Second Life. Will the last marketeer turn off the lights, please...?

The last few weeks have seen the worm slowly starting to turn, as far as marketing in Second Life is concerned. Wired carried an article recently talking about an almost spooky atmsphere within many locations in Second Life due to the lack of punters actually using the platform regularly, despite the massive growth in avatars. TechCrunch carried a similar opinion piece. Having been hassled both within my organisation ('but we'll miss the boat') and from various agencies ('but you'll miss the boat') trying to sell me their Second Life island construction skills, I can't say that I'm unhappy about this.

My gut instinct with Second Life was that, despite the hype, it would remain the domain of a relatively niche audience and that many people would register and try it once, only to get fed up that the technology didn't match the hype. By the look of some of the articles I have seen recently, it would seem that increasing numbers of marketeers are beginning to share my point of view. A member of my team recently chatted with a Web 2.0 lead marketeer from a certain FMCG giant at a recent Search Engine conference in California and his view on Second Life (in which his company had invested heavily) were too heavily laden with expletives to post in this blog...

It is easy to get carried away with all of the hype surrounding Web 2.0 and the effect it is having on marketing. It's important that we don't forget that Joe Public is still nowhere near as technologically savvy as those of us that work on and with the web every day. 3D worlds may well become important, but only when they are as easy to use as YouTube. Second Life will remain an opportunity for reaching certain niche audiences. Just don't expert it to sell any additional cans of fizzy drink for you any time soon...