Higher Education Marketing and Second Life - Part 1 of 6

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On Thursday of last week, I visited the real world campus of the University of Michigan to learn more about their virtual world efforts.  The University of Michigan is pursuing a variety of efforts in several fields in the virtual world called Second Life.  Second Life is one of many virtual world applications, but it also happens to be one of the most popular from a user and activity standpoint.  As of the last quarter, ending in July, 1.5 Billion square acres of virtual land had been purchased, users logged 95 million hours of use, and $84 Million (USD) exchanged hands.  Second Life offers a lot to blog about, much of it tied to the many parallels that can be drawn between Second Life and real life.  People purchase real estate and tend to pay more for real estate in areas with higher traffic, similar to commercial real estate in the real world.  Second life has a financial system with a governing body, a currency exchange which fluctuates in relation to U.S. currency, and from time to time even inflation.  Although unlike the real world it may be one of the few financial markets not experiencing severe pain from the deleveraging of financial products we are seeing around the globe.  For those entrepreneurs out there, according to the Second Life website, as of July 2008, there were over 59,000 profitable businesses in this virtual world.  The GDP in Second Life grew to $402 million annualized in August 2008, which based on the CIA World Factbook, makes it the 179th largest economy.  This makes it larger than 15 other economies listed, such as Samoa, Solomon Islands, Dominica, and several others. Furthermore, Second Life’s GDP is growing at 62% per year, more than three times faster than any other economy on the planet.  According to 2007 estimates, which are likely higher than the current conditions, Azerbaijan would be a distant second with a 23.4% growth rate.  But, considering the name and topic of this blog, lets look at this from a marketing perspective for education.

First, there are actually two Second Life virtual worlds. There is the teen grid, focused on teenagers 13-17, and then the main grid, for ages 18 and up. If you are trying to reach students under the age of 18, then you will only find people in this age group on the teen grid. In fact, you are required to be 18 to set up an account on the main grid. From time to time, you may find a 13-17 year old that is posing as an older user, but this is rare and I should note that if you do, you should report them for their protection. Here is a breakdown of the two grids:

Teen Grid – The Teen grid in Second Life is a separate world meant exclusively for children between the ages of 13 and 17. This provides a shield for those in that age group from some of the adult-level debauchery that takes place in the main grid. Teen Second Life is inaccessible from the regular Second Life Grid and vice versa. Due to these restrictions, the Teen Grid ends up being a poor marketing channel. Educators are using it to deliver education, but from a marketing standpoint, unfortunately your time and resources are likely better spent elsewhere. As a parent of two young children myself, I fully support the protection the teen grid provides. So please don’t interpret this as any sort of criticism of those restrictions. My only point is that from a marketing standpoint, I do not believe it is of as much value as other activities you could be pursuing. If that isn’t convincing, you could consider that teen grid avatars consist of less than one percent of active Second Life users.

Main Grid – This is what most people refer to when they talk about Second Life. It is typically called the Second Life grid, but I call it the main grid to distinguish from the Teen Grid. For any general help about setting up an account and accessing the main grid, you can find it all at their website, www.secondlife.com.

In future posts, I'll cover the following topics:

• Introduction and General Information about Second Life;
• We'll dig into the demographics of Second Life users;
• Discuss what statistics to use when analyzing Second Life as a marketing channel;
• Discuss some of the marketing challenges you'll face in Second Life;
• Discuss brand building for higher education institutions in Second Life;
• And reaching out to Alumni in Second Life.