Welcome to my second first life

Let me start out my initial post by pointing out the pictures on the right. You will notice the words "winner" and "iPod" underneath their names. Yes, Circuit City is giving away a bunch of iPod Nanos in Second Life. The rules and everything else are listed in world. And to stop any confusion, the iPods are nanos that they FedEx to your home.

Many of us have experienced Second Life long enough to know that as a newbie, it's an awful lot like trying to scrape ice off your car with a ham sandwich. You can tell that you're doing.... something but you're not quite sure if that something is a good thing or not and in fact, you're still trying to figure out why you're doing it.

For those of us who have tried Second Life and stayed away, let me try to explain Second Life another way. First, it's not a "game" where you level up, score massive points, slay ugly beasties and/or save the missing/lost/kidnapped prince/princess/queen.

In fact, you can't even die in this world. One of my admittedly guilty pleasures is to fly up to about 1000 meters, switch to first person view and then fall. See, I'm deathly afraid of heights in real life and Second Life allows me to do things that I would never be able to do in the physical realm. In short, it's all about freedom, it's about interaction and it's about experiencing. (side note, it's interesting to point out that after a long long time of this type of skydiving, I can get above the 3rd step on my ladder without freaking out... worth investigating further I think)

Most of us who have been around for a while understand that with a video game, you have to make the right choice or else... and usually there's no going back. Once it enters your thoughts that you can do anything (and I do mean ANYTHING) the game takes on a whole new perspective.

I'd also be terribly remiss in my blogging duties if I didn't mention that Second Life is very much a social network. Imagine taking facebook, Myspace and a myriad of others and throwing them in a mixing bowl with a chat room and a video game with god mode enabled and you'll start to understand the possibillities.

It's this social interaction that has brought companies to Second Life hoping to cash in on the marketing opportunities that are there. Unfortunately, many of these companies fail before they even open for business.

The Second Life community had posted, blogged, made videos, begged and in some cases written to these companies explaining what it is they're looking for and what it is they want. Sadly, too many companies are stuck in the "You don't know what will work, that's why I'm the professional" mode.

One of the things I like the best about being on this project is the number of time I heard "what's the experience like?" in a meeting. The person above me really has a lot of desire to bring to the community something that it hasn't had from a major retailer yet... a great user experience.

Incidentally, if you're in world, hop on over and say hello. Just search for Wyatt Odriscoll or check out the Circuit City Island (and maybe try to win an iPod!) After all, That's what I'm in world for!