Another Perspective on Second Life

This past Sunday the CBS News Sunday Morning program ran a story on Living A Virtual Life On The Internet (note the online version is not a transcript and varies slightly from the broadcast version) with Second Life (SL).  It was a rather interesting update and shows how big and mainstream Second Life has become.

How big?  How does the following sound?

• It is a $220 million a-year economy
• Several Second Life entrepreneurs are clearing $200,000 a year
• Residents spend on average $600,000 ($US not Linden dollars) every day

How mainstream?  How does the following sound?

• Toyota, Microsoft and Intel are wanting a representation in SL.  As technology companies you might expect Microsoft and Intel to be there but Toyota?
• Harvard Law School conducted a seminar in SL with people from around the world attending.

So do I still stick with my predictions about the future of Second Life?

In early January, 2007 I made the following predictions about Second Life:

1. As a social community, Second Life will eventually go the way of other Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG).  That is, the number of players (residents in SL terms) will peak and eventually decline.  I'm not saying SL will disappear but I just don't see it ever truly becoming mainstream as a social community.
2. If it lasts long enough to let the technology develop, there will be some interesting technology spinoffs that will become commonplace.  Conferences / conventions using SL technology are one example.

The January posting explains these in more detail.  I should also point out that it is still too early from me to declare victory.  It will be many more months (or possibly years) before the true fate of SL is evident.  However, everything I see in this story still leads me to the same conclusions.  Although SL is becoming more mainstream in terms of the companies and institutions it is attracting I believe they are there as a way of connecting with a portion of their constituency.  SL still has a long way to go in terms of being mainstream in terms of attracting a large cross-section of society.

I found it interesting that the Harvard Law School was conducting a seminar in SL.  I'm hesitant to read too much into one event but it is interesting that they saw and utilized the potential of SL for training and it social networking aspects.  When looking up the online version of the story  I saw a link to a related story, Virtual Reality Spreading In Business.  This second story discusses practical business applications of the type of virtual reality technology utilized by SL.  These included immersive visualization, mechanical simulation and training.  Second Life could be an instrumental force in the development of this technology so it can be more widely used.

You have some time but you might want to start thinking about how this technology could affect your IT department and how you can use it to help your customers.  Tomorrow comes quickly when talking about technology.

How do you think this will impact IT? business?

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• The Future of Second Life
• Get a (Second) Life!
• Or the posts in the "Internet" category