Second Life? - sorta

It seems the media is often behind the times as far as what's new and chik on the internet (youtube/facebook/myspace being in similar places). The last couple months I've seen some news stories on Second Life and the possibility of a different sort of booming internet community (though I hear the average user spends less than 10 mins. a month in the program- G4 tv). In any case, the site does offer some statistics on the outlook of its economy, presented here: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php , and here: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php . Looking at the actual amount of US dollars spent by the userbase, it's sharply declined over the last quarters of 2007. Considering this, I'd be hardpressed to see any company actually investing (any more- those same CNN news stories detail Coca-Cola commercials as well as car companies getting into the action) in Second Life real estate for monetary or marketing reasons (though it did represent a newish way to sell your product to consumers). If these trends continue, I can't see it being more than a fad for internet users. After all, why would you want to pay to be apart of a community when there are alot of sites that allow original content and free interactions (like this one for example).

That said, there's always someone else looking to turn information into commodity. Second Life does offer some interesting new additions (like being able to profit from your technical scripting abilities), but alas it seems like Sims on steroids. Personally being a gamer myself, I think there needs to be a mix between total freedom of user created items and on an actual objective for the game (like with World of Warcraft) to really push into a different sort of online experience. Information technology will keep evolving into something that will give a more tangible, consumable experience, but we'll have to wait a little bit longer for that to come. Till then- don't invest in online real estate.

J.