Maya Realities
All this extra free time, what better thing to do than start a company! Maya Realities was formed in April 2007 and focuses on creating the necessary tools to understanding customer behavior in a virtual world environment like Second Life. In essence, it allows a 3-D web site to connect with visitors at a new level of analysis. Our customers are businesses owning a minimum one “sim” land investment within Second Life. Once we process your order, a consent form is sent authorizing the deployment of our sensor grid. Upon receipt of the signed consent form, within one business day a setup package is delivered in-world to your organization’s point of contact with detailed instructions. We require the use of a media URL on a small but popular sub-parcel. Also, a kiosk must be installed at a location of your choosing that informs visitors of your organization’s privacy policy and provides visitors the option of opting out of personally identifiable information collection. This kiosk is not intended to be an advertisement for Maya Realities and can be customized with your organization’s branding. Once initial metrics are collected, your web account should be initialized within three to five business days. At this time, you will receive additional instructions on how to log into our service. The analysis suite incorporates both active and passive forms of data collection. To start, a sensor grid tells exactly when and where visitors to a virtual land are located, their current status, and where they are located in real life. Secondary analysis determines how long the visitor has been a “resident” of Second Life, if they have payment information on file with Linden Lab, and can even make guesses as to their social network. In addition, we offer a survey system where virtual land owners create customized questionnaires. These are created via our web site and then placed “in-world.” We are also developing an API that allows a company to keep track of arbitrary interactions with a virtual objects. For example, how often an object is purchased, or how often a note card dispenser gives information. These interactions are assigned a score and over time this leads to a more complete understanding of ROI. Finally, we have an in-world op-out system that allows visitors to remove themselves from any personally identifiable information collection. In addition, this same system can pass out a copy of a company’s privacy policy. To learn more, visit the Maya Realities web site. Figure 1: A SlideShare presentation of some of Maya Realities virtual world analysis products. 
Figure 2: A heat map of one of Linden Lab’s orientation islands. Each point in the figure above represents a visitor’s position on a one minute interval. Over time, this creates a type of heat map where a land owner can determine where visitors spend time in their virtual land. Red points highlight where a visitor entered an extended idle period.
