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18 Dec 2006
US electronics retailer Circuit City has opened a prototype 3D online store.
The project is part of an experiment with IBM, Circuit City's systems supplier, to see how customers react to 3D virtual shops.
"Teaming with IBM in the virtual world is as much about sensing and learning from the community as it is about commerce. These immersive environments provide an interactive forum for testing and feedback," said Bill McCorey, senior vice president and chief information officer at Circuit City.
"Our ultimate goal is to understand the implications of virtual 3D worlds on multi-channel retailing, and to extend the connection we have with our customers to new spaces."
Instead of browsing through a web catalogue, consumers use avatars (3D virtual representation of themselves) to walk the aisles of the virtual Circuit City store and pick up and examine products.
Other immersive features include an area where customers can recreate their sitting room and figure out the optimal size television to purchase.
Or if a customer wants to learn how to use all the features of a new digital camera, they can immerse themselves in the 3D environment and see how to use the camera instead of reading a product manual.
The project with Circuit City is part of an IBM initiative to experiment with conducting business inside virtual worlds, and to solve business problems in a new way.
IBM is opening up areas in Second Life previously inaccessible to the general public. On these 'islands', which are spaces where people can build 3D objects and interact with others, IBM has been experimenting on extending virtual worlds for business.
Three key areas in business include: virtual commerce and work with clients to apply virtual worlds to business problems; driving new kinds of collaboration and education; and experimentation on pushing the limits with a broad community on what might be possible in virtual worlds.
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Problems with Second Life
Second Life is an extremely unstable and bug ridden product. The secondlife.exe viewer crashes frequently. The Second Life server system is overloaded; the system can't handle the load and makes the user experience continuous slow loading of images, slow saving of scripts, slow everything. The system goes down for for hours forupdates every two weeks and often has to be taken down again for hours to fix bugs the update introduced or to fix drastically bad changes to the user interface. The program is extremely vulnerable to having one's experience ruined by other user's misbehavior such as deliberately crashing servers or displaying hundreds of pornographic images during commercial events. The user interface is awkward to use and thoroughly repulsive and annoying to look at to many users. Second Life requires a computer with higher specifications than most folks who just surf the web and do some email own. Wells Fargo tried Second Life for its Stagecoach Island project and upon seeing the many flaws switched to a far more stable and less hardware demanding competitor ActiveWorlds. Businesses should keep in mind the many flaws and shortcomings in Second Life in order to protect their own financial interests and public image and in order to avoid hurting the growth of interative 3D communications by using a system with as serious a set of problems as Second Life has. Second Life's highly probable failures and problems will tarnish the image of companies that use it in the minds of those exposed to this extremely unreliable service. This from a user that has spent 40 hours or so a week for three years using the Second Life program. Second Life can be fun but it's far from ready for prime time.
Posted by: Second Life User 02 Jan 2007
No way to keep disgruntled customers out
One problem with using Second Life sites that are accesible by the general Second Life user population as a marketing tool is that there is no way to keep out disgruntled customers or others with a grudge against the company. Second Life allows users to chat with each other in private instant messaging sessions. A person with a grudge could just strike up conversation with with other customers and badmouth the sponsor and direct people to the competition.
Posted by: Robert Cogswell 02 Jan 2007