June 26, 2007
Virtual Reality a Bust?
Does setting up operations in Second Life, the popular online game, really make sense for nonprofit organizations?
Social-networking sites allow their users to create profiles that are available 24 hours a day, whether the user is on the site or not and an unlimited number of people can view a charity’s profile, but Second Life is more like the real world — with the same limits of time and space, notes Allan Benamer, former director of information technology at the Coalition for the Homeless, in New York, on Non-Profit Tech Blog.
“In Wikipedia, Myspace, FaceBook, etc. there’s a quick learning curve as you set up your initial presence but you’re not going to have to go in there every day trying to interact with people,” he writes. “It’s an asynchronous communication tool.”
Despite the buzz about the MacArthur Foundation’s announcement that it was setting up an office in Second Life, Mr. Benamer thinks charities will achieve better results in their marketing and fund raising by focusing on social-networking sites.
What do you think? Is Second Life a passing fad, or is it something savvy nonprofit groups should be watching and participating in?
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I think we have to be careful about making tool-driven recommendations to nonprofits about investing in one social networking platform versus another. Certainly, not all social networking tools are equal in their learning curves or are appropriate for all organizations today. It comes down to understanding what is the best tool/strategy to reach an organization’s outcomes and having an eye on what is on the horizon (http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com/)
and (http://www.holymeatballs.org)
Virtual worlds for the sake of virtual worlds or social networking for the sake of social networking is not going to be successful.
However, I feel that virtual worlds are here to stay, not a passing fade. That is after over a year exploring many social networking sites and virtual worlds.
At this point I think we’re still in the early phases. As such not all nonprofits organizations should be investing in resources to implement a campaign in Second Life. As Allan points out, there is a steeper learning curve and will require more resources than say a Facebook profile. With that said, if I were a development director, I’d certainly want to get on avatar and get the chance to chat with Mr. Fanton directly about the foundation’s funding interests, find out what they learning about virtual worlds and philanthropy as well as learn from first hand experience what opportunities virtual worlds present for my organization and its mission — and ultimately figure out what is a low risk experiment. And having that access is a benefit that Second Life provides. Investing in exploring the tool to see if it is the right fit is not a waste of resources. Having knee jerk reactions – whether to immediately reject or immediately jump in with full scale implementation – is.
— Beth Kanter Jun 26, 12:59 PM #
I think that there will inevitably be a backlash for any new social networking or web 2.0 application.
However, with regard to virtual worlds, I don’t agree that you can compare them with FaceBook and Myspace. Although they do share the stumble-upon factor (where you are positioned to find new organizations or individuals according to your location in the network), virtual worlds provide many more tools that are impossible in static asynchronous sites like Myspace and Facebook.
Our own Nonprofit community in Second Life has ongoing weekly meetings, demonstrations and classes (on how to use the tool in innovative ways and build in the scripting language), mixed-reality events (collaborating between the real world and within the virtual world), a best practices wiki, a community blog, etc.
The boundaries of cost, tech-ability, locale and most importantly prestige are wiped away within the SL environment.
It’s not just a tool, it’s also another location. There are no limitations for people who are not able to travel, people who communication limitations, people who are not techies, or people who simply would not have access to the kind of people that are all drawn together in this environment because they share an interest in this innovation as a new tool for learning, awareness-building, community-building and collaboration.
There are few places where the security issues and the individual time of a member are rendered less significant. The boundaries of SL allow you to have access to many whom you wouldn’t be able to meet with in the real world (for example,business executives, celebrities and those in remote locations). It also allows you to create experiences that the two-dimensional web would never be able to produce (for example, walking through a human heart or experiencing schizophrenia as if you were the schizophrenic.) As soon as we have web directly enabled on Second Life (or whatever other virtual world takes it place), you will be able to have a seamless experience between your satellite office and your web documents. Presentations at virtual conferences will become the norm, for example. Virtual worlds will soon be voice enabled and eventually become compatible with mobile devices, rendering them the future of the web browser. There is far too much potential to write this tool as a game or as hype.
— Susan Tenby Jun 26, 01:03 PM #
It’s not like we have to choose either/or! Second Life is great for enabling rich learning experiences, creative expression, and complex interpersonal interactions. It won’t replace Facebook, nor vice versa.
— Ruby Sinreich Jun 26, 01:14 PM #
I am the business analyst at TechSoup, the founding organization and managing organization for the nonprofit commons. The nonprofit commons has received a lot of interest. In May alone the Nonprofit Commons blog secondlife.techsoup.org has received a tremendous amount of interest. In May alone it received over 900 visits. And interest is growing. On average the weekly meetings the nonprofit commons has in second life has about 20 attendees. Even in real life that is a pretty good turn out week in and week out. Also in these meetings, we have attendees that are from all over the world. I think that this is the really exciting aspect of second life. It removes location as a barriers. Nonprofits can come together by cause and not be limited by geographic barriers.
— Malin Coleridge Jun 26, 02:04 PM #
We seem to be all in agreement. But to jump on this ride…
We launched a blog to document the work of our non-profit in Second Life just a year ago. We now receive about 20,000 visitors a month.
Should a non-profit have an email account OR a web site? It’s really a question of how much an organization wants to invest in using new media tools and how much its audience used those tools. So it really depends on a case by case basis, but I think we’d all agree that for some time both social networks and Second Life will be important tools in our online programmatic and outreach toolkids.
— Barry Joseph Jun 26, 08:24 PM #