Archive for the ‘Virtual Communities’ Category

The first time I tried to use Second Life, I didn’t get it. It required a bulky, buggy application that kept crashing every computer on which I loaded it. I finally got in and realized it would take hours of work before my “avatar” could do anything interesting, and I bailed. In all fairness, I felt I should give Second Life a second look to see how it’s maturing. So I did, but I still don’t get it.

It crashes less, but I still don’t see Second Life going anywhere. Don’t get me wrong. It will continue to grow for a while. It may evolve into something worthwhile. But the numbers are still unimpressive.

Second Life currently boasts more than 12 million “residents,” but a resident is defined as anybody who has registered. In other words, it’s anybody who’s even looked at the thing. I’m a resident, even though I barely made it through the front door. The number who have logged on in the last 30 days is currently 897,269. Now remember, that includes not just people returning, but everybody who’s downloaded the software and registered in the last 30 days.

So in the sense of people who actually hang around, do stuff and maybe spend a little money, how many true “Second Lifers” are there? Nobody seems to know for sure — in part, because there’s no clear definition. Second Life claims 519,000 “active” users, but that includes everybody who has been online a hour a month. That’s not a lot of time by online standards. In their official blog, the proprietors describe a paltry core group of 50,000 users: “We believe that many of these 50,000 users are creating the diverse creations and experiences that make Second Life such an interesting place to explore. This is the powerful engine fueling the steady long term growth of Second Life. ”

So for all the hype, only 1 in 240 “residents” actually hangs around and turns into an active participant in terms of “positive Linden dollar flow.” A Linden is the surrogate for a dollar in Second Life. At first, this seemed silly, but 75% of the users now come from outside the United States, so a single currency could make sense. Still, even CEO Philip Rosedale told Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick in December 2007 that fewer stores are being set up because “there still isn’t enough traffic or ability to attract attention to justify most of those expenditures.” Indeed, Kirkpatrick’s article notes that “virtual sex … remains probably the lion’s share of service usage (you can buy a virtual penis at in-world stores.)”

My reasons for being bearish on Second Life may differ from those of a lot of other people.

• It doesn’t solve any “real world” problems. If you want to do business on the web, the web does just fine. In fact, the web worked (to say the least) precisely because we needed it. It made sense from the start.
• The learning curve is far too steep, resulting in high levels of churn. People get on, look around, and draw the same conclusion I did: “Not worth the trouble.”
• The day is long gone when one company can own the online world, even one of its own creation. Before Mosaic (the first browser) appeared almost 15 years ago and ushered in the World Wide Web, we had a collection of online services, each more or less standing on its own — The Source, CompuServe, MSN and AOL. They had their own software, their own exclusive merchants, and their own subscribers. Eventually, all became gateways to the Web as they swallowed each other up. Today, only the AOL and MSN brands remain, and they have nothing to do with their origin.

Meanwhile, other online passions occupy the time of the users who, in a vacuum, might become Second Lifers. MySpace, Facebook and other social sites continue to explode, and there’s plenty of commerce, conversation, and sex on the Web.

In short, I don’t see it succeeding in the long run because it’s just a clumsy way to do stuff we can already do.

Due to a data failure, several weeks of Over Coffee posts have been lost. We are seeking to recover. Meanwhile, we’ll pick up where we left off, looking at the many ways in which today’s media transitions are changing our lives. Thanks for your patience.