Last month Nortel announced that Lenovo has begun using web.alive, the company's virtual world business application. web.alive combines Web 2.0 and 3-D virtual world technology, and Lenovo used it to create an online virtual store as a way to give consumers a new way to research and purchase personal computers.Web 2.0 advances that are related to customer service delivery tend to pique my curiosity for a couple of reasons. As someone who closely follows contact center solutions, these developments may (should?) help define the direction of future application development. Also, it is in areas that directly impact the generation or protection of revenue that companies will choose to invest in Web 2.0 (see this related No Jitter Feature).
web.alive grew out of an effort by former CTO of Nortel, John Roese, to foster innovation. Nortel carved out a portion of the R&D budget strictly for investment in new products. "Incubation teams" were established, with Nortel playing the role of VC: Early seed funding to get to an idea to a prototype, a second phase of funding to get a prototype to the first customer, and hopefully a third phase that would help a venture go big and transition into the business. Project Chainsaw was the codename for the incubation project that has become web.alive.
Lenovo used web.alive to build eLounge. Like other virtual worlds, you create an avatar and move through the space. Web.alive can generate an event when a user stares at a laptop (e.g., for 3 seconds) and contact an agent, who gets a toast-like alert.
I asked web.alive's Nicolas Sauriol, the venture leader, how he would compare this to a retail presence on Second Life. He, understandably, gave me a laundry list. As a gamer at heart, Nicolas said that gamers aren't big fans of Second Life. Apparently the rendering is antiquated compared to games, and the controls are equivalent to games of the 80s and 90s. Something about trying to do 3D without a dead axis, operating on only one plane.... Not being a gamer, he lost me, but I got the basic point that these environments have to be state of the art or people won't adopt.
A bigger difference is the inclusion of 3D audio. Nicolas says this helps make web.alive potentially game-changing. Instead of just creating an information portal, companies can create a location where people can get together and talk, dropping in and out of conversations. Similar to a walk through a store, you might overhear someone explaining a feature to another customer, and choose to listen more closely or move on.
Like many vendor and analyst colleagues, I joined LinkedIn, then Facebook, and more recently Twitter, in part to understand the potential these social networking environments have for business applications. I must admit to having much less success attempting to navigate the web.alive eLounge. But I won't judge the application based on my experience. This baby boomer is clearly not part of the target market.
