Didn’t you hear? Second Life is so ten minutes ago.
On Monday, the Yankee Group issued a press release whose first sentence claims “the hype surrounding Second Life doesn’t match its actual marketplace impact.” As c|net points out, the primary stumbling block isn’t Second Life’s challenging user interface or frustrating lag times, but its PC-centric mindset in a mobile world. Yankee Group goes on to say that “for virtual worlds and metaverses to achieve greater potential in the marketplace and grow beyond early adopters, the experience must be untethered to meet the needs of the [mobile consumer].”
Two thoughts:
- One of the key challenges facing carriers today is how does one properly provision services with extremely large bandwidth demands (like Second Life) when the hype cycle is an order of magnitude shorter than the provisioning cycle? Do you wait to see how the market develops and deliver terrible QoS in the meantime or do you take the gamble and potentially waste millions in CapEx? Hint: pick choice C - use Network Resource Planning to bring the hype, adoption and provisioning cycles into closer alignment
- Anyone who was frustrated with Second Life lag times in a wired/PC world is not going to be any happier if Second Life ports a mobile edition. Note to wireless carriers: if you thought adding video was tough, wait until you’re streaming content in both directions!
Have a nice weekend everyone!
October 8th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
While I like the thoughts, it’s unfortunate they originated from a report that’s since been pulled due to what appear to be extraordinarily incorrect number crunching. Turns out that SL may, in fact, be the stickiest application (the Guardian reported as much two weeks ago).
More and more it doesn’t make sense to trust anyone’s numbers.