It’s like comparing Firefox to Twitter. (And you still have to download a browser client… but nobody complains about that.) SL would be better off if people started comparing it to Firefox or perhaps even the Adobe Suite. Platforms on which tools can be built. Let me rephrase that… Linden Lab would be better off if they began thinking about SL in terms of Firefox development - as a competitor.

On the other hand, the “inbound” links to Second Life content are pretty much tied to a large download and the teleport map. I’m not against that on principle (the experience of Second Life pretty much requires a fat client) but that is what restricts the platform in a social media context.

I find it somewhat dissapointing that many people I know have seen more Second Life via YouTube (or over my shoulder) than via the Second Life viewer with their own avatar.

arent you bored of all this yet?:)

just go do some work;)

I really don’t see SL as being any more “closed” than Twitter, at least not at the level of “open vs. proprietary” - both have APIs (open source clients, really and scripting), both allow users to mash up the content, both allow users to create experiences in or around….the difference is that with one, you have to download something (which also cuts off a large potential user base) but the payoff is that you get access to a wider range of tools.

But I do believe we basically agree - I’m not claiming that SL is currently a mass marketing platform. To be mass market you DO need to be light, and you need to be accessible to all. The trade-off for this, in my experience anyways, is that it may be a trillion miles wide but it’s still an inch deep. SL doesn’t claim to be a trillion miles wide but it DOES claim to be deep. And I believe that “deep” is an increasingly important feature that social media should strive for - widgets and 140 characters only take you so far.

Especially as the “end-to-end Internet” takes off, the whole thing will get even wider, with information tags on the buildings around us, but no where to actually sit down with someone and have a conversation (oh, sure, there’s REALITY but how boring is THAT?)

The question then becomes - if all of the streaming “light information” out there continues to widen, and our social connections become increasingly ephemeral (will I ever see you again? Will you be a comment alone and then you’ll wander off to other blogs? Or will I see you at a community forum and create another kind of connection?)…maybe virtual worlds play a part in those deeper connections that are so useful to making sense of a constant ocean of information and opinion, as limiting as the tools might be right now for facilitating it.

At this point in the history of the web, you have to bring some *serious* firepower to the table to think that a closed service is going to gain traction with the audience today. This does not preclude “proprietary but connected” services where it is easy to link into or out of the service, but anyone trying to recreate the walled service days is fighting an uphill battle.

Facebook *was* a walled service, but it became obvious that only allowing .EDU accounts was self limiting. (On the other hand, doing so caused the *initial* spike in use thanks to being the only dedicated “college hook up” service available… so I don’t discount walled services in all scenarios.) Today you can link to a facebook account and after a quick signup most people won’t notice the “wall” because it is easy to link in both directions.

There is something to be said about Second Life’s walled garden still being a limiter though. Is it a great “social” tool. Heck yes… in fact, the limit to the number you can bring together at a time even works in *favor* of it because it keeps groups to the size where you still feel like a member of a group and not just a face in the crowd. Travelling the grid with a small group of people is fun, full stop.

But there is something to be said about the fact that, unlike blogs or twitter or forums, the experience is transitory… and difficult to share with others who don’t meet the “bar” to Second Life.

That bar is pretty high in some circles. With the tech crowd, the hardware is pretty much assumed. With educational groups, family members and random business acquaintances it is frankly likely that the hardware will be lacking in at least one regard. That lack causes the experience to be poor. Combined with the problems that no client side hardware can hide (region lag, inventory lag, voice glitches, slow rez times, etc) my attempts to “bring people on board” typically fail.

I have no idea how they plan on monetizing Twitter (adding advertising would cause them to make insane amounts in the short run though)… but for bringing *everyone* to the table, it does it right. 140 characters and links out to the actual content means even mobile devices can play effectively in the Twitter social pool. Even with quad cores and a hot video card my experience in Second Life are… less socially effective.

Not because the social experience is inferior, just that so many can’t play along. True social media has to have a very *low* bar to entry.

Twitter as a source of monetization for the people using it (as compared to the owners) itself seems like something maybe in a larger tool kit of promotion and PR, but as such is just a tool rather than a source of enterprise value on its own.

And before I get all the other arguments - I’m not negating the idea of collaborative prototyping, idea-generation and the power of social change blah blah - but then if that’s the argument, then we’re not talking about hype related to big brand use (which is what the hype about SL was about) we’re talking about another kind of hype, in which case we shouldn’t look to SL for a comparator.

And yeah, I agree, the “anti-textual” argument is a weird one. I _think_ he means that there is no persistence (of conversations), but that’s just a guess on my part. You might as well say that YouTube is anti-textual too.