Many people, particularly those that are interested in, but not intimately involved in, virtual worlds, tend to think of Second Life, Kaneva, Entropia and other 3D environments as being at the advancing edge of web2.0. They're often referred to as web3.0, the 3D web, or web 3.D. Many other people view them as a waste of time, or an interesting diversion at best. These people most often have not been into Second Life, or have not managed to get over that initial learning curve. Through no fault of their own, they have a flawed view of what's happening in this space.
The reality is that the 3D web is in its infancy, and as such, is nowhere even close to the leading edge of web2.0 in terms of communication, Search, identity, sheesh, not even collaboration. It's certainly not a waste of time though, or something that's going to just go away if you ignore it, or pretend it doesn't matter. It does matter, and those people trying to make the best of the kludgy communications systems, poor system stability and all the other oddities that arise from using a system that's in constant development are at the forefront of something that will eventually change the way we all live and work on the internet.
That doesn't stop it feeling like some kind of insane time warp though. With that in mind, here's a fun, but true list of reasons why what we're doing in virtual worlds today is like what we did 10yrs ago.
1. Return of the Walled Garden
As the big players fight to maintain their precarious dominance, the concept of the walled garden rears its inevitable and ugly head once more. We're so many years from being able to travel freely between ALL worlds, and when we do, we'll have to fight the browser wars all over again as well...
2. Clueless Corporations
In any new medium, eventually the suits turn up, and get it utterly, and totally wrong. To the hilarity of the rest of us. Like the WWW before them, Virtual Worlds are no exception, and corporations, as well as politicians regularly fall afoul of new media rule #1: Look before you leap! For wont of a little observation, understanding and immersion within the culture of virtual worlds we see all kinds of mischief befall the unwary. Personally I'd not have it any other way, but maybe that's just me..
3. Spinning Logos
...and other horrors, like the 3D equivalent of the blink tag. We're still trying to work out what works best for attracting visitors to commercial sites in Virtual Worlds, but despite being able to look back on 10yrs of experimentation and evolution of technique, it's heartening to see that good old fashioned human stupidity and laziness can overcome such foolish notions as providing regularly updated content, building communities and providing genuine value, and move straight on to the 10m x 10m spinning neon atrocity....
4. First Fever
Hand in hand with clueless corporations, though deserving of it's own listing as it extends far beyond the big real life companies, is the desire to be first. It doesn't appear to matter what at, but dammit, you just gotta be first! "Clueless Twonk Inc Are First Walrus Tickling Company to Enter Second Life" and similar headlines get deleted from my inbox almost by muscle memory now. What truly amazes me here is peoples inability to see that this type of idiotic posturing jumped the shark quite some time ago.
5. Rock Star Designers
As when the web was young, there is a tendency among corporations to leave everything, including public relations, promotion and community management to the people hired to build out a presence for them. Some of these firms have people that specialize in different areas for just such purpose, but as I've remarked before, more often than not, the corporation in question would be better advised to hire a different, specialist company for such tasks. We see the designers of builds trotted out like prize pony's in corporate press releases and being charged with promoting events on corporate sims, which often just means announcing on the designers own email list or group. Personally I find it annoying, but let's lay blame in proportion shall we? 70/30 weighing worse for the corporation for not doing its inworld homework to the extent of being able to work this stuff out inhouse, and lightly(ish) on the designers for not having the balls to tell the client their plan sucks, or that they themselves cannot possibly be experts in every conceivable field.
6. If You Spam It, They Will Come
Search in virtual worlds, particularly Second Life, sucks beyond all possible belief. If we wanted to find the newest listing each time, rather than the best listing, and people were not naturally inclined toward the tragedy of the commons style of community responsibility when it comes to free traffic sources, we'd all be ecstatically happy with our results. As it is though, Search is truly like warping back 10yrs to pure keyword algorithms that only needed a title tweak and a bit of keyword stuffing to send you rocketing to the top of the pile. As a result, its very easy to find stuff, but not very easy to find good stuff.
