Institutional presence in Second Life

Whatever I may say about Second Life, you have to admit that people have a strange attraction to putting very mainstream elements there. There is an American Apparel, Mazda, Major Leage Baseball, MTV, Disney, Dell etc. Why is this the case? I mean, there aren’t that many people actually in the game, and most of them are trying to have sex with dragons. What possible reason would Mazda have to waste time on the maybe 5 visitors they get?

A post on Kotaku promoted this, apparently the US State Department is thinking about opening an office there, where people can get information and talk to their governmental officials. Like Kotaku, I wonder why it never crossed their mind to have a website where you could do this.

I think, fundamentally this shows how a large part of the population fails to understand the web. If you asked someone from the state department, or Mazda, why they are doing this in second life, and not on the normal web, which is much more accessible and populated, I think their response would be something along the lines of, “But we already have a website”.

I think they are stuck in the mindset of websites being like they were in 1996, more like print advertisements. Second Life on the other hand has obvious analogues to things they are actually familiar with. So, will 3D immersive worlds really catch on? Lately it’s been cool to say no, but what if we are all forgetting about the people that are not really comfortable or familiar with computers? They are certainly not arguing their point of view online.