Want to screw up a virtual world experiment? Here's how
An island all to yourselves sounds dreamy if you're planning a vacation with your spouse. But not so in the virtual world, where that sort of solitude is potential poison for companies setting up shop.
I've flown my avatar into more than one Second Life property where it was basically just me and my lonesome. This was an embarrassing marketing mistake by folks who should have known better. Unfortunately, it's not an isolated incident.
"Companies make a mistake when they assume that people will come when it's built. But then you go to a property and find out that it's empty," says Barry Gilbert, who directs research for Strategy Analytics, specializing in virtual online environments.
