FRANKthoughts

From the youtube profile: “Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving presentation, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. More about Randy here.”

I usually wonder about the future of the web and yesterday I stumbled upon this little nugget that got my brain juices flowing (thanks Techcrunch). Weblin is a service that lets you have an avatar online, traveling with you to every page. You’ll be able to chat to other people that are currently on the same site making your websurfing a social experience. The service also has a currency called “Kala” and I guess that soon enough people will start using it to buy virtual goods or even paying for real services. These kind of browser platforms are opening a whole new area of interaction online. Few questions that came in mind: How can this help with your online transactions? (talking to your banker avatar when you’re searching for a mortgage), How can this be used as an internal tool? (your employees can communicate & collaborate when they’re online), a branding tool? (branded avatars surfing the web?) and what will be the future of currency when every platform has it’s own? (Where can you get the Kala/Linden exchange rate?).

You only have to look at the phenomenal success of social communities and the booming of gaming, animation and virtual worlds to realize this isn’t just a game. For more similar services visit Techcrunch.

After jumping on board the virtual world spaceship without any strategy, brands learned that the rules of engagement are different and after getting the initial PR many have jumped ship.

I’m thinking that Second Life will have a second chance for brands and this chance will be in the training/education. Think about it like this: if using a flight simulator is good enough for NASA why not use a simulator for customer service, driving schools or even medical students? after all, isn’t Second Life a life simulator?

Learning to sail in real life requires studying a rule book and pass an exam. Than you’ll have to pass a hands on course. In second life you can actually tie a rope, get a sale up and even take the boat for a night cruise to learn the signals. Imagine if your organisation can reduce training times by half and end up with better results?

Another point is the fun part of learning. When we were young, we had fun learning as most of it happened as we played. As we grow older it seems someone had taken the fun out of learning. Instead of playing and experiencing we now have to read books and memorise dates. Second life can bring the fun and game element back to learning so we can enjoy it more.

Let’s see how long it takes for the first brand to start training employees in virtual worlds.

(Just had a quick look and found out that Scoble was on the ball in 2006!)

STA travel is one Australian brand that’s really gets online.
Check this out: they’ve got a facebook, myspace and friendster profiles.
They’ve got a second life branch with tours and bookings.
You can call an agent on skype and you can share any of their web pages on Digg, delicious, stumbleUpon, Reddit and Facebook.
They’ve got lots of travel blogs or you can create your own and you can even buy carbon credits to offset your trip.
Next time I’ll know who to talk about when asked which Australian brand gets it right and I’m interested to know how it works for them.

This is digital strategy 101 - have as many touch points as possible and be where your users are.