Google在华未能绕过跨国公司集体陷阱
2007年02月05日 《环球企业家》
高调开局之后，全球创新标杆Google仍未能绕过跨国网络公司的集体陷阱
坏消息似乎不能更多了。
整个2006年，还没有第二家公司像Google中国一样，纠缠于负面传闻、负面事实和负面统计数据。年初时，即使最悲观的批评家也不敢预言，网络业最炙手可热的公司在全球最大的市场里，将遭遇暴风雪般连绵的、让旁观者绝望的艰难时势。
本土化的最初手段——中文域名Google.cn和中文名称“谷歌”——成为了从硅谷到中关村的言论靶心。由此引发的质疑包括Google中国的原则、方法，乃至品位。非议方歇，6月起，国内网民们开始切实感受到，登陆Google正变得困难。不久后，咨询公司们就用不同的数据指向了同样的判断：Google在中国搜索市场的份额正从30%以上大幅度滑落，而一向被喻为“中国的Google”的百度，被评估拥有超过60%的市场份额。
还有来源不明但接踵而至的信息烟雾。“李开复离职”、“Google创始人表示将退出中国”、“周韶宁离职”……流言被重复多次，终于变成了现实：2006年底，其亚太区市场总监王怀南和大中华区联合总裁周韶宁先后离场。
更悲观的论调也已出现。一位对Google高度熟悉、但持批评态度的人士对《环球企业家》说：最坏的事情还没发生，不过是因为在全球势如破竹的Google尚没有撤出中国的必要——就像2年前的eBay一样。
喧哗与骚动中，人们仿佛有意忽视了Google中国当前的唯一领导者，李开复的声音。
这并不难理解。如人们多年来所见到的，这个学者般温和的职业经理人，似乎永远在良好自控之下：无论何时，他都是平静的、节制的、也是职业的。在多数人看来，重压之下，李开复表现得太过从容，以至于难以相信。
毫不意外的，在2007年1月李与本刊的几度访问中，他依旧乐观：
——2006年是中文搜索市场马太效应浮现的一年？“没有。我们在美国的经验证明，当你的搜索毫无疑问的比别人好的时候，一定会造成用户行为的改变。”
——Google中国对市场份额下滑没有做出有效应对？“做事情一定要有序，不能本末倒置。我们的战略是先打造一个团队，然后做最好的产品，然后再考虑市场份额和营业额。不能因为一、两个报告就乱了阵脚。”
——2007年能对Google中国期待什么？“市场份额会戏剧性增长。我们试着去打破跨国互联网公司在中国不能成功的论断。”
信或不信这些说法，一个再朴素不过的疑问是：既然前景如此乐观，比外界更了解情况的周韶宁和王怀南，为什么均以“个人原因”放弃分享美好前程？
人们或许忘记了，还存在着第三种可能：李的乐观，与周、王的离开是可以呈正相关关系的。
这种推断，并非基于常见的公司政治论。熟悉Google中国的人公认，这不是一个“玩政治”的所在。即使周、王去职后，你也不会听到类似“李开复胜出”的说法，或对周、王的苛责。
更为合理的说法应该是，正如任何一家跨国公司在其进入中国之初都会以不同的形式“交学费”。对Google中国而言，最大的一笔学费很可能并非是低估了竞争对手，而是理论上的最优选择、三名各具特色的成熟经理人，或许不能产生三倍的良好效果，而是相反的，让公司在不同的路径选择中摇摆。
这是一个在很长时间里，外界看不到、Google内部又难以看透的问题。如果将Google在中国所受到的外界挑战视为可以被看清的“因”，其内部所作出的应对就是难以被解析、更不可能被定性的“果”。每当遇到重大障碍，它的三名高层都会尽全力用自己的方式执行自己的战略，或许三人合力的见识最佳、能量最大，但其犯错误成本也是最高昂的——没有任何人有意愿、有办法为另外两个人的错误埋单。借用李开复对2006年的总结之词，“耕耘的一年”：如果一块地被同时撒播了两三种种子，会结出什么果实？
也因此，虽然外界所看到的Google中国走出了一条越发暗淡的曲线，在其内部，这是一个截然不同的故事。在《环球企业家》对10余名不同位置的Google中国员工访问之后，我们所能还原的拼图是：经历了2006年初的极限考验，在多种方向试探、摇摆之后，它终于在2006年下半年走上了李开复主导的路线。不可避免的，另外两个人作出了各自的选择。
【难解之题】
如果说招聘李开复引发的微软诉讼案对Google有何隐性影响，那就是从进入中国的第一天起，它就陷入了无法控制的“高调”之中。以至于它日后所做的种种事情，比如借用ICP牌照等事，都被放到了放大镜下拷问。
相对于外界不停调高的预期，Google总部显得颇为冷静。它显然从雅虎、eBay等进军中国成效不彰的公司身上学到了一些教训。教训之一是：不要急于盈利。因此，李开复和周韶宁都得到了一个颇为实在的要求：不以盈利为目标，只让尽可能多的用户使用到其产品。
而对于另一个被反复论证的教训：对跨国子公司管理者的授权问题，Google的高层们也进行了众多思考。
面试时，Google创始人拉里·佩奇和谢尔盖·布林不停询问着同样的问题：该怎样进入中国？去年初接受本刊采访时，周韶宁回忆，他当时回答说“需要公司本地化、产品本地化和人员本地化”，“他们非常同意”。
但理论上的认同和行动上的彻底授权终究还是两件事。在Google这样一家论才评辈的公司，放权基于双方合作的进展。2006年4月，当《环球企业家》采访Google亚太和拉丁美洲地区运营副总裁苏金达，问及总部对李开复和周韶宁能够授权到何种程度，她的回答是：“重点不是我们对他们授权多少，而是他们赢得了我们多少尊敬，表现出能得到相应权力的能力。”
独立看来，这是两个颇有远见的判断，但两者相加，就可能产生一个预期外的问题：Google中国的管理者如果想尽快“赢得尊敬”，他就必须做出实质性的成就。但如果他的工作成绩不容易被考量呢？
对于李开复而言，这是个相对清晰的命题。一定程度上受其官司影响，他在短期内的职务就局限在了招聘上。
招聘是一个契合Google自身诉求，以及李开复个人能力的工作。讨论之后，双方更是达成共识，把招聘目标投向了应届毕业生——Google本身有大量需要重新学习的技术，而且其文化过于独特，并非所有人都能适应。相对而言，毕业生们的教育成本最低，适应力最好。
当然，这也就意味着，Google在中国的第一年可能收效有限：毕竟找到一个质量符合Google需求的工程师团队需要大量时间，他们毕业时已经是第二年7月，又需要经历较多的培训，短期内在国内市场大肆扩张就成为了计划外任务。
当年9月起，李开复即开始了全国大学的“路演”。正是在李学校巡演的路程之中，他第一次遇到了周韶宁。在上海交通大学招待所附近的一个咖啡馆里，周对李直白表示：“无论我们在合作中有怎样的想法，我们都必须在一个问题上一致：这次我们不是为收入来到Google的，我们只能成功不能失败。”
但两个人对“成功”的界定是不同的。
作为一个多年在中国电信市场拼杀的经理人，周韶宁最擅长的是率领经营团队拿下定单。但对于Google而言，这并非当下最重要的能力——即使Google中国能立即获得百度的收入规模，那也不足其全球收入的1%。
唯一重要的，所谓“让尽可能多的用户使用到其产品”，或许可以用市场份额来体现。但市场份额是一个复杂的指标：只有李开复所率领的工程师团队将技术改善，周所带领的业务拓展队伍寻找合作、合资甚至收购机会，才能够取得相对应的成效。
这多少有些自相矛盾。周韶宁的位置决定了他期望通过迅速招聘市场上的成熟人才，及早做出产品和声势。但对于已经把大量精力投入于校园招聘的李开复，这并不是个容易做出的改变。
无可否认，李、周两个人都足够优秀，也有很强的求胜愿望。但他们是太不一样的人：李学者出身，一向以从容、温和的风格示人；周在UT斯达康就职多年，富有本土智慧，早在UT斯达康时，他就以强势、严苛的管理方法著名。非常能够体现两人差异的是他们如何使用私人时间：李用尽可能多的业余时间陪伴家人，而周更喜欢打高尔夫、唱卡拉OK。
别忘了，Google中国还有“第三个人”：王怀南。当Google将其从雅虎招至麾下，委任其为亚太区市场总监，总部的设想是，他应该覆盖全亚洲的营销工作，甚至认为王只要驻扎在美国就好。但王怀南表示，自己应该镇守亚太地区最大的市场，也就是中国。
也就是说，Google总部按照自己的标准选择了三个高层管理者，却没有足够认真的思考，是否给他们提供了他们默契合作的机制。如果这个组合是其中某一个人自行选择建立的结果，他们或许能比较流畅地达成站路上的方向一致。但因为Google总部只是独立选择了他们，虽然他们从不缺乏沟通，但性格上和角色上的差异，让他们更倾向于坚持自己的想法。
当然，短期内意见的不同并不是件很重要的事情。像外界一样，他们也能感受到自己进入了世界上最好的成长型公司，他们也有很多理由相信，自己能在中国塑造同样优秀的公司。
【晦暗时刻】
Google中国的2006年在一个小小的误解中开始了。
接到了总部通知，其首位工程师徐鹏程于1月3日前往北京新华人寿大厦的临时办公室上班。等待了一个小时，他并未见到自己之外的任何Google员工，只好拨通了李开复的电话。至此他才知道，美国总部通知自己时，忽略了中国的元旦假期。
更大的误解就在不久之后。
被授权政府公关的李开复选择了于1月23日发布中文域名Google.cn。它与Google.com的区别在于针对中国市场对搜索结果进行了优化，过滤掉反动、色情及违法内容。对于李开复而言，这是一个立场明确的决策：进入中国，必须尊重中国的法律。
但它先后引发了两波纷扰。首先是全球范围内，Google以从不过滤信息著称，这让其内、外部人士都对这一行为产生了疑议。感受到总部内的怀疑之声，李开复甚至打乱了原本的工作日程，抽出时间前往美国总部，回答工程师们的问题。这次非正式会议竟然有近500人参与。
在问答时间开始前，李对所有人说：“让每个人都接触到更多的信息，是Google的工作。但进入一个国家必须遵守一个国家的法律，否则就不要进入。”他得到了高层和大多数工程师的认可。
但到了2月，关于Google.cn借用赶集网的ICP牌照又在国内引发了争议。因为ICP牌照申请需要280个工作日，跨国网络公司普遍选择了。通过合资方式使用国内网络公司的ICP牌照，但Google还是受到了超出预期的极高关注，以至于信息产业部需要调查它是否“违规经营”。
虽然对Google而言，其立论不无道理：它以为雅虎、eBay所采用的借牌方式是被允许的。但对此，信息产业部的态度并不明朗。2月间， Google的员工每天等待负责政府公关的同事从信产部带回次日Google.cn是否会被迫关闭的消息。虽然外界明显感受到Google在华稳定性和市场份额变化是在下半年，但包括李开复在内的多数Google人士均表示，这是Google最晦暗的时期——如果Google.cn被迫关掉，就意味着 Google实质上退出了中国。这是一个李绝不能接受的结果。
一定程度上，这也影响了李开复在公司内部的形象。一种意见是：为什么在技术和牌照都不完备的情况下仓促推出Google.cn？
面对围绕Google.cn引发的诸多误解，李开复表现的相当平静。事后回顾时，他说：“应该说，经历了2005年的官司，我对外界的判断改变了，打官司的时候会看到更多误解的存在，当时我所碰到的困难远远超过其他的事情。”
曾有一晚，李开复将Google中国当时为数不多的员工召集到了自己的办公室，给所有人以最后的心理保障：“我已经和总部沟通好了，即使Google退出中国，也不会放弃Google在中国的员工。“
【信任问题】
ICP牌照问题成为了Google在2006年最大的困扰，在未获得合理经营权的前提下，它不能在中国放置服务器。这也就成为了其连接稳定性的最大制约。
但Google.cn引发了另一连锁反应：它影响了美国工程师们对中国团队的信任。虽然李开复飞赴美国所做的解释工作取得了一定的成效，但更真实的问题在于：Google是一个高度自治但又强调合作的公司，每个工程师对自己的程序代码有着比较大的决策权，如果Google中国希望迅速做出一些合格产品，必须得到不同位置上工程师的信任。
在Google中国取得任何实质性成就之前就让美国工程师产生了隔膜印象，并不是一个良好的合作开端。
事实上，与总部的磨合问题出现在工作中的各个层面。周韶宁试图招聘一个女秘书，却被总部面试了四次均通不过。而Google中国的销售分为代理商、直销渠道、大客户三条产品线，因为Google自身的架构分工，只有大客户向周直接汇报。
作为亚太区市场总监，王怀南同样感到工作受到掣肘。在2006年4月12日推出“谷歌”品牌前，他曾说服总部拍摄相关广告，耗资高达数百万人民币。但在Google全球高层考察过中国市场，并切实体会到“中国市场份额第二”的真实涵义后，相关人士立刻决定：叫停所有广告投放。
种种事件，都导致了周韶宁和王怀南在与总部的沟通中产生较大冲突。
相比而言，李开复更为在意沟通技巧。意识到Google在全球招聘工程师的英语考核过于严格，可能影响到在中国招聘的数量，他没有去和相关高层辩论这一政策的对错，而是非常小心地表示：这可能使招聘数量减半，而且，只要工程师愿意学，语言不会是个长期问题——这让Google最终将在华招聘工程师的英语水平降低到托福过关的水平。
为将跨国沟通的成本降到最低，2006年，李至少回到美国总部10次，前后加起来约50天，做过不少于5次公开演说。这充分符合他长期以来的风格。其在微软时期的同事、前MSN中国总经理罗川总结说：“虽然开复没有直接对我说过这句话，但我从他那里学到的是，去改变可以改变的，不去多想那些不能改变的。”
这再一次凸现了李、周、王的差异。据熟悉情况的人士称，周、王的意见是，既然总部对于中国市场缺乏了解，就未必需要凡事取得他们的认同，只要最终效果是良性的，信任就会逐步形成。
用来支持这一论点的，是Google日本的经验。据相关人士称，当Google日本落后于雅虎时，负责其日本市场的副总裁村上宪郎开始了“先斩后奏”的强势行动。当总部的一名副总询问他需要什么帮助，村上宪郎的回答是：“三点。第一，告诉我明年的三个指标：我们需要的市场占有率多大？我可以招多少人？花多少钱？第二，招聘的事情不能再通过总部。第三，给我滚得远远的，一年都别来找我，这就是对我最大的帮助。”
而这一破釜沉舟的要求，得到了对方的正面回答：“你不用向我汇报了，每三个月给我发一封邮件，告诉我日本怎么样。”更充分的放权让Google日本从2006年4月开始逐渐收复失地。
这就再度逼近了Google中国战略这个核心问题。所谓不顾总部意见行动，所能做的事情不外乎加大宣传力度，推出明星产品，以争取更大的市场份额。但在李开复的角度看来，招聘到的70余名工程师大多要7月才能开始工作，激进路线显得不切实际——在这个需要共进退的问题上，李、周、王三人始终不能达成一致。
另一个重要讨论是：在工程师们加盟后，究竟是短期内改善局面，还是以培养长期竞争力为目标，将Google的文化复制到中国来？或者说，究竟短期内出一些明星产品，拉动流量和销售，还是改善搜索质量，让新员工熟悉Google的风格，培植创新土壤？
一系列讨论后，多数人选择了后者，也就是“慢热路线”。可以理解，Google中国的工程师队伍以资浅的大学生为主，对他们放权创新，并不实际。而且，创新产生的杀手级产品是可遇而不可求的，反而改进搜索质量是可控的，也是能够让新员工们了解Google的最佳方式。经总部同意，新工程师们 80%的精力用于改善搜索，20%做搜索相关产品。
