I spent some time talking to Misacha Vaughan, co-owner of the newly launched Blue Horizon Business Park [SLUrl] today. They're the second large scale business park that I've encountered in Second Life and already have five companies in residence including a lawyer and a movie producer. The V3 Group runs the larger, better established Silicon Island, which acts as an incubator for real life companies that want to dip their virtual toe in the water before diving in.
Both businesses remind me of "managed hosting" environments, or perhaps something resembling Geocities. They both sport conference and communications facilities and offer clients support and hand holding through their second lives. So far, apart from the fact that these companies can't be found easily in the inworld search as they do not own land, merely rent, I can only see this as a good thing -- I'm betting it wont be too long before we see cut rate, poor quality, mass market monstrosities though.
Hi 57 Miles,
Thank you for the review. Very nice ideas in there. Managed hosting is one of many good ways to look at it.
Note that companies hosted in New Horizons are indeed referenced in the search engine under land, group and ads and already receive direct visitors because of it.
I'm not sure the Geocity reference applies.
To quote Wiki:
"Geocities never enforced neighborhood specific content, for example a "Hollywood" homesteader could be nothing but a college student's blog which would be more appropriate for another neighborhood."
Websites don't support the concept of neighbors or shared environments, services or resources. You're very much alone on your site. I think it's what I love the most about SL, it connects people together simply by being there and not just computers and databases.
It was a pleasure meeting you in-world. Looking forward to see you again.
~Misacha Vaughan
Re Search Misacha: You mean they are mentioned in the general description of the entire SIM? That's fine, but I think that's the same as V4 and it means that you can teleport only to the SIM's main TP area from the Search, and then you have to wander around to find the company right?
If you're not easily seen, or worse, in an office block that can be a bit tricky..
Correct me if im mistaken...
Hi 57 Miles. Each business office on the Blue Horizon business park is separately parcelled so that each business is properly referenced and marketed.
This means that each has their own entry in search/place and visitors can directly TP there rather than land in a central location. We've only been open for a few days and already our clients are getting their own traffic directly TP'ng into their locations.
It also means that each client can run their own video and audio feeds in their offices to show corporate videos etc.
Wonderful, thanks for the clarification! And welcome to Metaversed, both of you.