Secondlife.nl

In the past four years more than 364.000 Dutch inhabitants have registered with Secondlife.com. Three months ago Secondlife.nl was started. The Netherlands is now ranked fifth with 6,5 percent of total users. Compared to the worldwide figures: 5,6 million registered users, of which 1,7 million were active in the last 60 days. They spent 2 million US dollars per 24 hours.

Stats of April 18, 2007-05-10
Registered members in Secondlife.nl: 43.624
Average daily visitors to ‘0031’: 1500
Square meters bought on ‘0031’’: 111.776
Euro exchanged for Linden dollars: 35.000

The Dutch platform is also known as ‘0031’ referring to the international telephone access code for The Netherlands. It attracts on some days 1500 visitors; a company of temporary labour forces, Randstad, attracts some 186 visitors a day. Dutch companies and institutes are profiling themselves, mainly for marketing reasons. Big companies like banks amongst others the heavy battled ABN AMRO (no acquisition battle yet in Secondlife!) but also municipalities like Zoetermeer are present in this virtual world as well as the Free University. But also small and medium enterprises participate and have bought more than 11.000 square metres, if only to experiment. Also the association of Dutch nature monuments is active on ‘0031’; it offers a space to relax.

In the meantime a debate has started on the marketing blog Marketingfacts whether Secondlife is the next Internet hype. Reactions flooded in. Comments range from: Secondlife is an imitation of Habbo Hotel to Secondlife is a way for marketers to do the same as always and still be modern. Others think that Secondlife is a nice way to learn and only the beginning of something greater.

(I still do not understand why I should register for Secondlife.nl, when I can meet Dutch people all day. Do they have a virtual way to escape this 16,5 million inhabitants plot in the real world; then they start crowding together again. I guess that it is the same social habit of people with mobiles. If you do not use your mobile, you are socially dead. Would it be that Secondlife is there to see and to be seen; if you are not registered, you are virtually dead. It is not the ctivity, but the registration.)

Secondlife is a nice link to the virtual world and more attention will be paid to that in the coming years. In The Netherlands a Platform Virtual Worlds has been started to distribute knowledge about the development and application of virtual world and three dimensional internet. The technical universities of Delft and Twente, the Free University Amsterdam, the economic Erasmus University Rotterdam are partners as well as the companies ING, ABN AMRO, Philips and IBM. The platform will have its own website, where research results will be published.

Blog Posting Number: 749

Tags: virtual world, Secondlife