The Life or Death of Second Life

A lot of people have been tearing Second Life to pieces lately! From the interview and articles with David M. Ewalt at Forbes (whose site is getting a bit ad-heavy, seriously) to the article in Wired about how horrible it is to advertise there, people seem to have it out for the blossoming metaverse. But I don't think they understand Second Life's core elements: creativity, communication, and education.

Here's the jist of their arguments: Second Life (SL) is a place where (like the rest of the Internet) there is a lot of pornography and gambling, upon which the economy there is built. Well, now there is no more gambling, because Linden Labs just banned it for fears that they would get penalized by regulators (I think that's a pretty good reason.). But David Ewalt seems to think that it's the death of SL's Economy. While this may have some truth (one of the Second Life Banks collapsed shortly after the ban), I believe that only part of the economy is dying. I really think that this is a part of SL that Linden Labs must be happy to see go; now other parts can grow into the space where they once stood. The economic struggles are just a phase. But the change is thoroughly worth it. Could SL really be a place for free, open, and honest collaboration and learning, if it had gambling?

The other topic that is under debate is SL's marketing potential. A recent scathing article in Wired magazine, "How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life" puts the heat on marketing in SL. Big companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to create SL presences. Most often, they go to The Electric Sheep Company and fork-out 500,000 shells to build and maintain an island. Well, I must agree with Wired that this is not a good way for these companies to spend their money. The only way someone could throw away that much money on an isolated island is if they have no comprehension of the idea of service ecologies.Why would I want to go to Coca Cola Island? Sure, everyone needs a website (a stable presence), but I think if marketers want to meet an audience in Second Life, they are going to have to find ways of advertising that are more distributed and mixed than that. Perhaps something akin to Google ads. But this still leaves the question of why people would want to go there at all.

I think the key to Second Life's appeal is the life part. The dynamic, creative, and collaborative aspects are the real life of Second Life. If Linden Labs wants to save Second Life they need to pursue educational and creative institutions, mixed use, distributed marketing models, search, and social networking. I'm much more concerned about these things than Windlight.

And I really would like to see Second Life live and evolve.

Site Update

At N Formation Design we have recently updated our website. The new site includes the addition of a few new projects and an "Ongoing and Additional Projects" section in the portfolio. In the new section we include current projects like the work we are doing in Second Life for the University of Michigan Medical School and a recently finished website for Reynolds Pictures of Philadelphia. There are also a few others on the page if you're curious.

As for the new projects, they include "The Yeast Cell Cycle" and "Pop-up Guide to Exhibits at Please Touch Museum".