By Lauren Hansen
BBC News Magazine
Not long ago Second Life was everywhere, with businesses opening branches and
bands playing gigs in this virtual world. Today you'd be forgiven for asking if
it's still going.
Once upon a time Second Life had a Twitter level of hype. Even those without a
cartoon version of themselves couldn't plead ignorance due to blanket coverage
in newspapers and magazines.
Second Life is a virtual world started by the US firm Linden Lab in 2003, in
which users design an avatar to live their "second life" online.
And everything about this world can be customised for a price - new outfits,
drinks in a bar, even a luxury mansion can be bought with Linden dollars.
Mentions of Second Life first crept into the UK media mainstream in early 2006.
A year later, newspapers fell over themselves to cover it, devoting many column
inches in their business, technology and lifestyle sections to profiles and
trend pieces. By the end of 2007 Second Life had secured more than 600 mentions
in UK newspapers and magazines, according to the media database Lexis Nexis.
IBM bought property in 2006, American Apparel opened a shop the same summer,
Reuters installed avatar journalist Adam Pasick - also known as Adam Reuters -
to report on virtual happenings, and countries established virtual embassies.
The number of people joining the site jumped from 450,000 to four million in
2007.
But just as quickly as it had flared, media interest ebbed away. References
plummeted by 40% in 2008 and dropped further this year. And businesses diverted
their resources back to real life.
American Apparel closed its shop just one year after opening. Reuters pulled
its correspondent in October 2008. When asked about his virtual experience,
Pasick says: "It isn't a subject we like to revisit."
So, what happened?
SECOND LIFE'S PRECURSOR
In Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson, a seminal sci-fi work of the 90s, one of
the plots is that there was this whole metaverse exactly like Second Life, only
cooler. You had a whole generation of people who read Snow Crash and were
talking about this idea of the internet as a 3D world you could immerse
yourself in
Ben Hammersley
Not much, says Wired UK editor-at-large Ben Hammersley, and that was the
problem.
"You could go and open these stores and no-one would turn up," he says.
"They would have 20 to 30 people there when it opened, and after that no-one
would bother going in there again. It just wasn't worth the spend."
The "spend" varied from business to business. A retailer like American Apparel
might spend 10,000 on designers, as well as storage space from Linden Lab, to
build a virtual store.
But at the peak of the hype, the cost of purchasing or building property was
worth it.
"The first to go online would make the front page of the Guardian," Mr
Hammersley says. "But when you're the 15th country who goes on Second Life, no
magazine, no newspaper touches it."
Some businesses and users found it wasn't quite for them. The technology wasn't
easily grasped and some computers couldn't handle it.
Second Life has had to temper its ambitions for the quality of graphics to
extend its accessibility across varying speeds of broadband around the world,
leading to complaints about the cartoony look and feel of the site.
And there is a fundamental question about whether Second Life is a game or a
social networking site.
"It's not a really good social space," Mr Hammersley says. "Not as good as
Facebook or any general online forum.
Simon Gardner, a 23-year-old freelance social media marketer, believed the hype
in 2007.
He signed on, created an avatar with a shock of red hair that vaguely resembled
him, and jumped into what he found to be a lacklustre experience.
"It was a real pain. You have to learn how to control things and read manuals
on how to get to islands and get off. Half the time you're just wandering
around talking to weirdos."
After three months Mr Gardner became bored and left.
Mobile dilemma
And the online social network scene is a crowded one. "The key to anything
online is to get a broader reach of people," says Jim Clark of market
researchers Mintel. The learning curve required for Second Life prevents many
general users from returning regularly.
As more people turn to smart phones, sites need a mobile presence to stay
relevant.
"Mobile is the future of any activity online. This is something that Second
Life will struggle to penetrate," says Mr Clark.
This is because the graphics require more memory than current smart phones can
handle.
But Linden Labs isn't worried, because the number of users continues to rise.
