An official announcement was posted on the There.com website that they will be closing their doors on March 9, 2010. We knew this would happen to a few more worlds, although I admit to being surprised at There.com’s departure. It looks like 2010 will be the year the wheat is separated from the chaff.
The document reads like a bit of a eulogy, filled with memories of the golden years and happy thoughts of their achievements. This, I can accept – they’re going down and aren’t funded by anyone, so there are no stock holders to give solid explanations to. What I’m not so sure about is the blame they cast upon the “economic downturn”.
This was a world whose primary source of revenue was virtual goods, an industry that saw $1.38 Billion in investment last year. What happened?
As business began to slide, they started tinkering with the toy:
Throughout the last year and this quarter, we have fought the good fight by churning out new features and revisions as fast as we possibly could. [...] introduced a whole new suite of casual games, a completely new foundation for our user interface, improved internal efficiencies for the product, real estate, a whole new level of Community Involvement, etc, etc. On top of that, we’ve revised our first user experience several times [...]
This is a little disconcerting. While the move to get the “first user experience” right was a positive one, it should have been perfected back when they opened the world in 2003. The rest of these tweaks are just that – tweaks. Ask Blizzard what effect applying patches to World of Warcraft has on customer loyalty and new user generation.
What it comes down to is this: you can’t be a computer geek or Web 2.0 guru after the initial build of a .com. Instead, you have to be a business geek and entrepreneurial guru. Specialists built the enterprise, and now new specialists are needed to run it.
To put it another way: architects and engineers who build skyscrapers don’t busy themselves making sure the offices are leased out and a maintenance crew is taking care of the place. The reverse is also true: most landlords can’t manage a construction project.
Sure, every once in awhile these two specialties are combined in one person, but this is why there’s only one Steve Jobs and one Bill Gates. Its a very rare individual that can handle both roles.
There needs to be an understanding, now that we’ve seen the dot-com boom and bust and we’ve seen so many of these worlds rise and fall, that there’s a difference between building a company and running it. This needs to be a common understanding, out there in the open, not as a criticism of anyone’s skill but as a way of placing value on specialization.
Last night Anders Grondstedt, President of The Grondstedt Group Inc., gave us some fantastic insight into how million-dollar ideas were developed at Schneider Electric and IBM. Executives from a number of locations were able to engage with each other and really work creatively by using a virtual environment. Costs were kept low, and productivity was even higher than usual for a meeting of this type.
Machinima is real-time animation using games and virtual worlds. NYC based Global Kids have enriched the art-form with their social issue work, all created in Teen Second Life. Draxtor Despres talked to participants and staff at GK as well as enlightens us with some machinima history and….the FUTURE….
Lots of goodness here: Draxtor, Global Kids, and a good run-down of a specific application of virtual environments. I’ll follow this up in the next few days with a good video about using Machinima for training if I can find the one I’m thinking of.
Do you know the video I’m thinking of? A general promo of Machinima for training applications? If so please leave a comment.
Anders Grondstedt, President – The Grondstedt Group Inc.
Join us today at 2pm Pacific Time in Second Life (by clicking here) for a rare opportunity to see how high-level executives make some of their biggest decisions. I’m very excited to announce that our guest on Virtual Worlds Keynote this week will be Anders Grondstedt, someone with tremendous experience both as a developer and as a speaker on all things virtual. Here’s the breakdown of today’s session:
How do two global billion-dollar corporations co-create value without the carbon footprint of flying executives around the world to meet? How do you build dialogue and consensus and collaborate and innovate with today’s post-bureaucracy organizations who work from coffee shops, kitchen tables and cubicles in four countries? That was the question facing Schneider Electric and IBM. One thing is for sure: Few breakthrough ideas have ever been conceived while staring at the phone and talking to disembodied voices on a conference call, watching a death-by-PowerPoint webinar drone-a-thon or participating in a video conferencing session that brings the drama and depth of a C-SPAN program. Learn how they turned to the virtual world to create customer intimacy and break through innovation ideas.
Remember: only the presentation itself is recorded, so if you want to ask questions make sure you attend the live session. See you there!
—
To join us in Second Life, you’ll need to do the following:
Go to SecondLife.com, create an account, and install the software.
Log in through the Second Life software using your user name.
Click here to be teleported to our studio before 2pm Pacific.
