We are [in SL] because we see it as the next stage in the evolution of peer-to-peer media. Second Life is adding a new dimension to this dynamic since it’s in 3-D.

We view it as an emerging new public we need to understand first hand and, based on this experience, advise our clients how/if it can support their business.

We are not in SL to recreate the real world experience. We are there to do things we can’t do elsewhere. And for the time being, we don’t go there to increase customer engagement by quantitative measures, but it is our intention to bring a new dimension to it.

Some of my colleagues are still skeptical, but I’m willing to wait and revisit Text 100 Island in the future before deciding whether or not SL is just “a shiny new toy” used to blind, er, dazzle clients.

Georg has agreed to regroup in a few months. In the meantime he’s realizing that anyone first to a space is going to take a few arrows.

Starwood Hotel is going virtual with a new hotel concept, aloft -despite the fact that avatars do not sleep. Electric Artists is helping design aloft and its CEO, Marc Schiller, discusses “what drives a hotel brand to invest in a virtual world” with PSFK trend lord, Pier Fawkes.

With the virtual aloft project, Starwood is the first company to test the concept of “virtual architecture.” People will be interacting with the hotel experience online in VR which will give Starwood the ability see how people navigate the space before the real hotel opens. Perhaps we can learn from watching how avatars interact within the hotel in Second Life, things that can help make better design decisions in the real world. We think that this concept could revolutionize not only architectural planning but the wider area of brand development.

Of course, for many years architects have created 3D models and done virtual walkthroughs. But no one has made anything like this where real people are from different cities are walking through a virtual 3Dspace in real time using networked immersive environments.

In this manner a virtual brand therefore can help define the real world brand.

We’ll be watching to see if this is the case. In the meantime, these experiments are getting Linden Labs a ton of media coverage. The SL snowball will get much bigger before it melts.

Second Life Idea: Despite my argument for pragmatism in place of incessant, effusive praise for Second Life, I have a great idea for this unreal world. Amanda Chapel needs to join and create Strumpette Island. It’s a natural move and who wouldn’t visit for the first meeting of Media Guerilla’s PR Fight Club? Game On!

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But its initial approach to the genre has as much in common with advertising as it does with the wide-open world of blogging.

The Journal’s view is just a starting point. There is so much not right with this blog that it’s hard to pick somewhere to begin.

It looks nice and clearly a lot of thought has gone into its construction. It uses Movable Type and offers RSS feeds. So from a platform point of view, it is a blog.

But that’s about as far as it gets. From almost every other point of view, it misses the mark by a wide margin. This is really a marketing brochuresite dressed up as something else.

The most glaring negative is the way in which visitors are invited to participate in the site, ie, to comment. The only way you can is via a “contact the editors” link in the sidebar which gives you a popup that thanks you for your feedback, says that due to the volume of emails that the site receives each day it may not be possible to personally respond to your email, mentions terms and conditions and gives you a choice of three generic email addresses to write to.

Such hurdles to engagement hardly inspire warming friendliness let alone an encouragement to comment and create a visible and open dialog. What I found especially interesting is that I could not find a single comment to any post going back to the first one on 21 February. Maybe no one has tried to jump the hurdles, or perhaps Starwood didn’t like any of the comments. Who knows.

Starwood’s view quoted in the Journal:

[] Starwood says it is planning to make it more interactive but wasn’t specific about plans. It may allow limited reader input, but only in the form of comments that have been reviewed by the company. It also may offer moderated chat rooms and Q&A sessions with hotel designers and other industry figures.

But Starwood’s effort will never be a free-form Internet site, says Robin Korman, Vice President of Loyalty Marketing for Starwood. “We don’t make a secret of the fact that it’s a corporate-sponsored blog,” she says.

