To me, Second Life is simply a virtual place, which has been steadily growing for 5 or 6 years. The various ways people have tried to make it work for them ( residents and companies ) are all good, some are more successful than others, some promise more and are higher profile. I’m not sure I think about it being the 3d internet at all, and to be honest I don’t think that has ever really been its intent. I think its something else, which we don’t understand yet, but is evolving at its own pace, slowly and steadily, and of course its really just an very good extension of numerous other virtual world projects going back to the 70s.

At the moment I have to say that it seems far more logical, that the mainstream adoption of a concept like the metaverse or a globally pervasive location based web overlay, is far more likely to come though augmented reality / mobile applications. I say this because that approach requires no process of avatarisation – you don’t immerse to go to the data or the people, the data or the people come to you. I think successful and lasting avatarisation requires a certain type of self analytical ability or expression, which may be limited to an early adopter, or early adopter+ demographic.

However as Justin says, a mixture of fully immersive places, 2 dimensional web and location based augmented reality applications seems to be a perfectly logical way forward on all fronts.

I think its a shame to think of the 06/07 period as a regret. That was a period of people trying to do something very hard – make a virtual place pay for itself in real world terms. Those projects deserve respect for trying this and indeed finding out many things that dont work, as well as many that do.

Applying the Gartner hype cycle to just the adoption of Second Life is an incorrect reflection on the larger development of virtual worlds. When considered along that 30 year time-frame, the peak of inflated expectations and trough of disillusionment are just a little blip, similar to many before.

The future of the internet / enterprise / education etc etc may well go its own way, and VWs will probably play a part in all that. Frankly though, I’m more interested in the unique and new things which these new media afford, not trying to shoehorn them into extending or slightly augmenting old models.

Which is from what the older websites have said, was the end of the first web3d hype in the early 2000s.

It just goes to show that “tools” sold to developers to use any way they want commercially ALWAYS trumps “single company owned service media platforms” for any real commercial industries growth.

I dont remember any of these “big 3″ running there businesses/or client projects this way.

Bailouts from the government were meant to help “industries” not “companies”.

Best to let these 3 join the ranks of being just another freelance flash/web house.

Join the rest of us flash artists and action script dudes since 1999.

cdz

Dusan, I thought you stated this quite well “However, if it can continue to allow users to create their OWN value then the attraction of SL isn’t that it’s a mass media platform, it’s that it has a “work force” that’s in the 10s of thousands”

I agree with you. It’s funny how many people I run into out there that think SL is dead, but I try to tell them otherwise.

An interesting trend we see is kids brands wanting to shift their websites to a 3D or 3D-like interface. They are not necessarily creating a full MMO. Time will tell to see how this really plays out. While you said that most virtual worlds fail, these are websites which already have high traffic built around a real world brand, and where kids are already spending a fair amount of time playing flash games. I do not think that these websites will take over the world and become monsters of market share, but I believe that it is much easier to monetize a virtual world-like website than a normal one via virtual goods.

OK, all I have time to dash off, but interesting conversation.