Second Life: What is the Buzz About?

Brian Regan of Semper LLC Explains

By Cary Sherburne

October 31, 2007 -- Have you been paying attention to what’s happening with the next generation of the Web? We were caught off guard when we were hit with the force of the Internet in the ‘90s, and according to Brian Regan, President of staffing firm Semper International LLC, if we don’t pay attention this time, we will be caught again as new virtual worlds like Second Life begin to catch fire.

The other day, I saw a report in AdWeek that advertising monolith Omnicom purchased a stake in Millions of Us, a firm founded in 2006 that has built presences in Second Life for brands like 20th Century Fox, Toyota and Pontiac. This quote caught my eye: “We are entering an era known as the 'Avatar Age' in which people connect face to face online," Reuben Steiger, CEO of Millions of Us, said in a statement. "Because people today trust the recommendations of friends much more than advertising, companies can now seize the opportunity to support online communities and connect more deeply with their customers through social networks rather than through traditional online advertising."

I hate to admit that I was not all that sure what they were talking about. What is an Avatar, anyway? But by the time I finished my very informative conversation with Regan, I had a much better idea. I am sharing part of our conversation here in the hopes that it might help some of you not feel as clueless as yours truly, and maybe set you on the road to your own Second Life.

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WTT: Brian, first of all, for our readers who may not be familiar with Semper, can you give us a little background?

BR: Sure. We were founded in 1995 as PressTemps, later became PrintStaff, and although we are the largest staffing agency specifically dedicated to print, as we looked to expand our market, we were looking for a new name. That’s a hard thing to do these days—it took us about a year. We chose Semper because it means Always. And the exclamation point in our logo represents excitement. So our name now reflects our organization. As a recruiting organization, we tend to be a happy, excited, social sort of people.

WTT: And for those of us among the uninitiated, what is Second Life?

BR: Second Life is an online, 3D, virtual world. A web site is two-dimensional, and a virtual world like Second Life is three-dimensional. It is an interactive, social-based environment.

WTT: Are there others like it?

BR: Yes. Second Life is the most well-known. But another example would be There.com, which MTV uses, and Kaneva.com is another one.

WTT: So how might my experience in Second Life be different than other web experiences? Can you give me an example?

BR: Think about visiting Amazon.com and browsing through books. It is likely you are in a room by yourself on a computer, and you have no idea who else might be looking at the same book online at the same time. There could be 20,000, for all you know. In a virtual world, if you are in Amazon (virtual store or location) looking at a book, you can actually (virtually) turn to others who are looking at the book and ask them what they think about it, just as you might do if you are visiting a Barnes & Noble or Borders. It dramatically changes the way you use the Internet as an individual, but more importantly for this discussion, it dramatically changes the way people are marketing. There is a blended social/business thing happening and it is more of an immersion experience than a web fly-by experience.

WTT: Can you explain what an Avatar is?

BR: When you register in one of these virtual worlds, you create a profile—a digital “you” as it were—and that is your Avatar. Right now, your Avatar represents you in these virtual worlds, but as we begin using increasingly capable digital devices, you will be carrying the digital you, or your Avatar, with you. Imagine, for example, that all of your information is embedded in your cell phone, and you can use it to buy groceries or go through the subway turnstile.

WTT: What kind of timeframes are we looking at before this becomes ubiquitous?

BR: Last year, there was roughly $1 billion invested in virtual worlds because many people feel that this is what the Internet will look like in ten years. Right now, to participate you need to have a fast Internet connection and a pretty high powered, fast computer like you would need for video games. It is hard to say what it will look like exactly. Ten years is a long time, and it is even hard, sometimes, to project out a year. But all of the big companies are putting money into it. Google has a secret project going on at the University of Arizona, which it is believed is a blend of Google Earth with something called My World. IBM has been a huge pioneer in Second Life, and they have created their own virtual worlds for their clients and employees, including digital conference centers, training, etc. It is estimated that the division of IBM that focuses on Virtual Worlds (VW’s) has 6,000 employees and roughly 3,000 are working in VW’s at any given time.

WTT: Who provides the content on Second Life?

BR: Second Life is an environment, and all of the content is provided by the user base. Users go there for all sorts of experiences, including both entertainment and business applications. Marketing professionals are trying to figure out how to effectively interact in this new environment and build locations in these virtual worlds that are sticky to other people—in other words, that people will visit often. Many companies like Coca Cola, AOL, NBC, and Verizon have a presence in Second Life for marketing purposes. If the next generation is going to be using these worlds, they want to know now how they are going to interact with those users. Fewer of this “digital native” generation are using TV and more are using interactive media. So advertisers need to be on top of their game and be able to maximize their investments in these new environments.

Other companies, like Cisco and Fidelity, have chosen to use Second Life as an internal tool, interacting with their technical staff for training and that kind of thing.

WTT: How and when did you get involved?

BR: We launched our location March 1, 2007. We were lucky enough to be the first staffing company in the world to use it as a recruitment tool, but we were cognizant enough to know that that was not the only reason to be there. In the beginning, we used it for company meetings, interviewing, internal training, that kind of thing. Here we are a staffing agency, focused on the printing industry, which one could say is not necessarily the most glamorous industry. Yet the staffing agency that supports it is the first one in. So it really demonstrates that printing is an exciting industry.

WTT: So in the Second Life world, I guess you are almost an old-timer. How are you using it differently today, with some experience under your belt?