Well, there’s nothing wrong at all with a corporate-sponsored blog. I don’t know what a “free-form internet site” is, though. And “limited reader input”? If what you really want to do is have a place on the web as a carefully-controlled information channel – and this blog certainly looks like one of those – that’s fine. Chat rooms, Q&A, all fine. While I might argue that such an approach isn’t the most effective one from a two-way communication point of view, it’s still fine if you want to go ahead anyway with such a place. Plenty of companies do.

So let’s look at the purpose of TheLobby.com as stated in its About text:

To help keep Starwood Preferred Guests on top of the latest travel trends, Starwood and ElectricArtists have assembled a team of travel writers to contribute to this site. Every weekday this site will be covering the latest and greatest in worldwide travel.

ElectricArtists is the marketing services company who produced the site. Looking through their website and reading about some of the social media projects they have been involved with (eg, podcasts for Fortune magazine), they seem to understand a little of the ‘social’ in social media.

That understanding clearly hasn’t made its way into this project for Starwood if they call it a blog.

And that’s a pity. This blog could be a great opportunity for Starwood to really engage with its most important (and influential) customer segment, those “preferred guests.”

Starwood could take a tip from The Red Room Chronicles, a fan blog about Marriott Hotels (not an official Marriott blog) written since last July by Rob Safuto of PodcastNYC, which illustrates how a blog focused on hotels approaches engagement where the blogger is someone with a passion about his topics.

And unlike any of the writing at TheLobby.com, the posts at The Red Room Chronicles exude that passion and a genuine feeling for what the blogger is writing about. Imagine that kind of focus in an official blog aimed at the members of a hotel company’s loyalty programme.

If I were Starwood, I’d ditch TheLobby.com in its current form and revert to their traditional one-way marketing channels. If what they want to do is just tell loyalty programme members about travel trends (as per the About text), even email would do.

Or, if engagement is their goal, then do it whole heartedly. Make TheLobby.com into a real blog. Invite some of those preferred guests to be bloggers on the site. Let them write what they feel and think, the good and the bad, about their experiences as Starwood guests, about “the latest and greatest in worldwide travel” (from their distinct viewpoints) and as loyalty programme members.

Let those bloggers become the voices of authority to other loyalty programme members “to help keep Starwood Preferred Guests on top of the latest travel trends.” Open up commenting. It can be moderated, but open it up. Take a look at GM’s FastLane Blog to see what can happen when you do that.

Go on, Starwood. Take a risk. I bet you’ll find it will be worth it.

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The company is optimistic about the rest of the year and next year as well.

Steven J. Heyer, CEO, said: “For ten quarters in a row our market share has been improving, even as we took the opportunity to renovate key hotels this quarter, including another 500 rooms and all of the ballroom and group meeting spaces at the Sheraton New York. We are moving full speed ahead with our brand-building efforts and service innovation, which I believe will lead to further share gains in coming years. I’m excited about the progress we’re making, the opportunity to take our expertise to other price points and brands and the additional talent we’ve brought in to lead these initiatives.”

Starwood reported EPS from continuing operations for the first quarter of 2005 of $0.36 compared to $0.16 in the first quarter of 2004. Excluding special items, primarily related to a $2 million state tax refund, EPS from continuing operations was $0.35 for the first quarter of 2005 compared to $0.16 in the first quarter of 2004.

According to a press release, income from continuing operations was $79 million in the first quarter of 2005 compared to $33 million in 2004. Excluding special items, income from continuing operations was $77 million for the first quarter of 2005 compared to $33 million in 2004. Net income (after discontinued operations) was $79 million and EPS was $0.36 in the first quarter of 2005 compared to $34 million and EPS of $0.16 in the first quarter of 2004. The effective tax rate for the first quarter of 2005 was 21.3%. The tax rate and thereby income from continuing operations benefited from a state tax refund of $2 million during the quarter related to tax years prior to the 1995 split-up of ITT Corporation.

“We’re also focused on assets sales where that makes sense and we expect to be able to announce some developments on that front in the second or third quarter,” said Heyer.

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.