但对于周韶宁和王怀南而言，这是再沮丧不过的结果。据说就在工程师们开始正式上班前后，也即7、8月间，周提交了辞呈。对此总部始终不予批准。
即使在2006年下半年，他们也曾希望推动李提速，如当一名副总从总部来中国考察时，周韶宁做工作汇报时表示：Google在中国的收入保持着每个月近100%的增长，随即，他以玩笑话音一转：“开复，如果你的市场份额更高，我这边的增长还能更多。”
【李开复的选择】
耐人寻味的是，为何在周韶宁和王怀南的努力推动下，李开复始终坚持招聘路线？
最简单的解释是：这是李开复所擅长的。但也正因为所有人都能做出此种读解，这是个危险的选择：它太容易被外界视为避重就轻，而且，在Google中国的架构体系里，李对搜索的市场份额承担着更多的责任。
在不止一个场合，李会用开玩笑的方式解释说：“我招了这么多人，Google在中国怎么可能退出呢？”
这很可能是一句实话。李的位置让他不可能体会不到与周韶宁们同样的困扰，但他始终认为，如果说有什么能够让Google感觉到中国是无可替代、不可或缺的，那很可能不是短期内能够获得的收益，甚至不是短期内的市场份额，而是一个可持续的、庞大的人才库。
为此，他也做出了自己的赌注：代价不仅是在短期内丧失一定的市场份额，更重要的是，加盟Google不过一年的李开复，必须证明自己能让中国的工程师像在美国一样运转，并取得一定的成绩。
招聘应届生首当其冲的问题是，李曾为微软建立了一套有效的高校关系网络，微软在北大、清华等诸多大学设立了奖学金，而且一些表现突出的学生可能被送到美国，在微软实习一段时间。没有任何一所学院会因为李的离开愿意迅速放弃与微软的紧密联系。
但依靠Google的明星效应以及李开复多年来在国内高校积累起的声望，他依然延揽来当年毕业生中最优秀的70余人。这些学生达到了美国总部的招聘标准，而其数量惊人，的确让Google总部对中国市场刮目相看——2001年即告成立的Google日本，至今只有50名技术人员。
到了2006年9月，即使大多数工程师们还在培训中，美国总部对Google中国已经有了一个新的认可。李开复的直属上司，艾伦·尤斯塔斯来到中国，在给Google员工开会时说：“你们不仅要考虑针对中国开发产品，也要想着自己的技术对全球是否有价值”。
【自下而上】
就像此前李开复、周韶宁的讨论所展示的，Google中国有一个极富雄心的计划：复制Google——但究竟以何种手段？复制什么？并没有标准答案。
即使到了今天，Google在美国也是一家神秘的公司。试图复制Google，就必须从基础价值观到管理方法无一遗漏的拷贝。为此，李说服总部可以无限制地从美国带工程师回中国，并用各种方式征召回由工程师、产品经理组成的“空降兵团”。
“我不认为所有的人都适合Google的工作方式。适合它的人会非常开心，不适合它的人会无所适从”，2005年5月在硅谷加盟Google的洪峰说：“因为没有人告诉你，你应该怎么做。”
这种无人管理的状态，意味着两点：其一、每个人必须有效的自我管理。其二、必须学会与Google在世界各地的近万名工程师沟通，然后找到属于自己的位置。
“他们进来之后都习惯问我：我老板是谁？我就说：你没老板，就是咱们几个人凑一块干点事情。”从总部回来的谷雪梅说。她认为，虽然外界对Google丰富多彩的文化充满憧憬，但其文化的根本，是每个人都承担尽可能多的责任。
与承担责任同样重要的，是沟通技巧。因为Google的企业文化强调“自由、平等”，相信创意可以来自于所有人，这也导致了一种特殊的组织结构：程序代码分散在每名工程师手中，同样散落的，是每个人脑子里的创意和经验。因此，与多数跨国公司不同，Google中国如果希望尽快获得成功，就不仅要求李开复等少数高层与美国总部达成流畅沟通，更重要的是，每名工程师都须与美国对应工作的同事形成友谊。
这让洪峰们必须传授新人们这个组织里的各种know how。小到与口音不标准的印度同事沟通时，要敢于在没听懂时要求对方重复一遍。大到写代码的时候一不小心把总部同事的代码弄坏了，如何道歉、修复。
另一种情况是，一名新工程师用了大量时间制作了一个社区产品，但当他把程序演示给总部的同事，对方所能说的是：类似产品我们已经有了 Orkut，且技术更成熟，你的工作只能放弃——在Google这样一家有一万名员工的公司，无数人在编写着自己有兴趣的程序，如果不能学会了解其他人在做什么，就会产生大量无用功。为形成中、美两边的无缝合作，Google中国把40%的中国工程师派驻美国。
更难学习的是Google闻名硅谷的自下而上的创新机制，但讨论之后，李开复等多数人相信，这必须复制。
“对于任何一家大型跨国网络公司，想在中国成功都不可能寄希望于立即拿出一款杀手级产品，因为它的开发是不可控的。我们可以控制的是，通过形成自下而上的创新机制，我们能推出24款产品，其中有一、两款是杀手级产品，两、三个相对重要的。这是我们知道的，但那款杀手级产品是什么？我们不知道。” 负责Google在中国战略的郭去疾解释说。
自下而上创新的的基础，是以OKR(目标及关键指标)推进进度。在每个季度开始前，工程师要从行动、结果、时间各个层面给自己设立可评估的工作。他们不能说“我要提升搜索效率”，而是必须细化到“把平均每个用户做下一列的时间从0.3秒降到0.29秒”这种程度。这显然不是所有人一开始就能够适应的工作方式。
而且，因为是由每个人自行制定时间表，Google要求每名员工尽可能激进。如果最终能够实现其目标的70%，就算成功。如果能够实现100%，反而会被指为当初目标制定的过于保守。
然后才是“20%时间”。事实上，精确计算的20%时间是不存在的。它是一种尺度相对宽松的管理工具，让工程师在执行相对枯燥的改善搜索质量的工作同时，享受思考、创造的乐趣。
李开复承认，并非所有中国工程师都愿意积极参与自主创新，更多人担心自己的想法得不到认可。这是Google在美国所不会遇到的问题。
为此，李要求总监和产品经理们率先发明一些项目，然后推销给年轻工程师，让他们在这一过程中学会同时做两个项目。甚至有目的地组织头脑风暴，让工程师们就一个方向讨论，逐渐形成团队去开发他们感兴趣的产品——即使他们的想法，李开复们可能并不喜欢。
刚开始时，新工程师们很可能顾此失彼，因为对20%时间的工作更感兴趣，而不自觉地将其提升为50%的工作。但每一个半月对OKR进度的考察，又让年轻工程师们无法逃避。直至今日，仍不乏有人加班到晚上10点甚至夜里2点。
Google中国的第一批产品将于2007年一、二季度陆续推出。在提前看到了其中一些产品的演示后，《环球企业家》把一个问题抛给了负责国学搜索的产品经理盛佳：“看上去这不是一款能够提升你们流量的产品，它不是止疼片，而是维他命。你是否选错了方向？”
盛佳的回答是：这最初只是几名新员工的兴趣之作，但用了2个月时间做出了测试版本后，他们意识到了它的真正价值。“国学的数据难以被处理，难点在于两方面。一是生僻汉字处理，二是怎么把散乱的信息点结合起来。比如关于李白，搜索者可能从字、号查询，背后的程序必须将多个信息匹配到同一信息点去。这种多信息点的匹配、结合，很可能被应用到其他领域的搜索产品去。”它因此被立项为一款正式推出的产品。
这是一个奇妙的产品开发经验：如果换在一家自上而下创新的公司，产品经理甚至可能不会同意制作它，因为毫无疑问，它不能改善Google的市场份额。但现在，盛佳负责的团队可能找到了一种新算法，并能应用到其它中文产品中去。
【眼球理论】
回到那个原始问题：以搜索引擎风靡全球的Google，在中国是否依然具备与百度竞争的机会？
Google中国的回答是：持续改善搜索质量，只要与其他搜索引擎的搜索体验形成明显差距，用户就会用脚投票。毕竟，与操作系统或电子商务网站不同，用户转换搜索引擎的成本为零。
当然，这又取决于另一个问题：中文搜索的质量还会有巨大提升的空间吗？
否定者有之。想让用户更换搜索引擎，必须在搜索结果上具备相对竞争对手，能让任何人都感觉到的巨大优势。但拥有百度这样一个强劲对手，这并不容易做到。而Google中国所能相信的是：中文网络仍在高速壮大，更好的算法和搜索技术仍然会出现。而且，除了对网页的有效搜索，能够根据每个用户的行为历史更聪明地推荐相应的信息，以及针对手机的搜索业务，依然具备广阔的发展机会。
Google中国工程研究院技术总监刘骏用“眼球理论”来解释搜索引擎的改进：并非从一开始，生物就拥有眼球，它是为生存需要，从一个感光细胞起，持续进行微小改进，且每一步都建立在有用并产生效果的前提之上，最终，眼球产生了。“我觉得这个理论相当符合网络产品和Google的理念，”刘称。
改善的起点是设计一套评测体系：了解什么是Google的技术已经做到的，什么是欠缺的。负责这一项目的，是1995年即开始中文搜索相关工作的简立峰。2006年6月起，他设计了上百种指标，甚至超出了Google在美国单纯对于关键词的分析，去研究用户在某一个关键词上停留的时间，以及点击的位置。
一个意外的小发现是：很多人居然直接找到屏幕下方的“相关搜索”，点击进入新一轮搜索。
直到对大量用户进行了调查，才了解到很多人并不习惯在搜索引擎上输入自己所想的全部关键词。如何帮助用户减少输入，就成了一个问题。目前Google中国所尝试的方法包括改善相关搜索的质量，在用户输入时提供搜索建议，甚至开发自己的输入法。
而针对用户意见最多的问题——连接——刘骏等人也一直在寻找解决方案。针对因为连接不顺畅而放弃Google的用户，刘骏试图通过重新定向来解决这个问题：用Ajax抓取网页的搜索结果，然后进行判断，把那些可能存在连接问题的搜索结果导向Google.cn的路径上去。
这是在2006年9月初的一个周五想出来办法，当时即使是刘骏本人，也并不确信这样是否能真正解决问题。但在周末，1982年出生、中科院计算所毕业的刘超就做出了一个原型系统和演示环境，并发给刘骏。这最终成为了一个8人参与的大工程，甚至说服了美国总部，一路“绿灯通行”。这一功能从想法到上线只用了2个星期。
整个2006年下半年，Google中国的工程师有80%的人力投入于搜索结果的改善。据其内部评测，到2006年12月，其中文搜索结果已经达到和英文接近的质量。刘骏和简立峰均表示，在过滤垃圾网站、提高搜索结果相关性等问题上，Google中国进步巨大。而其一些针对中国的尝试，比如把信息的“时效性和新鲜度”作为一个参数以方便试图搜索新闻的用户，甚至被纳入了Google全球的主程序。
一个多数人不会否认的论断是：2007对于Google是至为关键的一年。所谓关键，指的是它的市场份额已经经不起大幅下跌。另一个角度言之，这也是李开复及其团队证明自己的最佳时刻。
李开复称，过去的一年还只是“把分内事做好”，即改善搜索水平。接下来的战略还有另外三个层面：其一、从本地搜索、社区、视频、知识四方面提供良好的本地化功能。其二、分析、理解、弥补现有缺点，找到吸引那些不愿使用Google用户的改善之道。其三、利用更多的渠道吸引新用户。
市场份额？这是多数Google员工谈及不多的一个话题。“如果说以前eBay们犯了什么错误，那应该是他们没有把自己长线的优势发挥出来”，Google一名资深人士称，Google中国的竞争优势也应是长期的。
短期内，Google的确缺乏着提振市场份额的关键环节：中国每年增加2000万互联网的新用户，但他们使用搜索引擎的最大目的在于寻找歌曲下载。这是一个违背Google“不作恶”原则的产品，目前Google中国仍在寻找合适的解决方案。
如果说长期而言，Google有何超越百度的机会，那就是对方的市盈率已经超过120倍，为维持股价，百度必须非常紧张的维持每季度盈利超越华尔街的预期。这种压力会让百度在某些决策上缺乏长线思考的勇气。
类似的故事在美国已经发生过一次：在雅虎们早早上市，不得不与华尔街周旋时，Google一直在雷达之外改善产品及扩张市场，直到其收入规模大到可以不在意
资本市场的意见，它才选择上市——相比百度，Google中国几乎不需要承担任何资本层面的压力。
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
8 February 2007
6 February 2007
两篇关于Second Life的中文报道
中国企业抢摊Second Life 虚拟王府井地价翻番
记者：窦毅
“我们是不是也考虑在Second Life上建一家产品展示中心？”1月4日元旦假期刚刚结束，国内某笔记本供应商市场经理朱兵将一份“虚拟广告投放建议书”放在总监办公桌上。
在建议书中，朱兵写着鉴于目前社区“地价”越来越贵，即使前景不甚明朗的情况下，也建议早点动手抢一块好一些的“地”，留做备用。朱兵私下告诉记者：目前全美最红火的Second Life上的“王府井”，虚拟地价已经翻了几番。而且最好的地段都快被抢光了。“如果再不抢的话未来只能到郊区开店了。”IBM、SUN、CNET、阿迪达思、戴尔、可口可乐、GE、MTV、索尼、路透社等大批知名企业早已在这里开了专卖店。
Second Life并非以娱乐为用户服务目的，这款2003年由美国林登实验室开始运营的网游最终目标在于复制人类现实社会的全貌。并且通过承认虚拟财务归属创造者所有，使Second Life成为一款帮助人挣钱的工具。Second Life用户除一部分土地费外，可完全免费地依赖电子方式完成大量商业经营。虽然，在中国它不被人们所熟知。
入驻企业与Second Life商业利益相连
据悉，深圳发展银行已成为第一家进入Second Life的中国
商业银行。此外2006年12月中旬，深发展刚刚与中国Second Life效仿社区《条条大路通北京》签约，此外本次参与入住企业还包括杭州天目药业等。
但相比Second Life而言，《条》却是小巫见大巫了。根据目前统计，Second Life上已经汇集了数十家知名企业和投资集团的入住。而这个虚拟社区中生活着近300万的居民(截至2006年中期数字)。
如此多的知名企业入局购地，并营造自己的商业展示中心，抢占有利地盘是其重要的原因。朱兵认为：尽管Second Life上土地随时有人出售，但是一旦大企业在“王府井”拥有了自己的地盘，基本上不会出让，所以抢占有利地势在目前相当重要。这直接决定了今后营销效果中的人气值。
Second Life第一位投资人是LOTUS创始人Mitch Kapor。外界有传言认为：正是在Mitch Kapor个人游说下，为Second Life带来了IBM和SUN等IT大企业。
目前部分土地在IBM投资后的一年多时间已经翻了数倍。而且随着不断有新企业加入，IBM所拥有的虚拟地产越来越高。此外有消息表明，SUN也要向Second Life投资大笔风险资金。
投资人还包括亚马逊网络公司的创始人Jeff Bezos等多位资深的商业名家、美国风险投资集团、Omidyar网络和美洲豹投资集团等。
他们除了获得一定的Second Life股份外，最重要的一个特点是被Second Life售予了部分土地。通过这种方式，投资人最直接地感受到自己与Second Life的商业利益相连。
