Oct 23rd 09 Posted by Eric Sickler in Featured Articles, TeensTALK

Future of Online Campus Tours?

This week we launched the FALL edition of Stamats’ 2009 TeensTALK® study. As soon as findings are analyzed, I’ll share some juicy tidbits in this blog space. But for now, I’d like to share an interesting phenomenon that might change the dreams you have for the next incarnation of your student recruitment Web site.

In the last couple of months I’ve been approached by no fewer than a half-dozen chief recruitment or marketing officers who share a vision for their online virtual tour to look and act more like a “virtual world” than the interactive collection of photos they currently feature on their Web sites.  You may (or may not) recognize some of the most popular ones: Webkinz, Second Life, The Sims Online, The Active Worlds, Barbie Girls, Club Penguin, Gaia Online, Habbo Hotel, and RuneScape.

What’s a virtual world? The good folks at virtualworldsreview.com post this helpful definition: “A virtual world is an interactive simulated environment accessed by multiple users through an online interface. Virtual worlds are also called ‘digital worlds,’ ‘simulated worlds’ and the largest and most common type of virtual world, ‘MMORPG,’ which stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.”

In theory, presenting your campus online as a virtual world where prospective students (and others) can meet, interact and even begin to build a sense of community among themselves makes perfect sense. I mean, how much more fun would THAT kind of tour be versus the traditional, nearly static click-the-photos-and-read-or-listen approach?

But earlier this month mediaweek.com reported comScore data that suggests Generation Y engagement with virtual worlds is waning. Formerly highly teen-populated virtual worlds have shut down due to seriously declining membership/participation, and media giant MTV is rethinking its virtual world strategy.

Why are teens not as engaged in virtual worlds as they were a couple of years ago when the craze launched? Analysts at Ypulse.com suggest they’re just too busy to invest the time required to create, customize and maintain avatars and virtual spaces, to figure out who’s online, to play a game or attend an event, etc.

Also, today’s teens grew up playing in kid-focused virtual worlds like “Club Penguin,” so they may equate virtual world play as too childlike to sustain into their teen years. It’s also worth noting that social networks like Facebook offer many, many more apps that effectively make the social network experience more “sticky” and virtual world-like for many teen users. Finally, teens who are in to console games find virtual worlds too social and more self-directed, quite unlike the highly scripted experiences their console games offer up.

So the takeaway here is simple: temper your enthusiasm for redefining your online campus tour to make it feel like a virtual world experience. Teens appear to be moving away from, rather than toward, this particular online gizmickery.

However, Stamats’ Senior Interactive Consultant Matt Arnold recently showed me some innovation in photo morphing technology that, I think, offers great promise for turning online campus tours into “wow!” experiences at a fraction of the price of hiring programmers to create your own virtual world university.

Stay tuned…

Eric (alongside many other higher education thought leaders) will dive deeper into Web topics, challenges, and concerns at Stamats Integrated Marketing: Technology Conference (SIM Tech) this coming November 10-12, 2009. Do not miss out on the discussion. Come join us. For more information, presenter bios and registration check us out at www.stamats.com/simtech.

Photo by jake durrant