Why has Obama no avatar?

(Flickr picture by Olivia Hotshot, Creative Commons License)

Avatars rejoice: the US mainstream press takes notice of Second Life and this in a knowledgeable and rather positive way. Dusan Writer runs a story about a very positive and interesting article in The New York Times about the architects of Second Life, Original Sim.

On Twitter Loic Le Meur, the founder of Seesmic, mentioned the article Second Life?s Second Wind in Forbes. Le Meur said (about Second Life): ?No, it?s not dead, I hear it?s doing very well actually?. Glad to hear, but the upcoming LeWeb conference in Paris, which is organized by Le Meur, hardly mentions virtual worlds.

Forbes mentions the demise of Lively and the fact that Reuters pulled its embedded reporter out of Second Life, but the biggest part of the article is an interview with CEO Mark Kingdon of Linden Lab, which is worth reading.

Andy Greenberg of Forbes asked why president elect Barack Obama has no Second Life avatar, while he did use about every other social media technique available (even though it seems an Obama avatar appeared in SL, the official status of that avatar remains unclear). Kingdon had a good answer:

Social media is good for reaching large volumes of people. But Second Life allows you to connect with people in a direct, more engaged level. Virtual worlds allow for a level of participation and a level of dialogue that you can?t get with 2D social media properties. They?re very different, but I think they?re complementary rather than substitutes. So I think in future elections we?ll see virtual worlds play the same role that social media played in this election.

This is very true I think, but I must admit that the absence of Obama in the virtual arena puzzles me. Can it be that, like Eric Krangel (the former embedded Reuters reporter in SL) says, ?Second Life?s reputation is now a liability??

I am not sure about the ?liability? argument. I tend more to read the unspoken part of what Kingdon says: ?Social media is good for reaching large volumes of people. But Second Life allows you to connect with people in a direct, more engaged level.? Putting it in a less positive way: one does not reach large volumes of people by using virtual worlds such as Second Life.

The same phenomenon is well-known by media companies experimenting with synchronous interaction: while at times one can reach large volumes of people on a liveblog or chat, it is hard to keep doing so in the absence of big events. The people who do respond to chats and liveblogs (in 2D or in 3D) tend to be very engaged, as Kingdon says, but is is also true we talk here about a limited number of people in comparison with the total communities involved.

However cool engagement may be, at the end of the day people have a hard look on the numbers reached. If time is in very short supply and reaching large groups is essential (like in an election campaign), virtual worlds are not a good solution.

However, if one can go for the long run and when gathering a group of highly motivated people is crucial or at least beneficial, virtual media can be very interesting. So maybe the new president will use Second Life after all.

Roland Legrand

source: http://www.mixedrealities.com/?p=926