谁都可以做生意
另外吸引如此多的大企业介入的重要原因，还在于Second Life上正在演绎的一部全新的自由市场经济发展过程。而这个过程中，各种有趣的新商业模式层出不绝。
谁都可以做生意，在Second Life里,不存在传统社会中由于个体掌控资源不一致造成的商业门槛，以及各种观念束缚。
一家美国衬衫企业在Second Life上开设店铺销售虚拟衬衫，并将上面的设计拿到现实世界销售。这样一来，濒临倒闭的公司复活了；澳大利亚程序员Nathan Keir，在Second Life里创建了一个叫做Tringo的游戏，结合了“俄罗斯方块”和“宾果”游戏，目前已经被任天堂工作室购买版权；虚拟电影等拍摄机构也正在其上筹备电影拍摄，然后拿到现实社会销售。
而目前在Second Life上最惊人的商业故事莫过于德国华裔女子钟安社。2006年下半年出版的一期美国《商业周刊》上，钟安社的网上虚拟形象成为了封面人群。她依靠在 Second Life上从事地产开发，拥有了价值现实货币100万美元的虚拟财产，成为最成功虚拟世界的“大姐大”。
同时钟安社带动了一个新兴行业——网络虚拟地产业经营的出现。2006年3月，钟安社在武汉组建了一家公司，雇佣大约17名雇员，开展 Second Life地产经营。“钟安社工作室”通过将西湖风景作为电子地产的配套工程搭建具有人文风情的楼宇，然后出售或出租给个人或企业获利。一个好的楼盘，世界一流名企云集，
房价、租金会像现实世界一样飞涨，因此其工作的内容不光包括程序、图像设计，还包括商业销售、地产概念推广的业务。
更酷的营销方式
Second Life的出现，一手开启了未来现实社会一次工作分工的重新分配过程。这样的变化历史上曾出现过多次，例如：网络门户出现，传统纸媒体、电视台开始思考，不再涉及哪些网络媒体更具优势的内容报道形式，转而更加强调自己擅长的优势领域。
IBM最早放开并鼓励全球员工使用Second Life，被认为就是一个找出自己哪些业务应该放入虚拟世界的过程。目前IBM在Second Life上不仅拥有自己的办公大楼，而楼内的各种会议场所每天都在帮助全球各地的IBM员工召开各种不同领域、规格大大小小的内部会议。
此外从今年开始，IBM还将这个原本只对内部员工开发的“IBM大厦”中大部分资源针对普通用户开发。
“这带来了很多好处，用户可以更贴心地进入虚拟IBM公司感受一把IT服务的先进性，这对于IBM而言，帮了大忙。”朱兵认为，“在IBM出售PC业务后，IT服务产品的形象化推广一直是个问题。”
通过Second Life这种方式可以将越来越多的产品背后蕴涵的文化、内容以更直接的形式表现出来。“你可以想象一下，饮料公司可以建立一个虚拟生产线让更多用户感受饮料生产过程中的文化。这些在虚拟社区诞生之前是做不到的。”电通广告公司田波告诉记者。目前Second Life上设立了一家可乐录音棚，它可以让进入的任何一个用户录制一张自己的虚拟唱片，也可以利用上面的程序，组合编码出自己喜欢的音乐。通过这种方式，可乐针对音乐爱好者展开了一种最行之有效的品牌推广工作。
“虚拟世界可以提供更自然、更符合现实用户逛街购物时间选择的过程。”田波认为：重现在很多现实世界无法办到的现实场景，也许正是Second Life带来的重要营销改变。“现实世界，你不可能带用户去参观生产线，带到公司办公间展示团队文化，而Second Life上有可能了。”
此外，不光快速消费品、娱乐型公司在关注Second Life的应用。越来越多类型的公司正在研究Second Life。11月28日，SAP大中华区首席技术官张侠在接受媒体关于SRM(
供应链关系管理)专业采访中，语出惊人地表示：“最近最关心的话题就是Second Life。整个商业社会产业链变化不定，包括我们SAP很多人认为是严肃做企业管理软件的公司，与目前时髦的Web2.0等毫不搭界，但事实上，SAP正在受到Web2.0以及Second Life发展的影响。”
截止到目前，记者获知：电脑直销商戴尔已经在Second Life建立了自己的直营店。据戴尔人士反映：“在上面展示XPS高端游戏笔记本非常酷！”
“说真话，怎么投？投多少？这些我都不知道，现在也没有方法去论证得出正确结论，但我总感觉投入是迟早的事。”虽然公司并没有最终同意朱兵的建议：像戴尔一样开设专营店,但是朱兵并没有放弃：“我最近一直在研究这种3D虚拟社区游戏，未来它会成为纸媒、电视、广播、门户网站、博客等营销工具之后的另一种最重要的营销手段。”
“钟安社工作室”
2007年01月13日 12:33
2006年下半年，作为武汉市重点扶持的高新技术企业——“钟安社工作室”成立。和别的高新技术企业不同，它们既不从事半导体芯片设计，也不针对最新的生物工程展开投资，而是用大约25名职员，每天登录一款美国网游Second Life（译做“第二生命”），进行虚拟房地产开发。
这款高度模拟人类现实商业社会的美国网游产品，正在全面摧毁旧式简单的传统电子商务网站的生意模式。精明的网络商务淘金者可能需要考虑一下，是否有必要将淘宝上的网店搬迁到这款网游上，因为已经有人借助这个网游产品赚到了“第一桶金”。
这样赚到“第一桶金”
“钟安社工作室”的杰作是将中国最经典的西湖美景等风情作为电子地产的配套工程，一并销售给致力于在Second Life上有所发展的商人和玩家们。这和现实社会的地产大亨没有什么不同。
河北出生，随丈夫定居德国的华裔女子钟安社是这家工作室的CEO，在她领导下，员工通过Second Life拍卖系统，每天争取用尽量低的价格拍买下一片地，然后搭建商住两用写字楼，并配套建设大型商场，想办法吸引可口可乐进入，设立自己的店铺，当然还要配套开发绿地，建造人造湖泊风景……
最终万事俱备，新土地商业氛围浓厚后，钟安社将房子开盘出售或出租。依靠这种虚拟的房地产交易，钟安社已成为不多的几位网络百万富婆之一。目前她拥有的Second Life货币——林登币价值已经远远超过100万美元。而且以钟安社的经历和Second Life呈现的勃勃生机，这足以宣告一个全新网络商业时代的开始。
某种程度上，“钟安社工作室”的商业模式极度类似于2003年在江浙一带出现的“网游代练公司”。大量的中小网吧主放弃了网吧经营，雇佣十六七岁高中毕业的农村青年，以每月三四百元的收入让他们从事一项外界不能理解的职业：每年3班倒，对着电脑玩《魔兽世界》等网游。这些青年人不断变换网游登录身份，进入画面后找怪杀怪。以《魔兽世界》为例，杀死一个普通怪兽可以获得一枚银币，一定数量的银币又折合成一枚金币。最后他们通过网络交易将金币汇拢到少数几个账号内，再将这些账号拿到欧美市场销售，以换取真实的货币。
不过待遇不同的是，这些代练公司并没有合法的资质，不但成为公安机关和工商部门严打的对象，而且也成为《魔兽世界》网游经营者眼中的毒瘤。《魔兽世界》运营商并不承认虚拟财产的线下价值。
Second Life来了！所有的一切都发生了改变。Second Life发明者兼运营机构——美国林登实验室承认网游上创造的一切都属于游戏玩家个人，而且随着“钟安社工作室”的成立，线下虚拟财产经营也开始得到政府的认可。钟安社目前正准备将工作室员工规模扩大一倍。因为越来越多的人开始在Second Life上寻找自己的家、自己的店铺。
更像现实的商业
和《魔兽世界》等普通网游不同，Second Life带给用户最大的诱惑，不是游戏本身的乐趣，而是其高度复原现实社会后带来的新商机。
尽管林登实验室并没有直接承认虚拟财产的现实社会价值，但通过其建立的兑换所，虚拟财产可以随时折算成美元，到沃尔玛买回玩家需要的面包、啤酒。
普通网游找寻不同兴趣爱好和不同收入阶层人，用乐趣换取金钱；而Second Life是通过为玩家挣取更多的金钱，来换取自己的收益。
根据Second Life制订的游戏规则，玩家用美元购买林登币，而后通过拍卖系统获得土地使用权，或者直接购买现成的楼房住宅。一旦商品出手后，玩家还可以将林登币折回美元。
一位35岁的英格兰工人，赋闲在家，开始只是无聊才玩Second Life，很快他就用脚本工具创建了一个跳舞球。这样一对Second Life男女见面点一下跳舞球，就可以拥抱在一起跳上一曲。这个跳舞球很快流行起来，每天可以卖掉300个左右，这样他每周就有约1900美元的收入。澳大利亚程序员Nathan Keir在Second Life里创建了一个叫作Tringo的游戏，结合了“俄罗斯方块”和“宾果”游戏，目前已被任天堂购买版权。
在Second Life上成功挣到钱的玩家经历不胜枚举，虚拟电影等拍摄机构也正在其上筹备电影拍摄，然后拿到现实社会销售。
之所以一款网游能取得如此的成功，是因为它极度模仿现实社会的发展。一家美国衬衫企业，在Second Life上开设店铺销售虚拟衬衫，并将上面的设计拿到现实世界销售，这样一来，濒临倒闭的公司复活了。除了衬衫店等传统电子商务生意外，色情场所、黑帮抢劫犯也同样生存在游戏中，甚至林登币与美元的“汇率”是不断调整的，随着Second Life上的商业景气环境而变，Second Life复原社会的真实到了极点。
也正是因为这种商业文化的真实度，吸引了越来越多的商家在Second Life上开设自己的品牌展示店。戴尔去年开始通过Second Life上的店铺向高端用户展示自己的高端游戏笔记本；可口可乐已经在Second Life上建立了自己的实体店铺，以供消费者观看饮料的整个制作过程等。
与Ebay和淘宝网相比，Second Life最大的优势是更像现实的商业，商人对Second Life的钟爱度甚至正在超过Ebay和淘宝等传统电子商务网站。由于Second Life表现力更强，大大优于简单的网页式产品展示，而且传统电子商务网站特别强调价格对比文化，这让在线商人们对商业创新胃口大降。
记者：窦毅
“我们是不是也考虑在Second Life上建一家产品展示中心？”1月4日元旦假期刚刚结束，国内某笔记本供应商市场经理朱兵将一份“虚拟广告投放建议书”放在总监办公桌上。
在建议书中，朱兵写着鉴于目前社区“地价”越来越贵，即使前景不甚明朗的情况下，也建议早点动手抢一块好一些的“地”，留做备用。朱兵私下告诉记者：目前全美最红火的Second Life上的“王府井”，虚拟地价已经翻了几番。而且最好的地段都快被抢光了。“如果再不抢的话未来只能到郊区开店了。”IBM、SUN、CNET、阿迪达思、戴尔、可口可乐、GE、MTV、索尼、路透社等大批知名企业早已在这里开了专卖店。
Second Life并非以娱乐为用户服务目的，这款2003年由美国林登实验室开始运营的网游最终目标在于复制人类现实社会的全貌。并且通过承认虚拟财务归属创造者所有，使Second Life成为一款帮助人挣钱的工具。Second Life用户除一部分土地费外，可完全免费地依赖电子方式完成大量商业经营。虽然，在中国它不被人们所熟知。
入驻企业与Second Life商业利益相连
据悉，深圳发展银行已成为第一家进入Second Life的中国
商业银行。此外2006年12月中旬，深发展刚刚与中国Second Life效仿社区《条条大路通北京》签约，此外本次参与入住企业还包括杭州天目药业等。
但相比Second Life而言，《条》却是小巫见大巫了。根据目前统计，Second Life上已经汇集了数十家知名企业和投资集团的入住。而这个虚拟社区中生活着近300万的居民(截至2006年中期数字)。
如此多的知名企业入局购地，并营造自己的商业展示中心，抢占有利地盘是其重要的原因。朱兵认为：尽管Second Life上土地随时有人出售，但是一旦大企业在“王府井”拥有了自己的地盘，基本上不会出让，所以抢占有利地势在目前相当重要。这直接决定了今后营销效果中的人气值。
Second Life第一位投资人是LOTUS创始人Mitch Kapor。外界有传言认为：正是在Mitch Kapor个人游说下，为Second Life带来了IBM和SUN等IT大企业。
目前部分土地在IBM投资后的一年多时间已经翻了数倍。而且随着不断有新企业加入，IBM所拥有的虚拟地产越来越高。此外有消息表明，SUN也要向Second Life投资大笔风险资金。
投资人还包括亚马逊网络公司的创始人Jeff Bezos等多位资深的商业名家、美国风险投资集团、Omidyar网络和美洲豹投资集团等。
他们除了获得一定的Second Life股份外，最重要的一个特点是被Second Life售予了部分土地。通过这种方式，投资人最直接地感受到自己与Second Life的商业利益相连。
谁都可以做生意
另外吸引如此多的大企业介入的重要原因，还在于Second Life上正在演绎的一部全新的自由市场经济发展过程。而这个过程中，各种有趣的新商业模式层出不绝。
谁都可以做生意，在Second Life里,不存在传统社会中由于个体掌控资源不一致造成的商业门槛，以及各种观念束缚。
一家美国衬衫企业在Second Life上开设店铺销售虚拟衬衫，并将上面的设计拿到现实世界销售。这样一来，濒临倒闭的公司复活了；澳大利亚程序员Nathan Keir，在Second Life里创建了一个叫做Tringo的游戏，结合了“俄罗斯方块”和“宾果”游戏，目前已经被任天堂工作室购买版权；虚拟电影等拍摄机构也正在其上筹备电影拍摄，然后拿到现实社会销售。
而目前在Second Life上最惊人的商业故事莫过于德国华裔女子钟安社。2006年下半年出版的一期美国《商业周刊》上，钟安社的网上虚拟形象成为了封面人群。她依靠在 Second Life上从事地产开发，拥有了价值现实货币100万美元的虚拟财产，成为最成功虚拟世界的“大姐大”。
同时钟安社带动了一个新兴行业——网络虚拟地产业经营的出现。2006年3月，钟安社在武汉组建了一家公司，雇佣大约17名雇员，开展 Second Life地产经营。“钟安社工作室”通过将西湖风景作为电子地产的配套工程搭建具有人文风情的楼宇，然后出售或出租给个人或企业获利。一个好的楼盘，世界一流名企云集，
房价、租金会像现实世界一样飞涨，因此其工作的内容不光包括程序、图像设计，还包括商业销售、地产概念推广的业务。
更酷的营销方式
Second Life的出现，一手开启了未来现实社会一次工作分工的重新分配过程。这样的变化历史上曾出现过多次，例如：网络门户出现，传统纸媒体、电视台开始思考，不再涉及哪些网络媒体更具优势的内容报道形式，转而更加强调自己擅长的优势领域。
IBM最早放开并鼓励全球员工使用Second Life，被认为就是一个找出自己哪些业务应该放入虚拟世界的过程。目前IBM在Second Life上不仅拥有自己的办公大楼，而楼内的各种会议场所每天都在帮助全球各地的IBM员工召开各种不同领域、规格大大小小的内部会议。
此外从今年开始，IBM还将这个原本只对内部员工开发的“IBM大厦”中大部分资源针对普通用户开发。
“这带来了很多好处，用户可以更贴心地进入虚拟IBM公司感受一把IT服务的先进性，这对于IBM而言，帮了大忙。”朱兵认为，“在IBM出售PC业务后，IT服务产品的形象化推广一直是个问题。”
