Really

In an article for the Second Life Insider, Eloise Pasteur asks, “How should we talk to each other?” She describes the development of the ways Linden Lab communicates with the residents of Second Life. The progression goes from being able to IM CEO Phillip Linden on a regular basis, to the current blog, which limits the number of comments allowed per post. In other words, there has been a shift from dialogue to broadcast. Eloise does not mention the occasional town hall (admittedly plagued with technical issues) and regular in-world office hours held by some Linden employees, but it’s fair to say that many residents feel that their views are not listened to.

Ironically, one of the main reasons put forward for why corporations should move into Second Life is that they will be able to use the virtual world to interact with their customers, get immediate feedback, and create a more personal relationship with them. So… that makes the current situation with Linden Lab kind of inconvenient for us virtual world proponents.

Maybe there is a limit to how many customers you can dialogue with — once Linden Lab hit a couple of million residents, using IMs to communicate, or even having public forums became ineffective. Having sufficient resources to have interactive dialogues with all your users maybe is a problem that all business in SL will need to face. But what a lovely problem to have: “We’re getting too many visitors on our island — take down the camping chairs!”

The answer to Eloise’s question seems to be the advice one should give to any corporation wanting to communicate in the virtual world:

• Have staff available during business hours to talk with visitors to your location.
• Hold regular communication events to share your vision, ideas, and strategy.
• Foster the development of user communities around your products.
• Provide effective ways for people share their ideas about how to improve your product offerings.
• Expect and welcome criticism.

Businesses in SL are already applying these principles on a small scale. Perhaps the answer is as simple as ensuring that as your customer base grows, you also grow the number of opportunities for dialogue. If you find yourself forced to revert to broadcasting instead of interacting, you may have forgotten the reason for going into the virtual world in the first place.