What has Second Life achieved in five years?
June 22, 2008
With the upcoming five year anniversary of Second Life’s public existence, there’ll be plenty of editorialising and we’re not about to miss out. Below are the key achievements and challenges arising from Second Life’s first five years.
The achievements:
1. Changing the landscape
There’s no doubt that Second Life broke some serious new ground over the past five years. It was the first virtual world that gave residents enormous freedom and ownership over their creations. This alone makes the past five years a worthwhile exercise. Until then, there were gaming worlds and more restrictive social worlds like The Sims Online. Most importantly, it’s started to change the mindset of the broader population - virtual worlds are no longer just some freaky hobby experienced by a few.
2. Growth
In June 2003 there were 623 registered users of Second Life. Now there’s around 14 million registered users. Using the traditional method of a 10% active user base, that’s 1.4 million active users worldwide. That’s certainly growth, albeit not growth that matches gaming world success stories like World of Warcraft. Given some of the challenges listed below, this growth is arguably surprising and a testament to the user-driven community in Second Life.
3. Marketing
There’s no doubt that Linden Lab have had some real marketing successes, although the biggest story wasn’t created by them - Anshe Chung’s first miilion dollars . There was a deluge of new residents in late 2006 came and Linden Lab ensured the momentum continued well into 2007. The gambling, banking and ageplay bans weren’t perhaps handled as well, but overall Second Life is still perceived as a viable and attractive option in spite of its shortcomings.
4. Transparency
Linden Lab do try at times to maintain some transparency around their decisions and operations although I believe this has declined in some areas over the past year. They’re far from perfect in this regard but still a step ahead of a lot of tech companies.
The challenges:
1. Usability
This is by far and away the biggest issue facing Second Life, particularly if you live outside the USA. Linden Lab have actively touted 2008 as the year of improving the Second Life experience and there’s still a long way to go. It’s now well over a year since the word ’soon’ was uttered in regard to SL servers based in Australia. Until this occurs there’s little likelihood of significant growth locally as the experience for most people is frustrating to say the least.
2. Relevance
With so many competitors on the horizon, SL will have a battle to maintain its market share, let alone increase it significantly. That said, the open source corse Linden Lab have taken ensures it remains the preeminent virtual worlds platform for now.
3. Interoperability
The works well underway in ensuring different worlds can directly interact but there’s an enormous amount of work still to be done. Projects like OpenSim are leading the way and the list of new grids continues to grow but OpenSim will continue to have an uphill battle against the large number of proprietary worlds underway.
4. Governance
I don’t envy Linden Lab at all as far as its role in deciding what’s acceptable or not. The numerous legal jurisdictions are enough to turn any risk manager’s hair white overnight. Things aren’t going to get any easier either as real world governments finally start to grasp the impact of virtual worlds in a range of areas - intellectual property, taxation, and health and welfare are the three more obvious ones. Linden Lab’s banking ban, ageplay intervention and gambling crackdown have had varying degrees of success - expect more intervention in coming months and years.
The overall report card
It’s hard to imagine that any company could pull off a faultless virtual world creation and expansion, so at the very least some credit needs to be given to Linden Lab, faults and all. The continued expansion of the organisation in a coherent way will make the difference between a relevant and ever-improving virtual world platform and a declining pioneer that lost its way.
Here’s to another five years of innovation and inspiration - and maybe even a more usable virtual worlds for those of us down here.
Over to you - what do you consider have been the highlights and lowlights of Second Life’s first five years?
Popularity: 5% [?]
Weekend Whimsy
June 20, 2008
1. World of World of Warcraft
‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’
2. BASE Jump in Davos - Second Life
3. Teleport to Real Life
Popularity: 3% [?]
SL5B Keynotes and roundtables schedule confirmed
June 20, 2008
Linden Lab have finalised the schedule for the 5th anniversary celebrations.
One event that caught my eye was the discussion scheduled with Tom Boellstorff, author of ‘Coming of Age in Second Life’. I did a short review of the book on the latest podcast and in my opinion it’s one of the more interesting reads on Second Life in recent years.
Check the full schedule out here.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Job: The Faith Foundation
June 20, 2008
As mentioned previously, we have a free jobs board for anyone wanting to get the message out about positions available. Each week we’ll pick an interesting job to feature here on the main site.
This week it’s the first group to use the jobs board. The Faith Foundation is looking for a range of people in Second Life for paid positions.
Got a virtual world related job to promote? Post your ad for free here.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Virtual worlds prominent in BRW’s Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications
June 19, 2008
BRW have run a feature listing the ‘Top 100′ Australian Web 2.0 applications.
The list is a co-production with Ross Dawson’s Future Explanation Network and you can see the full list here.
The Australia-based virtual worlds that made the list were:
1. VastPark at number 22.
2. MojiKan at number 32.
3. My CyberTwin at number 65.
4. Mycosm at number 69.
That there are four projects in the list shows the strength of the Australian virtual worlds sphere. We’ve covered VastPark extensively and will be profiling the other list entrants in coming weeks. If you’ve used any of these products, what has your experience been?
Popularity: 6% [?]
Episode 6 of TMJ Podcast - Religion and Second Life
June 19, 2008
Episode 6 features a news roundup, a short review of Tom Boellstorff’s ‘Coming of Age in Second Life’ and an interview with Dr Helen Farley from the University of Queensland on religion and Second Life.
For details on how to automatically receive these podcasts, check our podcast page.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Stream your own radio station into Second Life
June 18, 2008
Torley Linden strikes again with a blog post on using a service called MediaMaster to do direct streams into SL rather than relying on third party streams.
Popularity: 15% [?]