通过Second Life这种方式可以将越来越多的产品背后蕴涵的文化、内容以更直接的形式表现出来。“你可以想象一下，饮料公司可以建立一个虚拟生产线让更多用户感受饮料生产过程中的文化。这些在虚拟社区诞生之前是做不到的。”电通广告公司田波告诉记者。目前Second Life上设立了一家可乐录音棚，它可以让进入的任何一个用户录制一张自己的虚拟唱片，也可以利用上面的程序，组合编码出自己喜欢的音乐。通过这种方式，可乐针对音乐爱好者展开了一种最行之有效的品牌推广工作。
“虚拟世界可以提供更自然、更符合现实用户逛街购物时间选择的过程。”田波认为：重现在很多现实世界无法办到的现实场景，也许正是Second Life带来的重要营销改变。“现实世界，你不可能带用户去参观生产线，带到公司办公间展示团队文化，而Second Life上有可能了。”
此外，不光快速消费品、娱乐型公司在关注Second Life的应用。越来越多类型的公司正在研究Second Life。11月28日，SAP大中华区首席技术官张侠在接受媒体关于SRM(
供应链关系管理)专业采访中，语出惊人地表示：“最近最关心的话题就是Second Life。整个商业社会产业链变化不定，包括我们SAP很多人认为是严肃做企业管理软件的公司，与目前时髦的Web2.0等毫不搭界，但事实上，SAP正在受到Web2.0以及Second Life发展的影响。”
截止到目前，记者获知：电脑直销商戴尔已经在Second Life建立了自己的直营店。据戴尔人士反映：“在上面展示XPS高端游戏笔记本非常酷！”
“说真话，怎么投？投多少？这些我都不知道，现在也没有方法去论证得出正确结论，但我总感觉投入是迟早的事。”虽然公司并没有最终同意朱兵的建议：像戴尔一样开设专营店,但是朱兵并没有放弃：“我最近一直在研究这种3D虚拟社区游戏，未来它会成为纸媒、电视、广播、门户网站、博客等营销工具之后的另一种最重要的营销手段。”
“钟安社工作室”
2007年01月13日 12:33
2006年下半年，作为武汉市重点扶持的高新技术企业——“钟安社工作室”成立。和别的高新技术企业不同，它们既不从事半导体芯片设计，也不针对最新的生物工程展开投资，而是用大约25名职员，每天登录一款美国网游Second Life（译做“第二生命”），进行虚拟房地产开发。
这款高度模拟人类现实商业社会的美国网游产品，正在全面摧毁旧式简单的传统电子商务网站的生意模式。精明的网络商务淘金者可能需要考虑一下，是否有必要将淘宝上的网店搬迁到这款网游上，因为已经有人借助这个网游产品赚到了“第一桶金”。
这样赚到“第一桶金”
“钟安社工作室”的杰作是将中国最经典的西湖美景等风情作为电子地产的配套工程，一并销售给致力于在Second Life上有所发展的商人和玩家们。这和现实社会的地产大亨没有什么不同。
河北出生，随丈夫定居德国的华裔女子钟安社是这家工作室的CEO，在她领导下，员工通过Second Life拍卖系统，每天争取用尽量低的价格拍买下一片地，然后搭建商住两用写字楼，并配套建设大型商场，想办法吸引可口可乐进入，设立自己的店铺，当然还要配套开发绿地，建造人造湖泊风景……
最终万事俱备，新土地商业氛围浓厚后，钟安社将房子开盘出售或出租。依靠这种虚拟的房地产交易，钟安社已成为不多的几位网络百万富婆之一。目前她拥有的Second Life货币——林登币价值已经远远超过100万美元。而且以钟安社的经历和Second Life呈现的勃勃生机，这足以宣告一个全新网络商业时代的开始。
某种程度上，“钟安社工作室”的商业模式极度类似于2003年在江浙一带出现的“网游代练公司”。大量的中小网吧主放弃了网吧经营，雇佣十六七岁高中毕业的农村青年，以每月三四百元的收入让他们从事一项外界不能理解的职业：每年3班倒，对着电脑玩《魔兽世界》等网游。这些青年人不断变换网游登录身份，进入画面后找怪杀怪。以《魔兽世界》为例，杀死一个普通怪兽可以获得一枚银币，一定数量的银币又折合成一枚金币。最后他们通过网络交易将金币汇拢到少数几个账号内，再将这些账号拿到欧美市场销售，以换取真实的货币。
不过待遇不同的是，这些代练公司并没有合法的资质，不但成为公安机关和工商部门严打的对象，而且也成为《魔兽世界》网游经营者眼中的毒瘤。《魔兽世界》运营商并不承认虚拟财产的线下价值。
Second Life来了！所有的一切都发生了改变。Second Life发明者兼运营机构——美国林登实验室承认网游上创造的一切都属于游戏玩家个人，而且随着“钟安社工作室”的成立，线下虚拟财产经营也开始得到政府的认可。钟安社目前正准备将工作室员工规模扩大一倍。因为越来越多的人开始在Second Life上寻找自己的家、自己的店铺。
更像现实的商业
和《魔兽世界》等普通网游不同，Second Life带给用户最大的诱惑，不是游戏本身的乐趣，而是其高度复原现实社会后带来的新商机。
尽管林登实验室并没有直接承认虚拟财产的现实社会价值，但通过其建立的兑换所，虚拟财产可以随时折算成美元，到沃尔玛买回玩家需要的面包、啤酒。
普通网游找寻不同兴趣爱好和不同收入阶层人，用乐趣换取金钱；而Second Life是通过为玩家挣取更多的金钱，来换取自己的收益。
根据Second Life制订的游戏规则，玩家用美元购买林登币，而后通过拍卖系统获得土地使用权，或者直接购买现成的楼房住宅。一旦商品出手后，玩家还可以将林登币折回美元。
一位35岁的英格兰工人，赋闲在家，开始只是无聊才玩Second Life，很快他就用脚本工具创建了一个跳舞球。这样一对Second Life男女见面点一下跳舞球，就可以拥抱在一起跳上一曲。这个跳舞球很快流行起来，每天可以卖掉300个左右，这样他每周就有约1900美元的收入。澳大利亚程序员Nathan Keir在Second Life里创建了一个叫作Tringo的游戏，结合了“俄罗斯方块”和“宾果”游戏，目前已被任天堂购买版权。
在Second Life上成功挣到钱的玩家经历不胜枚举，虚拟电影等拍摄机构也正在其上筹备电影拍摄，然后拿到现实社会销售。
之所以一款网游能取得如此的成功，是因为它极度模仿现实社会的发展。一家美国衬衫企业，在Second Life上开设店铺销售虚拟衬衫，并将上面的设计拿到现实世界销售，这样一来，濒临倒闭的公司复活了。除了衬衫店等传统电子商务生意外，色情场所、黑帮抢劫犯也同样生存在游戏中，甚至林登币与美元的“汇率”是不断调整的，随着Second Life上的商业景气环境而变，Second Life复原社会的真实到了极点。
也正是因为这种商业文化的真实度，吸引了越来越多的商家在Second Life上开设自己的品牌展示店。戴尔去年开始通过Second Life上的店铺向高端用户展示自己的高端游戏笔记本；可口可乐已经在Second Life上建立了自己的实体店铺，以供消费者观看饮料的整个制作过程等。
与Ebay和淘宝网相比，Second Life最大的优势是更像现实的商业，商人对Second Life的钟爱度甚至正在超过Ebay和淘宝等传统电子商务网站。由于Second Life表现力更强，大大优于简单的网页式产品展示，而且传统电子商务网站特别强调价格对比文化，这让在线商人们对商业创新胃口大降。
5 February 2007
Cover Story of Bussiness Week -- about Second Life
from Bussiess Week:
MAY 1, 2006 issue
Virtual Land, Real Money
Second Life is an online world where a savvy avatar can make a bundle. Its best known "land" developer explains how
Anshe Chung is the online identity for a Chinese-born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. She's the best-known executive in Second Life, an online world run by Linden Lab of San Francisco. Known inside the world as the Rockefeller of Second Life, she prefers to keep her real name private to deter intrusions into her human life.
Chung runs a very real business buying plots of virtual land, developing them into communities complete with houses, beaches, mansions, and other features, and reselling or renting those properties to Second Life players. Since she began two years ago she has amassed land and Second Life currency -- which is convertible into real U.S. dollars -- worth more than $250,000.
Even Chung acknowledges that it's a strange business. Recently, Chung's avatar, or graphic character, met Rob Cranes, the avatar of BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau chief Robert D. Hof, at her home inside Second Life for a chat about how she started the business and where she's headed. These are edited comments from that conversation.
Do you generally spend most of your time in-world in a particular place -- like this?
No, I am very nomadic. In fact, for more than one year I did not have a home, despite being the biggest land owner. I am always busy with developing land, selling land, buying land, or meeting with my team. I lived on one small 1,008-square-meter piece for six months, then was homeless one year.
What do you do on a typical day?
I usually get up very early in morning, then get in touch with the sales team to finish transactions they prepared. After this is done and information is passed on to the billing department, I have to deal with many quality-control issues with the development teams. Then I also get in touch with Guni (my husband), who is managing our development team, discuss projects and the market situation of the day. I also spend a little too much time with media.
How big is your team?
We have seven people in the U.S. and Europe who work like freelancers for us, kinda fun work. So they play the game with us. We have 10 people employed full-time in our new studio in China near Wuhan. That is just since this month. China is our main location now: management, billing, accounting, and development.
Offshoring, even in virtual worlds?
This is not a new concept. When I played Asheron's Call [another online game], the world where "Anshe" was born, I was the richest avatar of my server. I was kinda lucky with trade skills. Then the Russians took over the economy [inside the game]. Nobody knew, because they hid they were Russian. I found out after they hacked my account. This time we decided that we are not going to wait for Russian or Chinese people to come here.
Why China? Less expensive in terms of people?
We are able offer competitive salar[ies] there, yes. And of course I have very good connections there.
How much will the China operation allow you to expand your business?