7. Selling Picks and Shovels
Though the press has recently turned on virtual worlds, as my friend Joel notes here (the inspiration for this post no less..), the gold rush in Virtual Worlds is still in full effect. We're just doing it a little quieter at the moment. In any gold rush, the ones that are really guaranteed to profit are not the gold miners, panning through grit to find nuggets, but the ones selling the picks and shovels. In terms of entire worlds, we've seen a few different kits come out recently, including Icarus and Multiverse, who are frighteningly keen to stress that they're not just for games! but virtual worlds too! What we havn't seen yet, but must surely come, is the 3D equivalent of the CMS. Oh I know you can get prefab houses in Second Life, even ones that you can build yourself with different floors jig-sawing together and the like, but we've not seen anything approaching the kind of functionality and flexibility required to cause a real shift in the way we work in virtual spaces yet. I hope we see it soon, when content becomes easier, so will adoption rate and retention levels.
Despite firmly believing that in many ways we've taken great leaps backward, in our coming forward, on the 3D web, i remain optimistic. There are talented, creative minds working 24/7 on this stuff, and barely a week goes by without the landscape shifting just a little bit. I remain a believer, a fan, and I hope, one of the 'doers', in this space.
Have more points to add? Think I'm talking crap? Say so in the box beneath...
Blink tag and spinning logos - right on the money there, although the blink tag is a bit more annoying because it's an actual tag that Netscape introduced into the wild. There isn't an actual "spinning logo builder" one-click tool in SL's viewer. (yet)
By 1997, a lot of still-running abandoned pioneer websites were building up cobwebs and dust, just like quite a few corporate builds in SL now.
Terra Nova published an interesting article about the 3D web, basically saying that we are not so much heading for 3D web, but a combination of 3D spaces, 3D webtools, mirror worlds and the web as we know it today (2D). Its more or less the viewpoint of the Metaverse Roadmap as well and I have to agree, that while i hear the phrase '3D web' more and more, it is somewhat a misleading term. But you are so right about the simularity with the web 10 years ago, including the mistakes and boobytraps.
Read the articles on: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/08/death-to-snow-c.html and www.lostinthemagicforest.com/blog
Yes, I can't say i have an easy time envisioning SL as "what everyone is doing" either Dobre, but I do fervently hope for some kind of cross world communications and the ability to travel between spaces carrying my identity with me...
Nick you know how to hit the mark. You pretty much nailed this one.
Every time I see screaming w00ting twitter gals announcing "come on down and party" my stomach turns. Revolving signs go beyond the bounds of bad taste. That said, I'm still weeding my way through ideas on the best ways to let the metaverse know that new clients are planning their SL presence.
But again, I'm just the evangelist not the builder or huge company claiming to do it all, so my emphasis is different from the start.
The option of sending email to everyone isn't on my short list though . Facebook announcements and _subtle_ event buzz mentions on twitter, facebook calendar, and 30 boxes are.
Especially as someone who works alone and lives a Second Life life less than I'd like to be able to, I look for ideas from the people who really are in second life every day. Like - um - you, Jeff Barr, Josh Bancroft, in short whoever has suggestions. I'm all ears . The topic is, shall we say, topical, for me today, but always of interest too.
In the interest of full disclosure: Susan Reynolds plays Tynan Clary in Second Life & blogs at http://www.artsyasylum.com
My thoughts exactly, I couldn't have said it better myself. I am an optimist and firm believer that the Internet will only become more and more 3d enhanced. In addition to the main issues you have addressed, I think the visual aspect can't be ignored. Unfortunately, a lot of business people I know don't take virtual worlds like SL seriously because they look too much like a cartoon.
But I also remember all of the cheap clip art style graphics that littered sites in the early days of the web only to be replaced by richer media such as flash.
Similarly, I look forward to a time when virtual worlds become visually more appealing and engaging using, for example, radiocity style techniques for creating more life like 3d models with natural ambient lighting, lush organic scenes and very rich, detailed textures. Its only a matter of time before these techniques and plugins for software like 3ds max become more available and practical as tools for creating content in virtual worlds.
With all of the creative talent already inworld, once the 3D web can support the more advance 3D modeling software and techniques, it will be amazing to see what comes next. The fun has only begun.
Great post Nick,
My thought about future of the WEB is this :
2D - now and future of information handling, sharing, managing etc....
-- in short : 2D for Information
3D - Interaction with people, making friends, where serendipity takes full effect etc...
-- in short : 3D for Collaboration, social life
What do you all think?
Search the metaversewww.MetaverseMart.com
Like 1995-1997 on the web, those of us with real experience in *technology* and *business* are often being chased out of mixed-reality contracts by two kids with the equivalent of having read "Learn HTML in a Week" and the arrogance of youth...
