Pros to Using Second Life

There are a lot of pros to using second life. Being able to remain anonymous is a good thing too because, it allows people to come out of there shells and be themselves among other people. It's also like a social media network in that it allows people to communicate with each other. It can also be used for companies to hold meetings and even for interviews to higher employees. Companies can do power-point presentations on Second Life which just goes to show how far technology has come.

Sources: http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/22/magazines/fortune/secondlife_recruit.fortune/

Second Life Five Primary Benefits for B2B

Shared real-time experience. A website is an isolated, one-way communication channel, but Second Life allows visitors to interact in real time using many different media at once. For example, an avatar visiting a virtual meeting hall can view a video while text messaging with another avatar watching the same video.

A new forum for explaining complex products and services. By combining different communications channels in Second Life, companies can let customers see and experience products and services that are difficult to conceptualize in traditional media such as print. For example, PA Consulting has built a "smart home" in Second Life where visitors can play with futuristic high-tech and energy-saving technologies for the home. On Dell's Second Life island, visitors can enter a giant 3-D Dell computer to see the inner workings of a PC. Most important, if visitors have questions, a virtual representative can answer them in the moment.

Inexpensive prototyping and customer focus groups. For example, PA Consulting built a virtual bank branch for a client to gauge customer reaction to the space and to give bank representatives a chance to try different sales techniques on visitors.

Training and recruiting. Second Life is becoming a valuable training ground for Cisco, which recently conducted its network academy instructor training series inside the virtual world. Meanwhile, PA Consulting uses its virtual island to ask job applicants questions in real time, just as during a job interview, as do other organizations, including Microsoft, HP, and the Vancouver Police Department.

Global reach and accessibility. Second Life meetings can replace in-person meetings and teleconferences. Dell, for example, has a virtual conference center for meetings and events and a theater for product announcements and webcasts. Cisco holds its monthly user group gatherings and events with partner companies in Second Life and has a virtual trade show floor where the company holds product launches for the press and analysts

Source: http://www.itsma.com/NL/article.asp?ID=360

The Cons to Second Life

Second Life seems like a very good idea but there are many down sides to it as well. For one it requires a high speed internet connection to run properly. It takes up a lot of space on your hard drive because of this, it tends to slow ones computer causing it to lag and/or crash. It also requires that you have a good video/graphics card. Another thing people start to forget that it isn't real and they start getting hooked on to it. One can even fall in love with someone that they have met in the virtual world and start giving away personal information to someone who they don't even know if they are who they say they are. If one chooses to use Second Life they need to remember that not everyone on the internet is who they say they are.

Sources: http://iris.nyit.edu/~ssafara/The%20Pros%20and%20Cons%20of%20Second%20Life.pdf

http://dusanwriter.com/?p=203

What is Second Life by: Hector Cardona

Second Life is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab launched on June 23, 2003. Built into the software is a 3D modeling tool based around simple geometric shapes that allows a resident to build virtual objects.

Avatars may take any form that users choose such as human, animal, vegetable, mineral, or a combination. Residents may choose to resemble themselves as they are in real life or they may choose even more abstract forms given that almost every aspect of an avatar is fully customizable.

Second Life has an internal currency, the Linden dollar, it can be used to buy, sell, rent or trade land or goods and services with other users. Virtual goods include buildings, vehicles, devices of all kinds, animations, clothing, skin, hair, jewelry, flora and fauna, and works of art.

Premium membership allows the Resident to own land, with the first 512 m².There is no upper limit on tier at the highest level, the user pays US$295 for their first 65536 m². Any land must first be purchased from either Linden Lab or a private seller. There are four types of land regions such as Mainland, Private Region, Homestead and Open space. Mainland regions form one continuous land mass, while Private regions are islands. Open space regions may be either Mainland or Private, but have lower prim limits and traffic use levels than Mainland regions. Residents must own a region, either Mainland or Private, to qualify for purchasing an Open space region.


http://secondlife.com/whatis/?lang=en-US

My Experience With Second Life

I created a second life account and have found it rather easy to use. There are a lot of tutorials before you can actually start exploring the islands. The tutorials took forever to accomplish. While on it I noticed that there was a lot of ads within the program. I still need to use it more to get a better understanding of things work within second life. So far though it is clear that business are using second life for advertising.