This is difficult to tell. But we are ambitious. Honestly, once the team is trained completely, I think the land-trading sector might be hard for others [to] compete with us in. Right now, our plans are limited by how fast we can train people.
Are you looking at expanding into other virtual worlds?
Yes, there are other platforms, most of them in development. We are looking very carefully at those and we are in touch with some of the companies that work on them. On the other hand, Linden Lab is very good to work with. Second Life is still the most advanced one and has very big potential.
What do you like about how Linden Lab manages Second Life? You were quite unhappy in December when the company started allowing people to go directly to specific points inside the world, bypassing "telehubs" where lots of people gathered. That devalued your land, right?
Yes, the telehub situation was big mistake where Linden Lab screwed up in many ways. Basically, they acted like a government that decides to build one big dam and flood one city. However, they finally realized what they did and changed their policies. They made a buyback offer for devalued land. That way we still all took some loss, but within what one can call acceptable business risk.
Can you tell me how you first heard about Second Life, and also how you decided there was a business opportunity?
I read about Second Life on Terranova [a blog about virtual worlds]. Then I took a look at this seemingly hopeless little thingy. I logged in and it looked like an empty and dead place, incredible laggy [slow], clumsy, and ugly. And beside that, it seemed really pointless.
But I really liked the degrees of freedom to really change and edit this world and also the lack of strict and insanely limiting rules that the big companies usually impose in their worlds. I did not come here for business, but found it an interesting challenge to see if I could "play" here for free. I also made it [an] iron rule to not invest RL [real-life] earnings.
To what do you attribute your success?
One reason for my success here, I strongly believe, is that I am not only here for business. I am very deeply rooted in this world, like a real native person. Most people who just come here for money fail miserably. They are foreigners, act like foreigners, and lack deep understanding of this virtual country. Many of them are also lazybones who think you just need money to make more money. The truly successful people I know here all are deeply involved in life and society here too.
What was attractive about the land business in particular? I gather you started with other activities first?
In the land business at that time, there was nobody who did [a] large volume and professional service with low margins. This was not exactly planned. I think last autumn it become obvious that if I would start selling L$ [Linden dollars, the in-world currency] in huge quantities, it could become serious income. Something became very real when I was able send money to one poor boy in the Philippines and it was enough he could live on. Now it is exciting to see it creating jobs in China.
Do you see expanding the business beyond land sales? What other opportunities might there be?
We have moved from land trading to land development to community development. Entire communities. This continent here, called Dreamland, is unique in that it contains several themed and zoned communities. Examples of communities here are German or Japanese communities in Second Life that we are hosting, or lifestyle communities such as furries, gay/lesbian, gothic people.
Our new studio will hopefully soon allow us provide new types of content and services together with land that will take landowner experience in SL to a completely new level.
Did you expect to build such a large business inside Second Life?
Please do not think any of this was planned even one year ago. It more or less just overwhelmed me.
Does it all seem very strange sometimes?
Yes, at times it becomes really kinda surreal. I feel like I am reading a cyberpunk novel. This kind of interview, of course, is difficult because it blurs the online role and real person.
Yes, a little odd for me too.
Also, what now happens with branching out into RL. I don't know if there is any other company in the world that has actually started in a role-playing game. You can say this virtual role-playing economy is so strong that it now has to import skills and services from the real-world economy.
Do you admire any other activities or creators in SL?
In general, I am a big fan of some cultural projects here and also admire the people who help others connect who might have difficulty in RL, such as people who are immobile. I think these kind of places have great potential to help people have new experiences and realize their dreams.
COVER STORY
My Virtual Life
A journey into a place in cyberspace where thousands of people have imaginary lives. Some even make a good living. Big advertisers are taking notice
podcast
COVER STORY PODCAST
As I step onto the polished wood floor of the peaceful Chinese country house, a fountain gurgles softly and a light breeze stirs the scarlet curtain in a doorway. Clad in a stylish blue-and-purple dress, Anshe Chung waves me to a low seat at a table set with bowls of white rice and cups of green tea. I'm here to ask her about her booming land development business, which she has built from nothing two years ago to an operation of 17 people around the world today. As we chat, her story sounds like a classic tale of entrepreneurship.
Slide Show >>
Except I've left out one small detail: Chung's land, her beautifully appointed home, the steam rising from the teacups -- they don't exist. Or rather, they exist only as pixels dancing on the computer screens of people who inhabit the online virtual world called Second Life. Anshe Chung is an avatar, or onscreen graphic character, created by a Chinese-born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. And the sitting room in which Chung and my avatar exchange text messages is just one scene in a vast online diorama operated by Second Life's creator, Linden Lab of San Francisco. Participants launch Second Life's software on their personal computers, log in, and then use their mice and keyboards to roam endless landscapes and cityscapes, chat with friends, create virtual homes on plots of imaginary land, and conduct real business.
