The two organizations I picked for this project were IBM and Amazon.
IBM has a massive Second Life Presence. When you search for it in the map, a dozen things come up, including IBM Japan, IBM China, and IBM Italia. I chose the IBM Business Center, which seemed like it would be a fairly neutral ground where I would be able to read the language things were written in.
The Good: It was in English! And man was it HUGE. I could have explored that place for hours if Second Life weren’t so frustrating. The architecture was really cool—very futuristic. Also, it was actually day there, unlike most of the other places I’ve been in Second Life where it’s either night or sunset. The navigation was also well done. They had maps, which only required visitors to click a button in order to transport to the desired area. There were also maps which had clickable locations, and for those who preferred to walk (or fly) there were arrow signs pointing to the locations and most of the locations had signs on them to tell what they were. Also, many of the objects were clickable and led to links relevant to what the object was displaying.
The Bad: it was SO big, and most of the different islands did not have descriptive names, so it was hard to tell what exactly might be on them. There were many places and interesting buildings to explore, but many of them were annoying to navigate due to the complexity of the design, and some of them had no content. They were just cool-looking buildings that were there for the hell of it, which was okay to look at, but frustrating to get through and realize that there was no reason to explore them. This made me wonder why IBM needs so much space, since there really wasn’t that much content in the place that I visited. It seems like the whole thing could have been consolidated much more efficiently.
I would recommend a friend to have a look around at the cool buildings, but unless they were looking for something specific, I would not suggest hunting down the content, since it wasn’t interesting enough to be worth the effort.
Amazon had a really neat map, though there was absolutely nobody there, which made it a little desolate. Also, there weren’t really any interactive objects—just a whole lot of things to sit on.
The Good: this place looked awesome. It was themed like a jungle/rain forest kind of thing, which was funny (haha, pun). There was an awesome looking map of the place right when you got there, and little transportation disks that took you all over the map. The descriptions of the different places made it very clear what you were going to.
The Bad: the Amazon forest thing was cute, but kind of theme inappropriate. When I first got there, I thought I was in the wrong place. The map was difficult to use and rather uninformative. I quickly became fed-up with it. Also, it was hard to tell what the teleportation disks were right away. And nothing was clickable! Nothing! There were hosts of computers with a website displayed on screens, but they didn’t take you to actual websites. The few things that did take you to a website, the sites were incredibly specific. Like in the bookstore, there were a handful of books displayed, and you could go to pages for those books, and there was nothing that took you to a page for all books. It was somewhat maddening trying to find things to interact with.
I wouldn’t recommend a friend go here. It’s cool to look at, but there’s absolutely nothing worth doing. It’s easier to just go directly to Amazon’s website.
IBM’s space was by far my favorite between the two. There weren’t many things to do, but there were enough to keep me occupied for a little while, and there were even a few non-business related things, like a soda and coffee machine. Amazon’s space was just frustrating. They both looked good, but IBM’s space actually had some relevance to the service it offers, where as Amazon’s was a pun gone rogue. And IBM’s site actually seemed to serve an informative and business related function, while Amazon’s was just kind of… there.