Use-cases for marketing user-managed virtual worlds.
Think product differentiation.
Think multiple markets.
The Kitely model
User-managed digital worlds have many potential uses, but "potential means you haven't done it yet." Not all those uses will be comfortable under the same brand. A bit of Design Thinking suggests a reinvention.
A bit of design thinking
- What business are you in?
- Where is there a demand you can meet?
- What is a user-built world from the user perspective?
- The Proctor and Gamble model
- The Kitely model
What business are you in?
- My question to virtual worlds:
- What business are you in? Don't tell me tell me what you do.
- Tell me what consumer want you satisfy.
- I remember an ad from a famous big virtual world "Be a vampire!"
- This grid thought it was satisfying people's need to be vampires.
- I would have preferred an ad: "Practice conversational German (or English)."
- But that was their business decision.
- They thought lots of people wanted to be vampires.
Where is there a demand that you can meet?
- That is an entrepreneurial question.
- Demand: people want it and can pay for it.
- Say you are very good at making vampires.
- That doesn't make a business unless there is a demand for vampires.
- There is not a lot of competition in the business of making vampires.
- That might be because there is no demand for that service.
- There is a demand for practice in conversational second languages.
- But a virtual world company lacks the expertise to meet it.
- Lots of schools do have that expertise. But they don't have a virtual world.
- An entrepreneur might see that as an opportunity to create a new product.
- Virtual world language learning
What is a user-built virtual world from the user perspective?
- It is a tool that could be used for many different purposes.
- But it is not ready for any of those uses.
- That is where the user-built part comes in.
- Users can build places for their purposes.
- But some purposes are not compatible with others
- Can you put a high school next to a porno place? Not even in a virtual world. But there are solutions
The Proctor and Gamble model
- Look at the brand web page for Proctor and Gamble
- Lots of products doing somewhat the same thing.
- Probably using mostly the same materials,
- Maybe made in the same factories
- But with enough difference that they serve different markets.
- The benefits of a shared infrastructure and of product differentiation.
The Kitely model
- Many use-cases for digital places have nothing to do with grids.
- Notice how I change the language to fit the interests of schools and businesses.
- Schools and businesses want to be seen as doing serious work.
- They do not want a grid or a world or anything virtual.
- They want a campus, classrooms, conference rooms, and other places to do their work.
- They can use a digital campus with digital rooms.
- They can use digital museums and digital field trips.
The Kitely Organizations option
- Kitely offers themed "grids". Independent websites using Kitely tech but managed by an organization
- Kitely announces virtual campuses for schools (and other organizations): Virtual worlders would say private grids.
- Bring the virtual campus into the school: Kitely custom viewer login page
- Kitely will offer private grids with dedicated login pages
- Why I specifically recommend Kitely for hosting a virtual campus (MUVE)
- We can bring schools into OpenSim. Not just people. Whole campuses full of people.
- An online school needs a digital campus. Not just for classrooms, but for many of the services currently offered on a physical campus
- Kitely organizations
*********************************
Visit me on the web
- Drop by my web offices Weekdays: 12:-12:30 pm Central time (US)
- I am available for free consulting on any topic in this blog.
- Cybalounge and 3DWebWorldz (Orientation room)
- I will be in both places, so you may need to speak to get my attention.
- Web-worlds, 3D virtual worlds running in a browser. Summary
- And we can visit the Writer's Workshop on the Web
- Don't register -- enter as guest.
************************
License
- Original text in this blog is CC By: unless specified public domain.
- Use as you please with attribution: link to the original.
- All images without attribution in this blog are CC0: public domain.
- Second Life, Linden, SLurl, and SL are trademarks of Linden Research Inc.
- Annotated screenshots made with Jing
- This blog is not affiliated with anything. Ads are from Google.
- Selby Evans in Kitely and Hypergrid, Thinkerer Melville in Second Life.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.