The Project Factory’s summary video showing a variety of top global brands in Second Life has been posted on YouTube today.

The brands featured include Reuters, BMW, Sony BMG and Ericcson, BigPond, Reebok, Vodafone, IBM, ABC TV, Showtime, Pontiac, American Apparel, Virgin, Dell, NBC, Apple, Sears, Circuit City and AOL.

These are the companies that are currently gaining first-mover advantage from their Second Life worlds - for example being included in our video! In all of these cases, it will be important for them to keep their sites up-to-date, fresh and interactive to maintain the level of visitor interactions that they are currently getting. In some cases, we would recommend that they start again and rebuild their world to be more interactive - there were tumbleweeds rolling through a number of the major brands’ buildings when we visited.

At the heart of a successful virtual world is an appreciation of how to structure the content to meet the needs of the participants. One of the reasons that the BigPond presence remains as the world’s most visited brand is because it was built to be explored and enjoyed - not as just a shopfront. A book is different to a movie, and a website is different to Second Life.