Barry Collins decides to return to the shining prime example of virtual worlds, Second Life, and see how some of the recent changes (new land, closing down casinos, adding Adult Zones, etc) have impacted things. Along the way he discusses some of the history, and finds not all is well in virtual space.
At its peak, the Second Life economy had more money swilling about than several third-world countries. It had even produced its own millionaire, Anshe Chung, who made a very real fortune from buying and selling property that existed only on Second Life servers.
Three years on, and the hype has been extinguished. Second Life has seen its status as the web wonderchild supplanted by Facebook and Twitter. The newspapers have forgotten about it, the Reuters correspondent has long since cleared his virtual desk, and you can walk confidently around tech trade shows without a ponytailed “Web 2.0 Consultant” offering to put your company on the Second Life map for the price of a company car.
In short, the whole article can be shrunk down to “Sex Sells”. All of the “Destination Landmarks” that SecondLife hypes up are deserted, while all of the hidden red-light stops, while buried underneath paywalls and age verifications, are the busiest places in space.
via Whatever happened to Second Life? | Analysis | Features | PC Pro.
@Tateru
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Inworld_policy_on_bots
I realise my post may have seemed like this was an automatic process..
@ Actingill Igaly
Incorrect. So far nothing has been done which causes bots to be counted differently to any other user.
As for Collins’ article? Inaccurate.
Bots, once the scurge of second-life, are no longer an issue as changes in Q4 2009 prevent their presence from affecting traffic. It has been several months since I saw bot-populated land and I regularly visit high-traffic areas to check for rental opportunities. ‘SL User’ would have been correct last summer, but this phenominom simply does not exist anymore. Accordinging, concurrency figures and other metrics show a sharp decrease at the point where these new rules were implicated, so to jump the gun on the next batch of naysayers who point to these figures spelling out the ‘death of second life’, this is an entirely welcome and deliberate adjustment in SL’s user base.
@ sl user
The lab also says to file abuse reports against bots. The bot counts are way down compared to last year.
@sl user
I can only comment from personal experience but I have a sim with a fair amount of traffic and we never see bots.
you will find that sl has a large percentage of bots on sl to make up traffic figures.. this is not speculation, even linden lab admits this..
OMG I’m sooo sick of having to defend Second Life to my non virtual world friends because of stupid, narrowminded articles like this. I’m in Second life to learn and explore and do my light dances, NOT because of the SEX. There is soooo much more to Second life than just cybering. SHEEESH. Second life is just like the rest of the internet. YOU find what you are looking for which includes SEX of course. Perhaps we should quit using the internet for that very reason. Sigh wake up to a truly creative and beautiful world and look to the light because that’s where I will be. Come see one of my shows if you think Sex is all there is. Pfffft.
Greetings,
I really have to differ with what Mr. Collins concluded about ‘Second Life’. I would invite him to come visit my sim:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hunjers%20Skold/198/182/25
From Wednesday to Saturday every evening (7:00pm SL to 9:00pm SL)our nightclub has an average of about 20 avatars in it. The name of the club is ‘The Riot Act’. I have seen people in there who range from librarians to writers to lawyers and technicians. My sim is rated as an ‘Adult Sim’; my guests and I have no problem with sexuality. On the other hand we come to ‘Second Life’ for far more than that. For most of the people I know in ‘Second Life’ it is as much a creative tool and a social networking site.
Please feel free to come visit my sim during our events and see if you can come to the same conclusions.
Its only Sex if you look for it! Obviously this guy had the intention of doing that before he came ‘back’ into Second Life.
I disagree with most of the stuff he wrote about…second life means more to some people than others. Second Life is what you make it, some just use it as a game, some take it seriously. Those who take it seriously see the good side of Second Life, and that it allows people to be equal, meet people globally, make new friends who ARE REAL PEOPLE, and do things they may not be able to, in the real world.
For some reason Second Life is allways in the news negative.
The journalists seems to be orderd that way.
Compagny’s go on Second Life and they don’t know what to do.
I know Dutch compagny’s with 3 sims and nothing happends there and in the end they say its no good.
They dont even know what they want.
No vision. They dont see the possebillety’s of Second Life.
The conference in Copenhage could be easely held in SL. Conference calls world wide. No need to take a plain.
I offered billboards near the walkway on Titanic to multinationals and they refused. So call me crazy. More then 500 people behind there keyboard every day, two klicks away from there websites. Must be a boycot on Second Life. Cant explain it in a differend way.
We have in Second Life the RMS Titanic.
We own it from July 2009 and have already more then 90.000 visitors there. And we are proud to have the best REAL LIFE artists there
Have a look on this video too. have fun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXFS8qujNPw
I couldn’t disagree more. I have worked full time in second life for the past 2 years and have seen profits and traffic quadruple in that time. There are deserted places, sure, but these mostly belong to those companies suckered into your aforementioned pony-tailed consultants spiel, and who entered a virtual world with no clue as to what the typical second life user was attracted to. The much talked about American Apparel being a shining example of how not to succeed in virtual reality.
Also I would point out that the gambling ban is not recent – over 2 years ago. With new land I guess you are refering to homesteads – over a year ago. And even adult segregation is 6 months old – a long time in cyberspace. If you are going to write an article, at least please check your facts before commiting anything to print.
Finally, Anshe Chung was SL’s first millionaire, but not its only one. Currently there are several individuals earning over $1m a year. I’m not quite there yet, but if Second Life keeps on growing the way it is, who knows? 🙂
I guess I should have calmed down and directed my comment to the Author Barry Collins. I apologize to you Mr Hand. I think.
hmm..once again the media logs in for a few mins and then tells the world were done. Its just Sex.. blah blah blah.. go take a look at whats going on in the arts! Education! live Music! Please Mr hand I challenge you to see what the rest of us are up to?
I like your article and have to agree. I joined second life 2 years ago after they featured it on CSI:NY. It was fun at first, lots of people about and seemed like there was lots to do back then. I probably was on and off it for a couple months then moved on to other things and forgot all about it.
This Christmas I had a few days off work and decided to have another look. Empty space is what I first thought. Everywhere I went to the first couple nights it was harder and harder to find anymore than a couple of people about. I too looked at my older landmarks from 2 years ago and most places where gone, except one dance club I found still very much alive and much bigger than before. I enjoyed a couple hours of dancing and listening to live DJ’s and then a live singer that was cool.
However apart from that club, I’m still search a week on for other things to do. I know gambling is banned, but I was still able to find some bingo type machines that you can gamble with.
As to the sex stuff, I’m in my 30’s and past all that online virtual sex stuff. I might take a walk around to see what you were talking about in your article, but that’s not what I’m looking for in second life. In fact I don’t know really what I am looking for. I guess creativity, I’ve played around with making things for my avatar to wear and enjoy creating things, but if there is not enough people about to see my creations, what’s the point?
I’ll probably play around when I’m bored in SL for the rest of this month, but I expect I’ll have my account sleeping for another 2 years soon.
I’m surprised you guys are taking the PCPro article seriously, when it reeks of yellow journalism. It’s as if Mr. Collins deliberately chose areas of the map with no people, and ignored the time difference between SL and the UK, to make a blanket statement about a virtual reality that 1.4 million regular users call home.