Facibus Reviews

More government bodies and large corporations are looking towards Second Life as a way of leveraging resources - using a person-hour of effort to create more than a person-hour’s benefit. An effective virtual presence can be had for a little under USD5,000.00 per annum [1] plus staff costs.

Why would you bother?

There are several reasons:

• because it is a low-cost channel for connecting to potential and current clients.
• because being an early adopter in this channel is a remarkable thing in and of itself.
• because Linden Labs, owners of Second Life, want to help make it happen.

For more background on why large organisations (including government) are looking to Second Life, please see:

• CDCs Second Life
• First UK law firm opens ‘virtual’ office
• First virtual consultancy in Second Life
• Second Life: Making it work for business
• Maldives pips Sweden in the “first Second Life embassy” race
• IBM gives birth to Second Life business group

And it should be noted that not every organisation is suited to Second Life. Some disqualifiers include:

• no potential client base on Second Life: while this does not apply to most organisations, there are some (such as local government or intelligence) that might be better served by alternative means.
• low organisational will: if you do not have an organisational website, chances are that your corporate culture does not support early adoption, and it may be a difficult thing to manage a Second Life implementation.

So what is involved?

Costs can be broken down into:

• Land: this can be the “big-splash - let’s buy our own island” model - this is USD1,675.00 plus USD295.00 a month. A 16-acre virtual territory on the “mainland” is around USD4,000.00 for a good location plus USD295.00 a month in maintenance. You can set up a presence in someone else’ building for a lot less. How notable a presence do you need? For more information see Real estate: buying and selling land in Second Life
• Setup costs: It is possible to spend a lot of money setting up a government office in Second Life - costs in the low nine figures are bandied about for the likes of setting up the virtual corporate HQ for Dell and IBM. That said, there is a lot of help in-world for those interested in learning to build, as well as plenty of people that will create custom designs for you (for a fee - like every other builder, you should ask for references and examples of their work). For an illustration of how easy it is to get started and create simple structures, read Mitch Wagner’s article on Building in Second Life. You can get your corporate IT providers to create the whole thing for you, or utilise in-world experts.
• Maintenance costs: Apart from the USD295 a month that owners of islands and 16 acre quadrants pay to Linden Labs, what costs are there for maintenance? At a minimum, none - unless you want to add more functionality (i.e. a bigger virtual shopfront, more online information, and more staff members).
• Staffing costs: Depending on how you staff your virtual shopfront, this is probably the biggest single cost to the organisation. Do you have volunteers that can be rostered on at opportunity-cost only for eight plus hours a day? Most organisations do not. In-world labour varies (as in real life) in quality and cost - you can hire virtual receptionists with reasonable language skills from a few (USD) dollars an hour and up, or have the best client service/sales/marketing minds in your organisation. Help desk operations are probably a good comparison - first-level operators help with the simplest enquiries and ensure that calls are logged and escalated as required. Fourth-level support pulls the system to pieces and rebuilds it - with all the graduations of specialisation (and cost) in between.

The early adopters are making hay while the sun shines in Second Life - the fad, if it is one, does not look like failing soon. Do it properly by all means, but think about doing it soon.
[1] calculated at an island “purchase” cost of USD1,675 plus USD295 a month thereafter.