Businesses essentially can't tell the difference between skill and enthusiasm. Just as there were oodles of geeks with no design experience, now there are oodles of folks with no idea what factor community, affinity, or "local culture" have in mixed-reality work.
I remember when I started Net Prophets in '95, telling a lot of clients on the one hand "it's not a billboard" and on the other hand "unless you are selling Porsches, you don't load animation on your own clients' 1200 to 56kb modems." Likewise today we have folks wanting presences who need single events, who need an office with a landmark who want an island, who aren't being informed that they are creating social ghost towns by not staffing a large presence, and so on.
There's very little emphasis on appropriate tech.
Some folks also don't consider ergonomics. Remember the amazing patchwork website that you couldn't find anything on? In our world, there has to be a pleasant way to move through 3d spaces -- untextured "grass" for example, doesn't show where the vertical drop off comes. There has to be an elegant balance between aesthetics and performance, so that scripts can run for example.
Yes, there are a zillion parallels. I have the scars from the previous go-round, hoping they serve me well 12 years later...:)
Ahh but you see, that's one of the things I like about everything we do on the web! Look at facebook, started by some kid, and his arrogance led him to turn down a 1bn$ offer from Yahoo! -- ppl said he was crazy, but now they just might eat their words..
I think the old school absolutely NEED to compete with the 'two kids with a book' type of developers, it'll keep them sharp, make sure they're not lazy and slapdash.. but really, if a company chooses 2 kids with a book over an experienced proven outfit, then they're probably not the kind of clients you would want are they?
Enjoyable!
I'm glad you took the time to codify and update this list, Nick.
As you might imagine, I disagree. I find this conversation about how wrong everybody's getting it just recurs and recurs, and becomes more smug with each retelling. The yarn goes like this, "We Web. 1.0 *told you*. We warned you that AOL would become irrelevant for smart people; we told you not to make walled gardens; hey, look at Netscape and...we have only one word for you: Geocities!" etc. They have this incredibly zealous certainty that the mistakes of Web 1.0 that they identified and learned from and corrected are somehow being replayed in Web 2.0 and Web 3.D and should be avoided, and that if everybody doesn't just *listen* this time and *do what they say* why...why...they'll have a tantrum and turn blue and sit in the corner. But...what if they aren't mistakes, but in fact right for 2.0 and 3.0?
Maybe they aren't right, and we need to keep an open mind. Who values travel between worlds? Only geeks fascinated with the architecture of bridges, and trolls who want to figure out how to charge to move between them. Only people who map the Internet itself as an image on to the virtual world concept and figure it absolutely requires integrative tissue and linkage or it will fail and die worry about this.
Who values sandboxes as distinct from walled gardens? Again, geeks who want endless freedom to experiment even at the expense of civilization, and advertisers who want more permeability for their marketing.
But...the rest of us don't mind a walled garden. If it means rules, protection of the experience and protection of the rights to the user-made content at least to some minimal degree, if it means an immersive integrity to the world, what's wrong with it? After all, there's a world of difference between my AOL chat buddies and the 3-d streaming immersiveness and creativity of Second Life. If Second Life stays a walled garden and that helps keep its compelling nature, what's wrong with that? Long after a small percent go host-your-host, I suspect the Linden mainland might stay in business, if they have the stamina.
Not everyone wants to have a chicken or a cube for an avatar in a vasty space filled with fractals and Moebius strips and colourful data representation. If that seems suburban and in mass taste, hey, do you want people to have freedom, and do you want to deliver content to them and make money yourself... *or don't you?*
This is what I found myself saying to the Lindens last week about their horrible billing snafus. "Look, guys, do you want to just make software and keep having a beta-test lovefest here, or do you want to just settle and have people *pay you* for what you made so far? Your choice."
I don't *need* to have a seamless integration between WoW and killing orcs and Kaneva listening to hip-hop in a club and Second Life hearing a lecture by Jonathan Fanton. I don't expect moving between NY and DC or NY and London to be a seamless experience, and if the virtual equivalent ends up having waits, log-ins, rule changes, ID checks, etc. -- so what? Why is integrity of worlds something that you kvetchers are willing to sell off so easily?!