BR: Today we use it for mass interviewing. You can recruit people from Second Life, but that is not a focus. There are not enough people there yet. There are maybe nine million people registered worldwide, and percentage wise, that is not a huge percentage of the population. We do some recruitment, and then we invite candidates to visit our Second Life location. We set a meeting time, and we have a recruiter who does a pre-scripted presentation about who we are and what we are looking for. There will be three or four other recruiters in the audience, and at the end of the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. Then each recruiter talks to a subset of the people, and the best of the best are brought in to real-world interviews.

WTT: So do those initial online interviews happen in separate rooms or something, one-on-one?

BR: No. Usually after the formal presentation, we adjourn to a beach setting that is more casual. The building where we do the formal presentation is very professional; the Avatar presenting is well-dressed. But then we invite people to a beach party. As a recruiting company, you want to make your candidates feel relaxed so you can have candid conversations. The beach party is more of a relationship-building session—not corporate, not professional. We can find out more about each other, and it is more comfortable than sticking people in another room and giving them the third degree. As you can imagine, it is a popular part of the presentation, although very different.

I know it sounds odd, but it is how new things are developed. They sound odd at first and then they seem normal.

WTT: So what can you tell about candidates from these activities?

BR: First of all, people are more likely to go to an interview like that after hours. They don’t have to dress up or travel. We are only looking for their mental capabilities, and with a text and voice situation, you can tell a lot about people. It works out well. You can really see the quality of a candidate in how they text, how they speak, and the social protocol they follow. It looks like a video game, but how do they interact with the people around them? Are they cognizant of the fact that they are in a professional setting? It helps us identify the type of people we want to work with, based on work ethic and social etiquette.

WTT: Do you have any metrics? Is the hiring process shortened? Do you get better quality hires?

BR: It is still too early to tell. We have recruited people this way, and we have them in the field and have earned revenue from them. It is not yet at the level of something like Monster.com, which is a dedicated job board. It is not competing at that level yet. But I think the quality of the people is better. Just getting in, you have to be a little tech savvy. And we are also developing a community. About 25% of the people we invite to our meetings end up logging on to Second Life on their own on a regular basis. And that tells us something about them as well.

WTT: So how would I get started? Do I just visit your Second Life location?

BR: You can’t go right there unless you are already registered with Second Life. If you are logged in, it will bring up my location. In order to register, you visit SecondLife.com, and create your online Avatar name. Then you fill out personal information and download the Second Life client, which is about 70 megabytes in size, compressed. It is a big file, because it is really an online video game known as a Massive Multiplayer Online game (MMO), except the users create the experience rather than the game designers. Linden Labs open-sourced the client, and there is another company that has created a web-type client that allows you to interact with Second Life with a reduced application size.

WTT: I understand you are working with PIA/GATF on a Second Life location for them.

BR: As it turns out, as we gained experience, one of the new services we are offering is building company locations for others in Second Life. It is a business offshoot that we were not expecting. We became so proficient and we were networked enough that companies started approaching us to help them. Our second client was PIA/GATF, although we actually approached them. We already do a lot of work with them, such as web access to flexible staffing that is available to their members.

WTT: What objectives are you trying to achieve?

BR: First, they want to figure out if their members will be interested, and whether their members should be concerned about Second Life. From separate research I’ve done, I’ve already located printing companies that operate within Second Life. We want to provide a ‘safe haven’ for PIA/GATF members in Second Life, and provide examples and more information on how to become involved. Another objective was attracting people to the industry; they wondered whether it could be used as a tool to let people know that printing isn’t a boring industry, and that we can interact with people from a cool platform. We’re looking at ways to provide information about PIA/GATF to residents of Second Life, particularly students and younger folks who might be interested in the printing industry. We also want to provide an alternative for distance learning.

We are moving forward with the student portion, where we can interact with students, and we are in the process of building a more comprehensive package if members are interested in Second Life or virtual worlds in general. We are creating information packets that will help members take the next steps. PIA/GATF is probably the first paid print association that has jumped into Second Life. There are other printing affiliated organizations, but no other paid associations at this point that I know of.

WTT: What is your key message to printers on this subject?

BR: They should be paying close attention, if they have the resources to expend. If you are retiring within ten years and don’t have a family succession plan in place, you might not have an interest. But if, in fact, the internet will become a 2D/3D blend in ten years or less, they will not be competitive unless they can play. They put themselves at risk. It will be 1993 all over again—do I jump in and get a web site? The benefit of 2007 is that most of us were around in 1993, and the ones that jumped in are still around in one form or another. If this is where the Internet is going, you have to at least have someone on your staff that monitors it. IBM, in partnership with Linden Lab (creators of Second Life), announced recently that they are demanding that a protocol be established in the development of virtual worlds so that virtual worlds are accessible from each other. Let’s say I create my Avatar, and it logs me into Second Life. With a standard, that same Avatar should allow me to log into any virtual world. As soon as that gap is bridged, it will become much like web sites, where you surf between them. Then you get to the point where your Avatar is your digital you, and that is coming down the pike really fast.

Keep in mind that there are already ad agencies, marketers, and other print buyers walking around in Second Life, so from a business perspective, it is beneficial to get involved now.

WTT: Any other implications you would like to point out?

BR: It also has some Green implications, especially for bigger companies. Being a Green printer is gaining importance. Many companies are concerned about their carbon footprint. If you have people on planes flying to locations for various things, perhaps much of that can be done in Second Life without the environmental implications of the travel.

We also see that education will be big there. Why go to a two-week course and pay for travel and a hotel room, when it can all be done virtually? It is much more convenient, and costs a lot less, to do it virtually. Done right, it can be just as effective.

Cary can be reached via email at cary@sherburneassociates.com, online at www.sherburneassociates.com and by telephone at 603-430-5463.

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