REAL BUCKS
The avatar named Anshe Chung may be a computerized chimera, but the company she represents is far from imaginary. Second Life participants pay "Linden dollars," the game's currency, to rent or buy virtual homesteads from Chung so they have a place to build and show off their creations. But players can convert that play money into U.S. dollars, at about 300 to the real dollar, by using their credit card at online currency exchanges. Chung's firm now has virtual land and currency holdings worth about $250,000 in real U.S. greenbacks. To handle rampant growth, she just opened a 10-person studio and office in Wuhan, China. Says Chung's owner, who prefers to keep her real name private to deter real-life intrusions: "This virtual role-playing economy is so strong that it now has to import skill and services from the real-world economy."
Slide Show >>
Oh yes, this is seriously weird. Even Chung sometimes thinks she tumbled down the rabbit hole. But by the time I visited her simulated abode in late February, I already knew that something a lot stranger than fiction was unfolding, some unholy offspring of the movie The Matrix, the social networking site MySpace.com (NWS ), and the online marketplace eBay (EBAY ). And it was growing like crazy, from 20,000 people a year ago to 170,000 today. I knew I had to dive in myself to understand what was going on here.
As it turns out, Second Life is one of the many so-called massively multiplayer online games that are booming in popularity these days. Because thousands of people can play at once, they're fundamentally different from traditional computer games in which one or two people play on one PC. In these games, typified by the current No. 1 seller, World of Warcraft, from Vivendi Universal's (V ) Blizzard Entertainment unit, players are actors such as warriors, miners, or hunters in an endless medieval-style quest for virtual gold and power.
All told, at least 10 million people pay $15 and up a month to play these games, and maybe 20 million more log in once in a while. Some players call World of Warcraft "the new golf," as young colleagues and business partners gather online to slay orcs instead of gathering on the green to hack away at little white balls. Says eBay Inc. founder and Chairman Pierre M. Omidyar, whose investing group, Omidyar Network, is a Linden Lab backer: "This generation that grew up on video games is blurring the lines between games and real life."
Second Life hurls all this to the extreme end of the playing field. In fact, it's a stretch to call it a game because the residents, as players prefer to be called, create everything. Unlike in other virtual worlds, Second Life's technology lets people create objects like clothes or storefronts from scratch, LEGO-style, rather than simply pluck avatar outfits or ready-made buildings from a menu. That means residents can build anything they can imagine, from notary services to candles that burn down to pools of wax.
PROPERTY RIGHTS
You might wonder, as I did at first, what's the point? Well, for one, it's no less real a form of entertainment or personal fulfillment than, say, playing a video game, collecting matchbook covers, or building a life list of birds you've seen. The growing appeal also reflects a new model for media entertainment that the Web first kicked off: Don't just watch -- do something. "They all feel like they're creating a new world, which they are," says Linden Lab Chief Executive Philip Rosedale.
Besides, in one important way, this virtual stuff isn't imaginary at all. In November, 2003, Linden Lab made a policy change unprecedented in online games: It allowed Second Life residents to retain full ownership of their virtual creations. The inception of property rights in the virtual world made for a thriving market economy. Programmer Nathan Keir in Australia, for example, created a game played by avatars inside Second Life that's so popular he licensed it to a publisher, who'll soon release it on video game players and cell phones. All that has caught real-world investors' attention, too. On Mar. 28, Linden Lab raised a second, $11 million round of private financing, including new investor Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN ).
Virtual worlds may end up playing an even more sweeping role -- as far more intuitive portals into the vast resources of the entire Internet than today's World Wide Web. Some tech thinkers suggest Second Life could even challenge Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT ) Windows operating system as a way to more easily create entertainment and business software and services. "This is why I think Microsoft needs to pay deep attention to it," Robert Scoble, Microsoft's best-known blogger, recently wrote.
WEAK SPOT
A lot of other real-world businesses are paying attention. That's because virtual worlds could transform the way they operate by providing a new template for getting work done, from training and collaboration to product design and marketing. The British branding firm Rivers Run Red is working with real-world fashion firms and media companies inside Second Life, where they're creating designs that can be viewed in all their 3D glory by colleagues anywhere in the world. A consortium of corporate training folks from Wal-Mart Stores (WMT ), American Express (AXP ), Intel (INTC ), and more than 200 other companies, organized by learning and technology think tank The MASIE Center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is experimenting inside Second Life with ways for companies to foster more collaborative learning methods. Says Intel Corp. learning consultant Brent T. Schlenker: "We're trying to get in on the front end of this new workforce that will be coming."
The more I kept hearing about all this, the more I knew this was wa-a-a-ay more than fun and games. So early this year I signed up at www.secondlife.com, downloaded the software, logged on, and created my persona. As reporter "Rob Cranes," I embarked on my journey.
And promptly got lost in the vast, uncharted terrain.
Click: I land at the Angry Ant, a nightclub holding a "Naked Hour" where avatars are in various stages of undress, dancing lasciviously. Is it getting warm in here?
Click: I stumble upon someone teaching a class on how to buy and sell virtual land to a motley crew of avatars sitting attentively on chairs watching PowerPoint slides. Do we get a toaster when we're done?
Click: Suddenly, I'm underwater at Cave Rua, watching a school of fish swim by. Cool, but what do I do here?
Click: Here's a virtual doctor's office, where a researcher runs a simulation of what it's like to be a hallucinatory schizophrenic. A menacing British voice from a TV urges: "Shoot yourself. Shoot them all. Get the gun out of the holster and shoot yourself, you !@#&!" Yikes, where's that teleport button?
My disorientation points up one of the big challenges of these virtual worlds, especially one so open-ended as Second Life: With nothing to shoot and no quest to fulfill, it's hard for newbies to know what to do. Virtual worlds require personal computers with fairly advanced graphics and broadband connections and users with some skill at software. "The tools are the weak spot," says Will Wright, legendary creator of The Sims video game, who nonetheless admires Second Life. For now, he says, "That limits its appeal to a fairly hard-core group."
Still, there's no denying the explosion of media, products, and services produced by users of these virtual worlds. IGE Ltd., an independent online gaming services firm, estimates that players spent about $1 billion in real money last year on virtual goods and services at all these games combined, and predicts that could rise to $1.5 billion this year. One brave (or crazy) player in the online game Project Entropia last fall paid $100,000 in real money for a virtual space station, from which he hopes to earn money charging other players rent and taxes. In January inside Second Life alone, people spent nearly $5 million in some 4.2 million transactions buying or selling clothes, buildings, and the like.
That can add up to serious change. Some 3,100 residents each earn a net profit on an average of $20,000 in annual revenues, and that's in real U.S. dollars. Consider the story of Chris Mead, aka "Craig Altman," on Second Life. We exchange text messages via our keyboards at his shop inside Second Life, where he hawks ready-made animation programs for avatars. It's a bit awkward, all the more so because as we chat, his avatar exchanges tender caresses with another avatar named "The Redoubtable Yoshimi Muromachi." Turns out she's merely an alter ego he uses to test his creations. Still, I can't help but make Rob Cranes look away.
SHOPPING SPREE
Mead is a 35-year-old former factory worker in Norwich, England, who chose to stay home when he and his working wife had their third child. He got on Second Life for fun and soon began creating animations for couples: When two avatars click on a little ball in which he embeds the automated animation program, they dance or cuddle together. They take up to a month to create. But they're so popular, especially with women, that every day he sells more than 300 copies of them at $1 or less apiece. He hopes the $1,900 a week that he clears will help pay off his mortgage. "It's a dream come true, really," he says. "I still find it so hard to believe."
His story makes me want to venture further into this economy. Besides, my photo editor is nagging me to get a shot of my avatar, which needs an extreme makeover. Time to go shopping! First I pick out a Hawaiian shirt from a shop, clicking on the image to buy it for about 300 Lindens, or about a dollar. Nice design but too tight for my taste, so I prowl another men's shop for a jacket. I find something I like, along with a dark gray blazer and pants. As a fitting finishing touch for a reporter, I add a snazzy black fedora, though I'm bummed that it can't be modified to add a press card.
I'm also feeling neglectful leaving my avatar homeless every time I log out. It's time to buy some land, which will give me a place to put my purchases, like a cool spinning globe that one merchant offered cheap. And maybe I'll build a house there to show off to friends. I briefly consider buying a whole island, but I have a feeling our T&E folks would frown on a $1,250 bill for imaginary land. Instead, I purchase a 512-square-meter plot with ocean view, a steal for less than two bucks. Plopping my globe onto my plot, I take a seat on it and slowly circle, surveying my domain. My Second Life is good.
I soon discover that Second Life's economy has also begun to attract second-order businesses like financial types. One enterprising character, whose avatar is "Shaun Altman," has set up the Metaverse Stock Exchange inside Second Life. He (at least I think it's a he) hopes it will serve as a place where residents can invest in developers of big projects like virtual golf courses. In a text chat session in his slick Second Life office, Altman concedes that the market is "a bit ahead of its time. I'm sure it will take quite some time to build up a solid reputation as an institution." No doubt, I'm thinking, especially when the CEO is a furry avatar whose creator refuses to reveal his real name.
Premature or not, such efforts are raising tough questions. Virtual worlds may be games at their core, but what happens when they get linked with real money? (For one, people such as Chung's owner start to take changes to their world very seriously. She recently threatened to create her own currency inside Second Life after the Linden dollar's value fell.) Ultimately, who regulates their financial activities? And doesn't this all look like a great way for crooks or terrorists to launder money?
Beyond business, virtual worlds raise sticky social issues. Linden Lab has rules against offensive behavior in public, such as racial slurs or overtly sexual antics. But for better or worse, consenting adults in private areas can engage in sexual role-playing that, if performed in real life, would land them in jail. Will that draw fire from law enforcement or, at least, publicity-seeking politicians? Ultimately, what are the societal implications of spending so many hours playing, or even working, inside imaginary worlds? Nobody really has good answers yet.
My head hurts. I just want to have some fun now. It's time to try Second Life's most popular game. Tringo is a combination of bingo and the puzzle-like PC game Tetris, where you quickly try to fit various shapes that appear on a screen into squares, leaving as few empty squares as you can. I settle in on a floating seat, joining a dozen other competing avatars at an event called Tringo Money Madness @Icedragon's Playpen -- and proceed to lose every game. Badly. I start to get the hang of it and briefly consider waiting for the next Tringo event until I see the bonus feature: a movie screen showing the band Black Sabbath's 1998 reunion tour.
Instead, I seek out Tringo's creator, Nathan Keir, a 31-year-old programmer in Australia whose avatar is a green-and-purple gecko, "Kermitt Quirk." It turns out Keir's game is so popular, with 226 selling so far at 15,000 Lindens a pop, or about $50, that a real-world company called Donnerwood Media ponied up a licensing fee in the low five figures, plus royalties. Tringo soon will grace Nintendo Co.'s (NTDOY ) Game Boy Advance and cell phones. "I never expected it at all," Keir tells me, his awe evident even in a text chat clear across the world. He's working on new games now, wondering if he can carve out a living. That would be even cooler than the main benefit so far: making his mum proud.
TALENT BANK
After all my travels around Second Life, it's becoming apparent that virtual worlds, most of all this one, tap into something very powerful: the talent and hard work of everyone inside. Residents spend a quarter of the time they're logged in, a total of nearly 23,000 hours a day, creating things that become part of the world, available to everyone else. It would take a paid 4,100-person software team to do all that, says Linden Lab. Assuming those programmers make about $100,000 a year, that would be $410 million worth of free work over a year. Think of it: The company charges customers anywhere from $6 to thousands of dollars a month for the privilege of doing most of the work. And make no mistake, this would be real work were it not so fun. In Star Wars Galaxies, some players take on the role of running a pharmaceutical business in which they manage factory schedules, devise ad campaigns, and hire other players to find raw materials -- all imaginary, of course.
All this has some companies mulling a wild idea: Why not use gaming's psychology, incentive systems, and social appeal to get real jobs done better and faster? "People are willing to do tedious, complex tasks within games," notes Nick Yee, a Stanford University graduate student in communications who has extensively studied online games. "What if we could tap into that brainpower?"
In other words, your next cubicle could well be inside a virtual world. That's the mission of a secretive Palo Alto (Calif.) startup, Seriosity, backed by venture firm Alloy Ventures Inc. Seriosity is exploring whether routine real-world responsibilities might be assigned to a custom online game. Workers having fun, after all, likely will be more productive. "We want to use the power of these games to transform information work," says Seriosity CEO Byron B. Reeves, a Stanford professor of communications.
