In a virtual equivalent of the Relay for Live events which take place worldwide to raise money for the American Cancer Society, Second Life residents have raised nearly $200,000 of very real money (L$52,050,171 precisely) for the cancer charity. That’s double what was raised in last year’s efforts.
Charities rely upon people rallying around a cause to raise money, and virtual worlds have shown themselves to be an ideal way to do that. It is likely the hyper-connected environment of virtual worlds, in which communication is incredibly easy, which allows people to work together so effectively. The trend is a wider consequence of the internet – websites such as JustGiving, where users publicly donate money to a particular cause, having been invited by a friend, are evidence of that.
David Miliband (UK Foreign Secretary) has spoken about the power of communication driving support for a cause in the context of its ability to rebalance the relationship between the state and the individual. He calls it the ‘civilian surge’: “There are 200 million Chinese learning English; there are more bloggers in Iran than any other country in the world per capita; Buddhist monks march for democracy in Burma. I got the idea of a civilian surge when I was talking to David Petraeus [the US military commander] in Iraq because, he says, ‘You can’t kill your way out of this problem - you need politics as well as security.”
There is, of course, a commercial lesson in this. Virtual worlds offer brands the potential to mobilise support in their favour. If a brand can find a way to be the ‘in thing’ in a virtual world such as Second Life, with users really engaging with the message behind that brand, that could be incredibly valuable. That potential is arguably at the route of advertising interest in virtual worlds, and is perhaps the holy grail.
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