Sparkz Logo & Sparkz Violet

Continuing our Second Life dating service venture, we have created a logo as well as an avatar to represent out business. Sparkz Violet, who takes on the name o our service, was virtually born on Friday, January 22. We plan big things for her, and hopefully she will be very recognizable in the Second Life dating community!

Team!!!

Today in class we presented and listened to other teams presentations. All of the presentations were about the progress of each business. There will be more to come in another blog post, plus screenshots of each presentation. As for now, this is a screenshot of the great Sparkz Matchmaking team listening to another groups presentation.

Week 6: Session 1: Class INWORLD!

Today was a very exciting day for our class. For the fist time, Neil conducted a full class session in Second Life on the RIT Island. Aside from a few technical difficulties, everything went smoothly. The session concerned the importance of blogging. (What a great topic to talk about on a blog) We went through a brief history of blogging and how blogging has slowly become monetized. Blogging is very important to a virtual terraformer, as much of the Second Life world blogs as well. Gaining followers is a great way to gain attention to your business. Updated frequently gives customers a reason to constantly check the blog. There is a certain thrill involved when you see frequent updates from a blog that you are very interested in. We plan to start a business blog for our dating service. We want to make sure that we have just as strong of a presence on the Internet as we do in Second Life. Many(probably all) of our potential customer use web browsers, follow blogs, follow micro-blogs, and participate in several other forms of social media. Twitter is a great way to spread the word. Since I started to add #secondlife at the end of each of my tweets, I have gain a few "avatar" followers. The twitter accounts have pictures of avatars rather than real people. These must be the true "second lifers" because they sport their avatars outside of Second Life as well. Unfortunately we were not able to record todays session due to permissions on the RIT island. However there are some screenshots, and I have inserted one of them into this post. As we continue to learn Second Life, our next challenging task will be to report on the status of our business and our business plan inside of Second Life. We plan to do this next Monday, 1/25/10. There will be a post that covers the events of that presentation soon after Mondays session.

Exploring a Second Life Island: Lucky Designs

Just exploring some interesting second life islands. Lucky designs is really cool, its an island with a store of give away items. Most of the items you get are by winning a game, hence the name "lucky designs." There are also items to buy. I won speakers at the guess whats in the box stand!

More Pics From PhatLand

(Right) The walk in, the greeter was is in the white.

(UP) The entrance to Phat Cats dance Club.

(Left) A couple dancing. Hes wearing a tuxedo while shes wearing a wedding dress.

PhatLand

This weeks blog analyzes a community in Second Life. While doing some research, I came upon a list of the most popular islands on Second Life. I decided to visit an island called PhatLand. While the island offers a bunch of things, the main attraction is the dance club. I walked around the island for a little bit, not really noticing anything special, and except for the occasional person, there was no real traffic in terms of avatars. That is, of course, until I entered the Phat Cats Club. I dont think I was dressed properly. The club featured a long spiral staircase entrance. It took about 15-20 seconds just to find my way into the grand entrance. While entering, there was a greeter who welcomed every avatar into the club personally. An interesting thing I noticed was that for returning avatars, the greeter made sure to say that they are happy you are back with us. Not only do they welcome you, they somehow remember you. This happened quite a few times, so it was not a fluke. The club was mostly dancing and socializing. I observed many couples, dressed in full suits/dresses. The scene looked like it was a wedding. I began talking to some people, but all the responses I got were invitations to dance. It seemed like this was a place to find somebody else to interact with. Whether it be talking or "virtual" contact, the avatars here were looking for a partner above anything else. The whole place was well decorated. This seemed to be a very high end club. I was wearing a black t-shirt with jeans, probably not the proper attire. While you may not identify this as an actual community, I got the sense that the avatars here were frequent visitors. Almost like everybody knew everybody. Comments such as "Hey (x name), nice to see you again!" were common.

Our first In-World meeting

During class on 1/6, we had our first meeting in SL to discuss possible process to test the idea of our business

Week 3

In this weeks sessions, our team talked a lot about possible business models and possible business's. The trick was to identify which model would work best in Second Life. This was difficult for us because we are so new to SL. We developed a matrix that we used to filter out our business ideas. We met as a team on friday before christmas break, and in this meeting we completed the matrix and decided on a business. We chose to open an auction hall in SL. Charging users to post an item and possibly charging commission is a way for us to make a little money. I am excited to start this venture. I know it will be challenging because we are entering a very new business space, but I think it will be a very good experience. Over the break I plan to work on the first term paper, and look foward to working on the SL business with my teammates.