It looks like a fairly heated and a long overdue discussion on virtual world marketing is unfolding across SL-related blogs, so here's a a quick follow-up to yesterday's post with more links. (Brace for more SL news on Adverlab since the dedicated Brands in Games blog is undergoing some reconstruction. )
Business Week did a story last week filled with some hard numbers on what it costs to bring a company to (Second) Life. Quite a spread: $5,000 to $1M, and we are not talking Linden dollars here. As Prokofy Neva commented in SL Herald, "What a faint, distant memory that cover on BW in April featuring Anshe and her paltry $250,000 in Second Life, eh?"
Peter "Urizenus Sklar" Ludlow, founder and editor of the SL Herald, unleashes his wrath at the real-world marketers on the pages of Strumpette PR blog: "You don't blaze a path to the future by charging into a new space and ignoring what is happening around you, nor by recycling your old rust belt industrial design ideas in a new medium, and more importantly, if the discourse of cyberculture offends your delicate ears, then just keep the fuck away thank you very much." (Find more of his thoughts in SL Herald).
Wagner James Au, a long-time SL journalist, writes that "for the most part, real world companies and organizations are having neglible impact on Second Life society as a whole." He offers his observations of traffic stats to support the claim.
In a separate post, Wagner compares popularity of the new Nissan dealership in SL with a resident-run car business and found the traffic to Nissan way behind.
On a related note, the November issue of SL Business Magazine has an article on Amazon's efforts to bridge Second Life and it's own servers (mentioned earlier here).
