hobbyists. Even though for some SL businesses most revenue comes from micropayments (and that is not always true), it's no longer "swap meet style business" with the amount of US$ changing hands for what amounts to design work. These are full-time designers and merchants, some of them with employees of their own, out here in the real world. It is not any different than any other software or design company.

At the present state of the art, if you need a true shopping cart and not just in-world micropayments, you'll have to make use of a website along with an in-world presence. This is already being done.

I hope that I've shown that identity as a business in SL does not derive from the status of one's avatar or an in-world registration process, but from normal business identity established outside of SL in the usual manner. This is similar enough to 2D online retailers who have tax identity, DBA and a merchant banking account. The virtual world can't create this kind of legal identity by itself; it is always imported to it. The reasons for this are simply legal ones. That leaves only the question of authentication, to prove that a given avatar is the representation of a real-world business. For the most part these problems are solved in SL.

The separate but very important issues of content protection and platform stability do matter very much, and I'm hoping to see stability get better this year. I am not confident there will be highly secure content protection for publicly available content in SL, because all content is streamed to the client. At the present time, if someone created a virtual world with encrypted content, I'm not sure it would have much of a framerate.

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Permalink Reply by Ken Walters on March 13, 2008 at 2:49am

In most countries the business and individual are different legal entities, although this does become blurred at the small business level in many cases.

I think what scares most vw's 9virtual world)is copyright and other product or intellectual rights. If some of my art work is stolen in Second Life, then my first reaction is to go after Second Life for negligence, or similar, and sue them-this hasn't happened but it could. So makers of vw's are a bit edgy over legal ramifications.

most vw's are aimed at teenagers because they have, or are seen to have, the largest disposable income and spare time. so a few of the main reasons of vw's is to populate them and keep the population there as long as possible because they'll spend more.

Businesses are less likely to be forgiving of system crashes, especially where meetings are concerned because it could be credibility or money lost .

I'm always on the lookout for vw's where I can do business in a stable environment I currently have a large gallery in Second Life, but am not happy with the instability of the system. In fact I'm furious but have to put up with it for now because there's no real alternative, and that costs me US$50 per month plus [premium membership plus uploads.

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