The dirty little secret of AOL is that they pwn the Internet still, as just about everyone in the connected university has AIM, even if they sit in seminars and pontificate about how evil AOL is to make a walled garden in the Web 1.0 and how we must, never, never replicate this experience in Web 2.0...and hey, some walled garden if they made EVERYBODY hook up AIM hehe.
Geocities was among my first web-building experiences that gave me as a non-geek the thrill of user-created content building, and while it was clunky and stupid and probably not indexed or walled or whatever was hated by geeks, it crossed an important threshold for many of us with DIY tools. tripod.com then did it better, and yet other things will do it better. As much as I like my blog on typepad.com it's still a chore trying to upload snapshots and make widgets, all of which tripod.com simply does better for the amateur.
What a lot of those sneering about walled gardens have to realize is that when masses of people come along and get into all this, two things will happen: there will be increased demand for even more walled gardens in a long tail (but with a definite big clump at one end) and there will be wall-jumpers ranging from skunks (griefers) to professional horsemen (geeks) who will leap the walls, and there will be a struggle among them.
*Why can't we have both?* There should be room in the Metaverse for both.
The awful, unalloyed horror about spinning cube signs in Second Life is that *they work*. Avatars fly over to moving, shining things; it increases sales the way spam does. I wish this weren't so. I ban the thing on my properties and weed them out daily from tenants, but...it's a known fact.
*Search is not broken*. We who live and work the world all day know that it works. It's people trying to shove some advertising down the neck of the goose that find it doesn't work for them. And...I'm supposed to be worried a lot about that? *Search works when combined with traffic, the folksonomy of "picks" on profiles, and classifieds*. What, I'm supposed to applaud the Googlization even of virtual worlds, when all Google does is turn up dubious Wikipedia as a source as the first return on every search these days? That's no different than SL turning up a sex club. You skip to the next 3 or 10 down from that return.
When people say Search is "broken" and "doesn't work" they mean that...what? They typed in the words "science fiction" and they didn't find the museum or the club? But they would. I never get this. I seriously would like anyone who claims Search in SL doesn't work to spend an hour in world trying the terms they think aren't working, or trying to get the experience they say they can't have, and prove it to me. I remain profoundly skeptical. I think people even on Google have to try 50 times sometimes to get the returns they need, but they've absorbed this as an internalized, unconscious habit; doing that in SL in 3-D irritates them for some reason, though it shouldn't.
The point about the designers is very well taken. I think these corporations would be better off having softer, longer entries in which they let their own inhouse people familiarize themselves with it and burn it in, rather than hiring metaversal myrmidon agencies to guide them around. I realize it's inevitable that such sherpa firms come in, and some of them do perform a service, but the corps become too dependent on them. What you open in Second Life is not a web page where you don't have to refresh it but once a week or once a month, and not a trade show that you make a booth for once a year, but a 24/7 live help desk. Plan accordingly.
>>As you might imagine, I disagree.
I wouldn't have it any other way :)
Some food for thought there for sure, I'll have to have a good think about your position on walled gardens, i suspect i'll still disagree, but it's worthy of inspection I think.
Re Search, well, as i asid, if you want the newest, not the best, it works great. I just mean that it's nowhere near the algorithmic capability of Google, or even Inktomi pre Yahoo buy, it's very very simple, and thus easy to game. Which leaves for a poor experience for most.
Steve Dashiell mentions a cartoon-like look that turns people off. But show those same business types a Second Lifer who walks likes a human and interacts like a human, and whose hair and clothing behave the way they would in our reality when walking or stopping or falling etc.
Now you've given them a non-stereotypical virtual "reality" to stop and take note of. Take them to a meeting or concert and the skepticism drops dramatically.
Yes, as we are dropped off in the virtual world in our plastic hair and waddle, we do look cartoonish. But even at that state the human brain recognizes these other beings as humans and interacts with them as such.
A disappointing part of the mix in Second Life and one that makes it frustrating to newcomers is the learning curve - not of flying - but of outfitting oneself to look "real". Then there's the challenge of knowing where to shop for hair, clothing etc that is not cartoonish and less appropriate in a strip club. You literally have to know who to ask where to shop fto avoid the extremes of helmet hair, hooker hair or out of this galaxy hair.
Another issue is that even in Second Life communities that have some brand presence it's common to see unfortunate buildings that make walking around in them difficult and getting a camera angle right almost impossible for a newcomer.
Still, from where I sit, there's lots to improve, but a lot more to be excited about and help promote.
