ING enters Second Life to Learn and Facilitate
I have been quite eager to write about this initiative ever since I learned about it (and got involved a bit), but of course I had to hold back. However, the waiting is over, so here it is: ING get’s serious with Second Life!.
The first word in the blogosphere was via the 3pointD weblog (Virtual Holland Coming to Second Life from ING) that has somehow managed to find out about this (or was there a leak?). But given the fact that ING’s foremost purpose is getting feedback and learning from Second Life residents, this was of course no bad thing. This news will spread like wild fire to the targetted people!
So what is ING going for in Second Life?
Well in terms of physical presence, ING is building Our Virtual Holland, which means a place in Second Life with landmarks so characteristic for the Netherlands (also called: Holland). Think about:
- Windmills
- Tulip fields
- Deltaworks
but also:
- providing opportunity for residents to setting up small businesses, building houses design new products either on their own or together. (“We want to attract creative and entrepreneurial people and help you to explore the Virtual World.”).
Of course this is all very exciting, but in my opinion one of the most important aspects of this newest entrance among companies is the explicit “holding back” and “ask and learn first” attitude. Another is the community building and traffic generation strategy that is all over this initiative.
Companies that have entered Second Life long before ING (especially banking competitor ABN AMRO) have provided ING preliminary case studies of what could work and what not to do. And the result is actually nicely presented by the next quote from the Our Virtual Holland website:
We are not going to develop OurVirtualHolland by our selves. What do you think Virtual Holland should look like? And what should it not contain? Which activities do we have to start organising? And if you would get a piece of land in OurVirtualHolland, what would you create or organise for the other inhabitants? Please let us know and share your view on this concept.
also…(and now focussing a bit more on financial products and services):
ING seeks to gain a better understanding of improvements it can make to products and services by assessing valuable feedback from inhabitants who will experience ING in Second Life.
And finally (some vision):
ING is taking the virtual-world phenomenon seriously and expects that part of its future Internet activities will become three dimensional.
Well, let’s see what the reactions will be in the blogosphere and on the special weblog on the OurVirtualHolland website.
(Disclaimer: I am employed with a subsidiary of ING Group)
Related: all my Second Life articles
Technorati tag(s): Second Life, ING, ING Group
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posted Feb 22, 12:32 am on Feb 22, 2007 |
category: Second Life
/ OurVirtualHolland