BUILDING BOOM
Whether or not their more fantastic possibilities pan out, it seems abundantly clear that virtual worlds offer a way of testing new ideas like this more freely than ever. "We can and should view synthetic worlds as essentially unregulated playgrounds for economic organization," notes Edward Castronova, an associate professor in telecommunications at Indiana University at Bloomington and author of the 2005 book Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games.
I get a taste of the lack of regulation just as we're about to go to press. Logging in to Second Life after a few days off, I see that someone has erected a bunch of buildings on my avatar Rob Cranes's land, which is located in a region called Saeneul. The area was nearly empty when I arrived, but now I'm surrounded by Greek temples under construction. So much for my ocean view. Online notes left by one "Amy Stork" explain that the "Saeneul Residents Association" is building an amphitheater complex, and "your plot is smack bang in the middle." She's "confident that we can find a *much* better plot for you than this one....Love, Amy xx."
Oh, really? For some reason, this causes Rob Cranes to blow a gasket. He resists my editor's advice to "head to the virtual gun store," but he fires off angry e-mail complaints to Ms. Stork and Linden Lab and deletes the trespassing buildings, planting some trees in their place. Then he reconsiders: Maybe a ramshackle cabin with a stained sofa and a sun-bleached Chevy up on blocks would be a great addition to his plot.
At first, I wonder why I (or my avatar) has such a visceral reaction to this perceived intrusion. Then a flush of parental pride washes over me: My avatar, which so far has acted much like me, hanging back from crowds and minding his punctuation in text chats, suddenly is taking on a life of his own. Who will my alter ego turn out to be? I don't know yet. And maybe that's the best thing about virtual worlds. Unlike in the corporeal world, we can make of our second lives whatever we choose.
Two Famous Characters in Second Life
The Land Baroness
Avatar Anshe Chung was created by a Chinese-born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. She keeps her real identity private, but that hasn't stopped her and her imaginary self from creating what may be Second Life's biggest business. Chung has amassed virtual real estate and cash assets inside Second Life worth about $250,000. She buys land wholesale from Second Life operator Linden Lab, and then develops it, resells it, or rents it out. She's known as the Rockefeller of Second Life.
The Artist
Chris Mead decided to become a stay-at-home dad when his wife gave birth to their third child. Mead, who lives in Norwich, England, turned his longtime interest in computers to online games. Stumbling into Second Life, he started creating "couples animations" -- programs that make two avatars dance or cuddle. His animations are so popular that Mead, whose avatar is named Craig Altman, earns up to $90,000 a year selling them to other avatars.
MAY 1, 2006 issue
Virtual Land, Real Money
Second Life is an online world where a savvy avatar can make a bundle. Its best known "land" developer explains how
Anshe Chung is the online identity for a Chinese-born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. She's the best-known executive in Second Life, an online world run by Linden Lab of San Francisco. Known inside the world as the Rockefeller of Second Life, she prefers to keep her real name private to deter intrusions into her human life.
Chung runs a very real business buying plots of virtual land, developing them into communities complete with houses, beaches, mansions, and other features, and reselling or renting those properties to Second Life players. Since she began two years ago she has amassed land and Second Life currency -- which is convertible into real U.S. dollars -- worth more than $250,000.
Even Chung acknowledges that it's a strange business. Recently, Chung's avatar, or graphic character, met Rob Cranes, the avatar of BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau chief Robert D. Hof, at her home inside Second Life for a chat about how she started the business and where she's headed. These are edited comments from that conversation.
Do you generally spend most of your time in-world in a particular place -- like this?
No, I am very nomadic. In fact, for more than one year I did not have a home, despite being the biggest land owner. I am always busy with developing land, selling land, buying land, or meeting with my team. I lived on one small 1,008-square-meter piece for six months, then was homeless one year.
What do you do on a typical day?
I usually get up very early in morning, then get in touch with the sales team to finish transactions they prepared. After this is done and information is passed on to the billing department, I have to deal with many quality-control issues with the development teams. Then I also get in touch with Guni (my husband), who is managing our development team, discuss projects and the market situation of the day. I also spend a little too much time with media.
How big is your team?
We have seven people in the U.S. and Europe who work like freelancers for us, kinda fun work. So they play the game with us. We have 10 people employed full-time in our new studio in China near Wuhan. That is just since this month. China is our main location now: management, billing, accounting, and development.
Offshoring, even in virtual worlds?
This is not a new concept. When I played Asheron's Call [another online game], the world where "Anshe" was born, I was the richest avatar of my server. I was kinda lucky with trade skills. Then the Russians took over the economy [inside the game]. Nobody knew, because they hid they were Russian. I found out after they hacked my account. This time we decided that we are not going to wait for Russian or Chinese people to come here.
Why China? Less expensive in terms of people?
We are able offer competitive salar[ies] there, yes. And of course I have very good connections there.
How much will the China operation allow you to expand your business?
This is difficult to tell. But we are ambitious. Honestly, once the team is trained completely, I think the land-trading sector might be hard for others [to] compete with us in. Right now, our plans are limited by how fast we can train people.
Are you looking at expanding into other virtual worlds?
Yes, there are other platforms, most of them in development. We are looking very carefully at those and we are in touch with some of the companies that work on them. On the other hand, Linden Lab is very good to work with. Second Life is still the most advanced one and has very big potential.
What do you like about how Linden Lab manages Second Life? You were quite unhappy in December when the company started allowing people to go directly to specific points inside the world, bypassing "telehubs" where lots of people gathered. That devalued your land, right?
Yes, the telehub situation was big mistake where Linden Lab screwed up in many ways. Basically, they acted like a government that decides to build one big dam and flood one city. However, they finally realized what they did and changed their policies. They made a buyback offer for devalued land. That way we still all took some loss, but within what one can call acceptable business risk.
Can you tell me how you first heard about Second Life, and also how you decided there was a business opportunity?
I read about Second Life on Terranova [a blog about virtual worlds]. Then I took a look at this seemingly hopeless little thingy. I logged in and it looked like an empty and dead place, incredible laggy [slow], clumsy, and ugly. And beside that, it seemed really pointless.
But I really liked the degrees of freedom to really change and edit this world and also the lack of strict and insanely limiting rules that the big companies usually impose in their worlds. I did not come here for business, but found it an interesting challenge to see if I could "play" here for free. I also made it [an] iron rule to not invest RL [real-life] earnings.
To what do you attribute your success?
One reason for my success here, I strongly believe, is that I am not only here for business. I am very deeply rooted in this world, like a real native person. Most people who just come here for money fail miserably. They are foreigners, act like foreigners, and lack deep understanding of this virtual country. Many of them are also lazybones who think you just need money to make more money. The truly successful people I know here all are deeply involved in life and society here too.
What was attractive about the land business in particular? I gather you started with other activities first?
In the land business at that time, there was nobody who did [a] large volume and professional service with low margins. This was not exactly planned. I think last autumn it become obvious that if I would start selling L$ [Linden dollars, the in-world currency] in huge quantities, it could become serious income. Something became very real when I was able send money to one poor boy in the Philippines and it was enough he could live on. Now it is exciting to see it creating jobs in China.
Do you see expanding the business beyond land sales? What other opportunities might there be?
We have moved from land trading to land development to community development. Entire communities. This continent here, called Dreamland, is unique in that it contains several themed and zoned communities. Examples of communities here are German or Japanese communities in Second Life that we are hosting, or lifestyle communities such as furries, gay/lesbian, gothic people.
Our new studio will hopefully soon allow us provide new types of content and services together with land that will take landowner experience in SL to a completely new level.
Did you expect to build such a large business inside Second Life?
Please do not think any of this was planned even one year ago. It more or less just overwhelmed me.
Does it all seem very strange sometimes?
Yes, at times it becomes really kinda surreal. I feel like I am reading a cyberpunk novel. This kind of interview, of course, is difficult because it blurs the online role and real person.
Yes, a little odd for me too.
Also, what now happens with branching out into RL. I don't know if there is any other company in the world that has actually started in a role-playing game. You can say this virtual role-playing economy is so strong that it now has to import skills and services from the real-world economy.
Do you admire any other activities or creators in SL?
In general, I am a big fan of some cultural projects here and also admire the people who help others connect who might have difficulty in RL, such as people who are immobile. I think these kind of places have great potential to help people have new experiences and realize their dreams.
COVER STORY
My Virtual Life
A journey into a place in cyberspace where thousands of people have imaginary lives. Some even make a good living. Big advertisers are taking notice
podcast
COVER STORY PODCAST
As I step onto the polished wood floor of the peaceful Chinese country house, a fountain gurgles softly and a light breeze stirs the scarlet curtain in a doorway. Clad in a stylish blue-and-purple dress, Anshe Chung waves me to a low seat at a table set with bowls of white rice and cups of green tea. I'm here to ask her about her booming land development business, which she has built from nothing two years ago to an operation of 17 people around the world today. As we chat, her story sounds like a classic tale of entrepreneurship.
Slide Show >>
Except I've left out one small detail: Chung's land, her beautifully appointed home, the steam rising from the teacups -- they don't exist. Or rather, they exist only as pixels dancing on the computer screens of people who inhabit the online virtual world called Second Life. Anshe Chung is an avatar, or onscreen graphic character, created by a Chinese-born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. And the sitting room in which Chung and my avatar exchange text messages is just one scene in a vast online diorama operated by Second Life's creator, Linden Lab of San Francisco. Participants launch Second Life's software on their personal computers, log in, and then use their mice and keyboards to roam endless landscapes and cityscapes, chat with friends, create virtual homes on plots of imaginary land, and conduct real business.
REAL BUCKS
The avatar named Anshe Chung may be a computerized chimera, but the company she represents is far from imaginary. Second Life participants pay "Linden dollars," the game's currency, to rent or buy virtual homesteads from Chung so they have a place to build and show off their creations. But players can convert that play money into U.S. dollars, at about 300 to the real dollar, by using their credit card at online currency exchanges. Chung's firm now has virtual land and currency holdings worth about $250,000 in real U.S. greenbacks. To handle rampant growth, she just opened a 10-person studio and office in Wuhan, China. Says Chung's owner, who prefers to keep her real name private to deter real-life intrusions: "This virtual role-playing economy is so strong that it now has to import skill and services from the real-world economy."
Slide Show >>
Oh yes, this is seriously weird. Even Chung sometimes thinks she tumbled down the rabbit hole. But by the time I visited her simulated abode in late February, I already knew that something a lot stranger than fiction was unfolding, some unholy offspring of the movie The Matrix, the social networking site MySpace.com (NWS ), and the online marketplace eBay (EBAY ). And it was growing like crazy, from 20,000 people a year ago to 170,000 today. I knew I had to dive in myself to understand what was going on here.
As it turns out, Second Life is one of the many so-called massively multiplayer online games that are booming in popularity these days. Because thousands of people can play at once, they're fundamentally different from traditional computer games in which one or two people play on one PC. In these games, typified by the current No. 1 seller, World of Warcraft, from Vivendi Universal's (V ) Blizzard Entertainment unit, players are actors such as warriors, miners, or hunters in an endless medieval-style quest for virtual gold and power.
All told, at least 10 million people pay $15 and up a month to play these games, and maybe 20 million more log in once in a while. Some players call World of Warcraft "the new golf," as young colleagues and business partners gather online to slay orcs instead of gathering on the green to hack away at little white balls. Says eBay Inc. founder and Chairman Pierre M. Omidyar, whose investing group, Omidyar Network, is a Linden Lab backer: "This generation that grew up on video games is blurring the lines between games and real life."
Second Life hurls all this to the extreme end of the playing field. In fact, it's a stretch to call it a game because the residents, as players prefer to be called, create everything. Unlike in other virtual worlds, Second Life's technology lets people create objects like clothes or storefronts from scratch, LEGO-style, rather than simply pluck avatar outfits or ready-made buildings from a menu. That means residents can build anything they can imagine, from notary services to candles that burn down to pools of wax.
PROPERTY RIGHTS
You might wonder, as I did at first, what's the point? Well, for one, it's no less real a form of entertainment or personal fulfillment than, say, playing a video game, collecting matchbook covers, or building a life list of birds you've seen. The growing appeal also reflects a new model for media entertainment that the Web first kicked off: Don't just watch -- do something. "They all feel like they're creating a new world, which they are," says Linden Lab Chief Executive Philip Rosedale.
