Help Wanted in Second Life

April 3, 2007

Sweden is setting up an embassy in Second Life and Sears and Best Buy have opened stores there, it should come as no surprise that recruiting companies are establishing employment offices there too.

Second Life is a social network where "residents" create likenesses (known as avatars), interact with one another, buy land, build homes, get jobs and shop in an ever-expanding virtual world. It's a make-believe world that does a very real $1 million a day in business among the 15,000 to 40,000 users who are online at any one time.

With a help-wanted classifieds section and hundreds of jobs on its job board, SLJobFinder.com, Second Life presents an enticing lure for recruiters who are willing to test the waters, just the way some have by communicating with gamers in such role-playing games as EverQuest and World of Warcraft.

This month, Semper International became the first real-world staffing company to open a Second Life employment office. A leading staffing agency for the graphic arts and printing industry, the Boston-based company is advertising for designers, animators, virtual-world builders and the like. For now, the jobs are in the real world; eventually the work might be for real companies that want a Second Life presence.

"You have to be creative," Semper COO Brian Regan says. That's why the company bought space, built an office in Second Life and accepts applications from Second Life residents. Another reason is that Regan is an avid online game player and thought opening an office in the virtual world would be a way to attract young talent to the print world, a "not sexy" industry in the digital age, he says.

Better known by its former name, PrintStaff, and before that, PressTemps, Semper provides temporary staff in creative, design, pre-press and printing services to job shops and large printing businesses that have short-term staffing needs. But, Regan says, as the baby boomers who occupy many of the administrative and craft positions retire, "that industry will be under duress."

"Getting young people interested [in print] is a challenge," he says. "Second Life is a place where a lot of these talented people are, so I thought it would be a good place for us to be."

Now, just a few weeks after Semper opened its virtual doors, Regan says he has received several applications, with one already a finalist for a real-world job.

Another entrant to Second Life recruiting is Jeff Worth, a contract recruiter for Advanced Micro Devices. He built Recruiter Zone, and while he and a colleague are the only two recruiters there right now, he has high hopes to turn the site into a sort of 24/7 job fair. "I am definitely looking for a community of recruiters—people who want to experiment and have fun," he adds. "This is not something that is going to generate a lot of results right now."

Still, he's had a few applicants for his AMD openings and gets a rush of job seekers whenever he advertises in Second Life classifieds with such pitches as "Looking for Mafia dons and cowboys."

"That's what appeals to the role-playing types," he adds.

IBM has a different approach. It has an extensive presence in Second Life, but much of it is off-limits to all but those the company invites. One of the public areas, however, is a flashy recruitment office that links out to IBM Canada's Internet recruitment site.

Last month, TMP Worldwide, a recruitment advertising agency that was once part of Monster Worldwide, said it would offer virtual job fairs on its invitation-only island for clients of the recruitment advertising agency.

—John Zappe

A day in Second Life

A day in Second Life is 4 hours long, with 3 hours of daytime and 1 hour of night. Many other quirks of the sun and moon: The sun orbits the SL world and travels faster during night, the moon is always full, there will not be an eclipse for many many Earth years (a year in SL is 10 days long).

Second Life Overview

Doctor Dobbs Portal

An excerpt from an article by Dana Moore and Raymond Budd:

What is so compelling about Second Life and other emergent virtual (nongame) worlds? In a 2006 interview, Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale explains that when entering Second Life, people's digital alter-egos (known as "avatars") can move around and do everything they do in the physical world, but without such bothers as the laws of physics. "When you are at Amazon.com [using current web technology], you are actually there with 10,000 concurrent other people, but you cannot see them or talk to them," Rosedale said. "At Second Life, everything you experience is inherently experienced with others." Think of what this would mean to a social site. Instead of posting entries and responses on slashdot.org or digg.com and then reading them from a web page or an RSS feed, imagine conversing in real time with actual peers on emerging stories from real Reuters or CNet news feeds. Imagine opening a storefront site for your next brilliant idea and having it literally be a storefront, where you could, in real time, interact with your user base and potential customers. Imagine a world in which you could multitask by first tending to personal activities from "home," turn attention to "work," then break for "lunch" in an RPG adventure or go to a virtual beach in the middle of the day.

That's the promise that Second Life suggests. But there are several other reasons why it should be on your developer radar: Commerce is built into Second Life. It has a real economy fueled by a real currency. Although most of the goods and services in Second Life are virtual, the money is real, and the intellectual property you create is yours. Thus, the programming you do in this world is convertible to real revenue. Residents spent over $200 million in this virtual world in 2006. Every object in Second Life is there because a software developer created it. Currently, the SL incarnation of the metaverse is the open frontier, the wild west. No large players dominate the landscape; by mastering Linden Scripting Language, you are on even footing with any developer anywhere. Potential customers are loyal to the environment and experience. It is estimated that second world "residents" currently spend 40 hours a month in-world, a little more than 10 percent of the amount of time the average American spends watching TV per month. Consider the positive impact for your company of that level of exposure to potential consumers. Second Life is inherently a social experience rather than a game-playing environment. It has been estimated that slightly fewer than 50 percent of SL residents are female; this far exceeds female immersion in game-playing environments. Any web-based business that can attract genders equally holds tremendous promise. Your creations are potentially infinitely scalable. You can create shade changing sunglasses or dirigibles, and after you sell the first copy, you'll still have an infinite number left.

Read more:
http://www.ddj.com/dept/64bit/198800545

MSNBC: A guide to Second Life's space frontier

Showcasing 9 space related Second Life concepts:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17865952/?pg=1#space_slguide_070330

Faithful build a Second Life for religion online

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

Now is the holy season for the world's Christians and Jews — on Earth and
in the parallel cyberuniverse, Second Life.

...Second Life was created by Linden Lab in San Francisco in 2003; its
founders imagined a social platform for an idealized online society.
Membership has soared to 5 million; it has established a thriving economy
and become a popular venue for politics and education.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2007-04-01-second-life-religion_N.htm

Second Life Voice - Public Beta !!!

How It Works In-World

When you are on a voice-enabled parcel, you can simply walk up to
another avatar and begin speaking in a normal voice (no need to shout!).

If your headset is correctly configured, you will see a voice
"intensity indicator" over your avatar. This indicates that your
voice is being sent to (and can be heard by) others on the parcel.
The voice intensity indicator will change color slightly and will
grow and shrink along with the natural volume patterns and
fluctuations of your voice.

If the indicator turns red, you're either speaking too loudly, the
microphone is too close to your mouth, or the volume control on your
microphone is turned up a little too far. Please make adjustments
until the voice indicator stays in the bright green range and only
seldom flickers to red.

When others speak, you will see their intensity indicators and hear
their voices as they will hear yours. Walk around someone who is
speaking to you to hear the voice move around in 3D, based on where
you are relative to that avatar. If you turn toward someone and move
closer, for example, their voice will be louder. If you speak while
walking around someone else, they too will hear your voice tracking
your position.

All the information and to download:
http://secondlife.com/community/bhear.php