Socially|Mundane

Is it really such a big secret that virtual worlds are here to stay... and becoming more prevalent in our lives to the point that it just makes the planet the size of a marble?

The fact of the matter is that advertisers will will forced, eventually, to get a grasp of what virtual worlds are and how to incorporate themselves into them. Though we are most familiar (here on this blog) with Second Life, the fact remains that are dozens upon dozens and more on the way.

Additionally, there are piles of them targeted at the 8-year-old to teen and some specifically targeted at the pre-eight-year-old. This means these people will grow-up inside virtual worlds.

Part of what makes virtual world like Second Life so popular is the social aspect of it. Currently, outside of virtual worlds, if you and ten of your friends are looking at some web site or movie preview together, you are likely on the phone or in some instant messaging application, multitasking and describing what you are looking at as they do, too - all so you can stay in-sunc with each-other.


In a virtual world such as Second Life, all of you can be standing, virtually speaking, in the same place, looking at the same movie trailer on a virtual screen and except for a slight delay in sync for each of you, all of you are (virtually) staring at the exact same screen as though you really are together in the same physical space.

The difference? You might be in the United States, another one or two from Canada, and another from Japan or Korea, and more from South America and even more from across Europe. But, in Second Life, all of you are standing together, looking at the same thing.

The children of today will grow-up befriending people from all over the planet and not even blink an eye about it. Virtual worlds are shrinking the planet exponentially. And, where the most successful companies have discovered that user-empowerment is what allows their product to become massively successful, is where Second Life finds it's incredible popularity.

However, they are working frantically to simplify the initial user experience. it's my hope the current viewer, in it's current configuration will continue to be sanctioned, blessed and otherwise officially supported by Linden Lab. I would prefer this as opposed to some bloated pig-in-a-poke viewer that works like anything from Microsoft: over-bloated, sloppy crap that tries too hard to be everything to everyone.

Linen Lab owns the servers and code. Linden Lab is the overloard of anything and everything Second Life. Linden Lab giveth and can taketh-away. But Linden Lab still must be careful:

Victor Keegan | The Guardian: "Second Life's unusual libertarian model - in which users can build everything from scratch - confirms it as the most creative of the virtual worlds, but also the most difficult. Rosedale admits it could take a 'day of total suffering' to get used to it. Others would say weeks. But it offers opportunities for all, including older people, because, thanks to the anonymity of avatars, no one knows how old you are. Different generations can meet in a way they don't in real life."

If Linden Lab stepeth uponeth thy dicketh, those experienced users who actually created all that content will jump to Open Sim efforts in a heartbeat. TribalNet already makes this far too easy to do.

So, be careful Linden Lab: else you'll end-up with a too many brain-dead, entitlement-attitude, time-wasting, Linden-Dollar-begging, waste-of-bandwidth, lazy-leaches and all the quality residents and builders and scripters and artists and creators will jump-ship.

(Via In-the-tank-for-Second-Life Guardian UK.)