Besides, in one important way, this virtual stuff isn't imaginary at all. In November, 2003, Linden Lab made a policy change unprecedented in online games: It allowed Second Life residents to retain full ownership of their virtual creations. The inception of property rights in the virtual world made for a thriving market economy. Programmer Nathan Keir in Australia, for example, created a game played by avatars inside Second Life that's so popular he licensed it to a publisher, who'll soon release it on video game players and cell phones. All that has caught real-world investors' attention, too. On Mar. 28, Linden Lab raised a second, $11 million round of private financing, including new investor Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN ).
Virtual worlds may end up playing an even more sweeping role -- as far more intuitive portals into the vast resources of the entire Internet than today's World Wide Web. Some tech thinkers suggest Second Life could even challenge Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT ) Windows operating system as a way to more easily create entertainment and business software and services. "This is why I think Microsoft needs to pay deep attention to it," Robert Scoble, Microsoft's best-known blogger, recently wrote.
WEAK SPOT
A lot of other real-world businesses are paying attention. That's because virtual worlds could transform the way they operate by providing a new template for getting work done, from training and collaboration to product design and marketing. The British branding firm Rivers Run Red is working with real-world fashion firms and media companies inside Second Life, where they're creating designs that can be viewed in all their 3D glory by colleagues anywhere in the world. A consortium of corporate training folks from Wal-Mart Stores (WMT ), American Express (AXP ), Intel (INTC ), and more than 200 other companies, organized by learning and technology think tank The MASIE Center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is experimenting inside Second Life with ways for companies to foster more collaborative learning methods. Says Intel Corp. learning consultant Brent T. Schlenker: "We're trying to get in on the front end of this new workforce that will be coming."
The more I kept hearing about all this, the more I knew this was wa-a-a-ay more than fun and games. So early this year I signed up at www.secondlife.com, downloaded the software, logged on, and created my persona. As reporter "Rob Cranes," I embarked on my journey.
And promptly got lost in the vast, uncharted terrain.
Click: I land at the Angry Ant, a nightclub holding a "Naked Hour" where avatars are in various stages of undress, dancing lasciviously. Is it getting warm in here?
Click: I stumble upon someone teaching a class on how to buy and sell virtual land to a motley crew of avatars sitting attentively on chairs watching PowerPoint slides. Do we get a toaster when we're done?
Click: Suddenly, I'm underwater at Cave Rua, watching a school of fish swim by. Cool, but what do I do here?
Click: Here's a virtual doctor's office, where a researcher runs a simulation of what it's like to be a hallucinatory schizophrenic. A menacing British voice from a TV urges: "Shoot yourself. Shoot them all. Get the gun out of the holster and shoot yourself, you !@#&!" Yikes, where's that teleport button?
My disorientation points up one of the big challenges of these virtual worlds, especially one so open-ended as Second Life: With nothing to shoot and no quest to fulfill, it's hard for newbies to know what to do. Virtual worlds require personal computers with fairly advanced graphics and broadband connections and users with some skill at software. "The tools are the weak spot," says Will Wright, legendary creator of The Sims video game, who nonetheless admires Second Life. For now, he says, "That limits its appeal to a fairly hard-core group."
Still, there's no denying the explosion of media, products, and services produced by users of these virtual worlds. IGE Ltd., an independent online gaming services firm, estimates that players spent about $1 billion in real money last year on virtual goods and services at all these games combined, and predicts that could rise to $1.5 billion this year. One brave (or crazy) player in the online game Project Entropia last fall paid $100,000 in real money for a virtual space station, from which he hopes to earn money charging other players rent and taxes. In January inside Second Life alone, people spent nearly $5 million in some 4.2 million transactions buying or selling clothes, buildings, and the like.
That can add up to serious change. Some 3,100 residents each earn a net profit on an average of $20,000 in annual revenues, and that's in real U.S. dollars. Consider the story of Chris Mead, aka "Craig Altman," on Second Life. We exchange text messages via our keyboards at his shop inside Second Life, where he hawks ready-made animation programs for avatars. It's a bit awkward, all the more so because as we chat, his avatar exchanges tender caresses with another avatar named "The Redoubtable Yoshimi Muromachi." Turns out she's merely an alter ego he uses to test his creations. Still, I can't help but make Rob Cranes look away.
SHOPPING SPREE
Mead is a 35-year-old former factory worker in Norwich, England, who chose to stay home when he and his working wife had their third child. He got on Second Life for fun and soon began creating animations for couples: When two avatars click on a little ball in which he embeds the automated animation program, they dance or cuddle together. They take up to a month to create. But they're so popular, especially with women, that every day he sells more than 300 copies of them at $1 or less apiece. He hopes the $1,900 a week that he clears will help pay off his mortgage. "It's a dream come true, really," he says. "I still find it so hard to believe."
His story makes me want to venture further into this economy. Besides, my photo editor is nagging me to get a shot of my avatar, which needs an extreme makeover. Time to go shopping! First I pick out a Hawaiian shirt from a shop, clicking on the image to buy it for about 300 Lindens, or about a dollar. Nice design but too tight for my taste, so I prowl another men's shop for a jacket. I find something I like, along with a dark gray blazer and pants. As a fitting finishing touch for a reporter, I add a snazzy black fedora, though I'm bummed that it can't be modified to add a press card.
I'm also feeling neglectful leaving my avatar homeless every time I log out. It's time to buy some land, which will give me a place to put my purchases, like a cool spinning globe that one merchant offered cheap. And maybe I'll build a house there to show off to friends. I briefly consider buying a whole island, but I have a feeling our T&E folks would frown on a $1,250 bill for imaginary land. Instead, I purchase a 512-square-meter plot with ocean view, a steal for less than two bucks. Plopping my globe onto my plot, I take a seat on it and slowly circle, surveying my domain. My Second Life is good.
I soon discover that Second Life's economy has also begun to attract second-order businesses like financial types. One enterprising character, whose avatar is "Shaun Altman," has set up the Metaverse Stock Exchange inside Second Life. He (at least I think it's a he) hopes it will serve as a place where residents can invest in developers of big projects like virtual golf courses. In a text chat session in his slick Second Life office, Altman concedes that the market is "a bit ahead of its time. I'm sure it will take quite some time to build up a solid reputation as an institution." No doubt, I'm thinking, especially when the CEO is a furry avatar whose creator refuses to reveal his real name.
Premature or not, such efforts are raising tough questions. Virtual worlds may be games at their core, but what happens when they get linked with real money? (For one, people such as Chung's owner start to take changes to their world very seriously. She recently threatened to create her own currency inside Second Life after the Linden dollar's value fell.) Ultimately, who regulates their financial activities? And doesn't this all look like a great way for crooks or terrorists to launder money?
Beyond business, virtual worlds raise sticky social issues. Linden Lab has rules against offensive behavior in public, such as racial slurs or overtly sexual antics. But for better or worse, consenting adults in private areas can engage in sexual role-playing that, if performed in real life, would land them in jail. Will that draw fire from law enforcement or, at least, publicity-seeking politicians? Ultimately, what are the societal implications of spending so many hours playing, or even working, inside imaginary worlds? Nobody really has good answers yet.
My head hurts. I just want to have some fun now. It's time to try Second Life's most popular game. Tringo is a combination of bingo and the puzzle-like PC game Tetris, where you quickly try to fit various shapes that appear on a screen into squares, leaving as few empty squares as you can. I settle in on a floating seat, joining a dozen other competing avatars at an event called Tringo Money Madness @Icedragon's Playpen -- and proceed to lose every game. Badly. I start to get the hang of it and briefly consider waiting for the next Tringo event until I see the bonus feature: a movie screen showing the band Black Sabbath's 1998 reunion tour.
Instead, I seek out Tringo's creator, Nathan Keir, a 31-year-old programmer in Australia whose avatar is a green-and-purple gecko, "Kermitt Quirk." It turns out Keir's game is so popular, with 226 selling so far at 15,000 Lindens a pop, or about $50, that a real-world company called Donnerwood Media ponied up a licensing fee in the low five figures, plus royalties. Tringo soon will grace Nintendo Co.'s (NTDOY ) Game Boy Advance and cell phones. "I never expected it at all," Keir tells me, his awe evident even in a text chat clear across the world. He's working on new games now, wondering if he can carve out a living. That would be even cooler than the main benefit so far: making his mum proud.
TALENT BANK
After all my travels around Second Life, it's becoming apparent that virtual worlds, most of all this one, tap into something very powerful: the talent and hard work of everyone inside. Residents spend a quarter of the time they're logged in, a total of nearly 23,000 hours a day, creating things that become part of the world, available to everyone else. It would take a paid 4,100-person software team to do all that, says Linden Lab. Assuming those programmers make about $100,000 a year, that would be $410 million worth of free work over a year. Think of it: The company charges customers anywhere from $6 to thousands of dollars a month for the privilege of doing most of the work. And make no mistake, this would be real work were it not so fun. In Star Wars Galaxies, some players take on the role of running a pharmaceutical business in which they manage factory schedules, devise ad campaigns, and hire other players to find raw materials -- all imaginary, of course.
All this has some companies mulling a wild idea: Why not use gaming's psychology, incentive systems, and social appeal to get real jobs done better and faster? "People are willing to do tedious, complex tasks within games," notes Nick Yee, a Stanford University graduate student in communications who has extensively studied online games. "What if we could tap into that brainpower?"
In other words, your next cubicle could well be inside a virtual world. That's the mission of a secretive Palo Alto (Calif.) startup, Seriosity, backed by venture firm Alloy Ventures Inc. Seriosity is exploring whether routine real-world responsibilities might be assigned to a custom online game. Workers having fun, after all, likely will be more productive. "We want to use the power of these games to transform information work," says Seriosity CEO Byron B. Reeves, a Stanford professor of communications.
BUILDING BOOM
Whether or not their more fantastic possibilities pan out, it seems abundantly clear that virtual worlds offer a way of testing new ideas like this more freely than ever. "We can and should view synthetic worlds as essentially unregulated playgrounds for economic organization," notes Edward Castronova, an associate professor in telecommunications at Indiana University at Bloomington and author of the 2005 book Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games.
I get a taste of the lack of regulation just as we're about to go to press. Logging in to Second Life after a few days off, I see that someone has erected a bunch of buildings on my avatar Rob Cranes's land, which is located in a region called Saeneul. The area was nearly empty when I arrived, but now I'm surrounded by Greek temples under construction. So much for my ocean view. Online notes left by one "Amy Stork" explain that the "Saeneul Residents Association" is building an amphitheater complex, and "your plot is smack bang in the middle." She's "confident that we can find a *much* better plot for you than this one....Love, Amy xx."
Oh, really? For some reason, this causes Rob Cranes to blow a gasket. He resists my editor's advice to "head to the virtual gun store," but he fires off angry e-mail complaints to Ms. Stork and Linden Lab and deletes the trespassing buildings, planting some trees in their place. Then he reconsiders: Maybe a ramshackle cabin with a stained sofa and a sun-bleached Chevy up on blocks would be a great addition to his plot.
At first, I wonder why I (or my avatar) has such a visceral reaction to this perceived intrusion. Then a flush of parental pride washes over me: My avatar, which so far has acted much like me, hanging back from crowds and minding his punctuation in text chats, suddenly is taking on a life of his own. Who will my alter ego turn out to be? I don't know yet. And maybe that's the best thing about virtual worlds. Unlike in the corporeal world, we can make of our second lives whatever we choose.
Two Famous Characters in Second Life
The Land Baroness
Avatar Anshe Chung was created by a Chinese-born language teacher living near Frankfurt, Germany. She keeps her real identity private, but that hasn't stopped her and her imaginary self from creating what may be Second Life's biggest business. Chung has amassed virtual real estate and cash assets inside Second Life worth about $250,000. She buys land wholesale from Second Life operator Linden Lab, and then develops it, resells it, or rents it out. She's known as the Rockefeller of Second Life.
The Artist
Chris Mead decided to become a stay-at-home dad when his wife gave birth to their third child. Mead, who lives in Norwich, England, turned his longtime interest in computers to online games. Stumbling into Second Life, he started creating "couples animations" -- programs that make two avatars dance or cuddle. His animations are so popular that Mead, whose avatar is named Craig Altman, earns up to $90,000 a year selling them to other avatars.
3 February 2007
An Inside Look at Google China
An Inside Look at Google China
- Kaifu Lee's Summary Talk for the last year and half
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
