Tucked about halfway down in this story about Reuters opening a virtual news bureau in Second Life is this interesting paragraph about the number of mainstream companies staking their territories in the online virtual world:

“Car maker Toyota, music label Sony BMG, computer maker Sun Microsystems, and technology news company Cnet are among the companies taking part in Second Life. Adidas and American Apparel sell clothes and accessories for people to dress their avatars. Starwood Hotels has built a virtual version of “aloft,” a new hotel chain it plans to open in the real world in 2008.”

Linden Labs (the creators of Second Life) needs to be very careful as they move forward with these sorts of relationships. Part of the appeal of an alternate reality like Second Life is that it belongs to the people, not the advertisers. When Second Life starts to look too much like real life, will Second Lifers start to look for their third (advertising-free) life?

Companies that get involved in Second Life need to be careful, too. It’s not about slapping advertising onto virtual walls, it’s about a completely different type of customer-company dynamic. And if those companies don’t have someone managing their relationship with Second Life who understands exactly what that means, they could very well be blowing it before they even get started.

OCTOBER 19 UPDATE: The New York Times published an article today about this exact issue.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 6:00 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff.