September 25th 2006
Yesterday I had the chance to be given a sneak peek at Penguin UK’s first steps in Second Life using Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash as the vehicle.
My first reaction was “is this it?”
Knowing the book I was expecting a lot more then just a HUD that would pop up pages of the book I could flip through or listen to some audio.
What I did like from a business perspective is that right there in the HUD I can click on a link to buy the book through a special page set up just for Second Life visitors. That is smart because it’ll let them know if the HUD is driving book sales or not.
After reading their press release I feel a bit better about all this because what they are trying to do is bring themselves and their library into Second Life. They hint at a virtual bookshelf of all their publications which I’m looking forward to seeing and hopefully adding to my office. If they do it right, I hope they make it so that new titles can be auto updated to it so that the bookshelf can grow with new titles.
A special thanks to Jeremy Neumann (in the pictufor giving me the sneak preview. I said to him that I was expecting something more and I loved his answer which was basically “hard to do more when all of Second Life really IS what Snow Crash was.” He is right, but it would be neat to see some custom avatars or even a small build dedicated to the book.
Kudos to yet another business dipping their toes in the virtual waters. From the sounds of it Penguin Publishing will be jumping in full blown.
Posted in
Announcements, second life |
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