Thomson Scientific on Second Life

In an NFAIS session on “Emerging Business Practices,” Marisa Westcott, vice president of marketing for Thomson Scientific, described that company’s experimentation with Second Life. Queries to the audience revealed that many had tried Second Life, but most were still skeptical of its value, and very few were using it in their own organizations. Westcott’s presentation, while not delivering an open and shut case, may have convinced a few more would-be experimenters. She noted to begin with that 12 million people have registered with Second Life since its launch in 2003, and 500,000 were active within the last 7 days. The average age is 33; 10% have logged in for 40 hours or more, according to operator Linden Labs.

The interest of Thomson Scientific (TS), which serves a largely academic market, is understandable: over 60 universities are conducting classes on Second Life; Linden Labs even provides an official resource site for educators. A New Media Consortium survey of educators using Second Life found that 54% were involved there with education-related activity, 58% expanded their professional networks, and 13% collaborated with local or regional colleagues.

The TS presence (which takes the form of an island with different structures connected by monorail) offers a variety of applications, from traffic and usage inducements like hourly fireworks, Easter egg hunts, T-shirt sales, and squirrels, to more substantive aspects such as RSS feeds, a guided tour of drug development, essays on topics such ISI impact factors, and job postings at the reception desk. Efforts at online training have had mixed results, but interactions with visitors have led to interesting dialogue, survey opportunities, and other ways of interacting with users in a more casual than usual environment.  One of the more interesting aspects of Thomson’s experience has been degree of internal interest and enthusiasm. Most of the Second Life work has been done by team members on their own time; even individuals from other parts of the organization have volunteered to join in.

It’s unlikely that many of the skeptics in the audience were convinced, and Westcott acknowledged that one must “look beyond metrics” to find ways that this activity makes business sense: e.g.,providing a different kind of user experience, and learning curve benefits when and if virtual worlds become a commonplace element of Internet usage. Asked if the level of effort would have been justified if the bulk of the activity had not been done on people’s own time, Westcott unhesitatingly said that it would not. Still, it’s good to see established publishers experimenting with new ways to engage in dialog with the marketplace.