Tynan Clary plays Susan Reynolds in real life and blogs at http://www.artsyasylum.com
No, most people don't have a poor experience at all. This really is a perspective that a few have, mainly geeks/developers/elites, because it doesn't do some elusive thing they want it to do (and I'm still trying to understand what that is, since it works fine for me).
Most people simply discount the top few camped/gamed slots, and ignore Popular Places, which probably only the rankest newbs use. I really does work fine. I type in "Moroccan," I find the Morocco simulation sim and 3 furniture stories, etc. And search doesn't work in a flat, airless, isolated space like the Internet. Search is the whole world. I wander around and I see a Moroccan couch I like, click on the creator's name, and go to his store. I search by *inhabiting and navigating the world myself* and clicking on stuff.
*I am the search*. Be the search, Nick!
Insert random thoughts here,
I think more information is usually helpful. I'd like more fields in Search to sort by, maybe creation date, number of visits per day, number of visits today, purchases per day maybe? Maybe not those specific fields, but something more than dwell and the amount of $ you spend. Product ratings, maybe, or searching object names and descriptions would help. Something you can configure yourself, like the windows filebrowser fields that you can check on and off. What was the name of that object search tool you featured?
If people need to discount the top few camped/gamed slots and Popular Places, doesn't that mean something isn't effective and needs to be fixed?
Cartoon-like look was probably not the best way for me to characterize it. I just meant that we are in the early stages of this, and the more visually appealing (for some that means realism, for others it means something else) virtual worlds become, the more adoption rates will pick up.
But you are right, the learning curve is a HUGE obstacle and I think Nick mentioned that in one of his 7 points.
Having said that, it sounds like you know where to shop and how to outfit oneself to look real. Is there a way we could work together? My clients are always looking for this kind of support and we are exploring ways to bring them inworld and make it as easy as possible for them initially. If you are free for a chat our office is in the first floor of Silicon Tower on Silicon Island and I am Miles Eun.
drOffset Cortes, your wishlist for data sounds like data-mining for advertisers or something, not ordinary search for people to use to explore the world.
As I said, Google is gamed, too, and you discount the top returns and push down, try other terms, etc.
There isn't anything wrong with having search and traffic combined whatsoever; it helps merited trafficked lots rise to the surface.
Speaking as an ordinary person, I"m interested in going where other live people go, not some number that represents how many campers you can feed. I want a variety of metadata to sort by, and not be restricted to dwell or ad cost. You can search words like chat, hang out, etc, and still not know where people are actually speaking to each other, and yes, where other people are going to shop so I know what standard to try and meet. See what I mean? Also, notice I said 'maybe not these fields exactly."
Anyway, that's what I think.
I lived through the time when there was a rush to "digitize" brochures (some of that still goes on) for hundreds of thousands of dollars at the emergence of the web as a medium!
It comes from not understanding what is really at work, and perhaps not really having the luxury to. I mean, when you have to deliver numbers at the end of each quarter, it's quite conceivable that your vision gets compromised. This too will be a hard lesson learned, as the Virtual media matures.
I see this as VirtuReality. The virtual definitely affects the real and vice versa. I hope my article on the subject (pdf) on the subject serves as an advance warning... but being present at the earlier revolution, my experience tells me otherwise.
I hope I'm wrong this time :)
Really compelling arguments personally as someone not hugely involved I swing from 'this is the most exciting thing ever' to 'blatant pyramid scheme, waste of time'
Articles like this keep me on the optimistic side.
Today’s Virtual Worlds Are Yesterday’s AOL might be worth a tangential read.
My experience with in world search has been poor. I have been using advanced keyword modifiers in search engines for a long time, and the simplistic model just fails for me.
Thinking I'm an outlier data point, I have since started watching others "work" with search, over their shoulder. People who have no trouble getting to content with a variety of Internet search engines start muttering under their breath or simply throw up their hands and start hitting up their friends with "hey, do you know where to buy X" or "know of any good place for Y?"
While this latter element is kinda cool in a social networking context, I'm not seeing it as terribly valuable as the world scales up.
I will also consider the vast number of alternative search systems available (both in world, such as MetaHUD and SLBrowser) and external (SLExchange, SL Search Bar and many others) as a sign of perceived weakness in the built in tools.
Thus, I am in awe of Profky's SL Search Foo... I think some in world classes are in order!