"Monthly repeat login - a metric we use to gauge the number of users engaged
with Second Life - grew 23% from September 2008 to September 2009," says Mark
Kingdon, chief executive of Linden Lab.
On average, a million people log in each month, he says. In October 2009,
75,000 of those were in the UK.
And the site continues to evolve, Mr Kingdon says. It launched a new product
earlier this month geared towards businesses, and will soon be launching more
user-friendly and intuitive software.
And many companies and organisations are still hold on to their virtual selves
- 1,400 of them says Mr Kingdon. IBM continues to be an avid supporter of
Second Life.
But for many others, the jury is out.
It's the ultimate sandbox to build whatever you can imagine. Hospitals &
universities are using it, Harvard Law School is one among many who teaches
there. Reuters missed every major story while they had a site in SL. It's
wonderful for builders, artists, and live performers to start out, but no-one
is going to login to it to buy trainers. Pam, UK
I've just had my third "birthday" in Second Life and fully intend to have many
more there. I attribute my happiness there to four simple rules I follow, three
DON'Ts and one DO: 1) I don't run a business - I have enough of that in real
life. Second Life is a hobby and I'm willing to pay for my hobby. 2) I don't
get into relationships - far too dangerous as I'm a happily married family man.
My Second Life friends are not 'friends with benefits'. 3) I don't get involved
in arguments and fighting - enough of that in real life. 4) I do have a reason
to go there - like real life, Second Life is not Facebook, which is simply
about keeping in touch with people in your network. I was lost at first, but
quickly found new friends and new things to do. I help run a travelling
vaudeville theatre group and write & perform comedy acts - something I'd never
have thought of doing in real life. In fact my second life is as busy and
involved as my first. Second Life has a healthy and growing population that
doesn't need hype and counter-hype to continue to grow and enjoy it. HeadBurro
Antfarm, RL is Lancashire, SL is Steelhead
Another of SL's weaknesses is that events happen in real time. Social networks
such as Facebook and MySpace would not work so well if you could only
communicate with your friends when you're both online. My experience of many
events in SL is that I tend to spend more time explaining to people about
Second Life, how to use it, how to set up microphones etc, than I do enjoying
the event. Perhaps if a client were available for consoles then interest could
be bought back in. Darren Wall
Updates; that was what killed it for me. Every time you revisited you were
compelled to upload more and more updates, which seemed really cool at first,
until you realised that you were inflating the spec. Eventually, the
technological improvements outstripped the natural upgrading budget of the
average PC owner - there were a lot of stay-at-home moms, kids and freelancers
online when I was there - and the experience became like wading through buggy
sludge until it crashed on you. Not pleasant. Jon A, Bristol, UK
I joined SL but it was absolutely impossible to navigate. I could barely get
out of the intro area and once you did, there was no help or guidance left. I
wandered round and round in circles for a couple of days and then gave up. It
was a great idea but just didn't work in practice. Shame, really. Emma, UK
Use media as a measurement of how well an online community is surviving is much
like determining the health of your car by the number of pedestrians that look
at you drive past. Secondly, the idea of the Net in Second Life's form was from
William Gibson in the 80s, not Stephenson in the 90s. Rob Lang, Reading
I don't remember the media falling over themselves to cover Second Life. The
BBC always did though. I could never work out why, with so many larger, more
important online communities out there, the Beeb chose to focus so heavily on
one that was relatively small and obscure. Sarah, Maidstone, England
Second Life (and I'm not a user but have/had an account) is just as viable than
it was before the hype. It appeals to people who wish to escape reality - so
anyone trying to replicate reality find there was no business case.
Unfortunately this tenancy to seek out and hype the new and quirky (and equate
numbers growth with success) confuses and distracts people from what is
important - and proven - online v what is novel and unproven. Duane Raymond,
London, UK
Twitter will go the same way. Adam, Dundee
I spent two years on Second Life. Were it not for finding good company in the
trivia game community, I would never have stayed that long. Most of the other
things I found a bit pointless and superficial. Rickson Barbosa
Don't confuse hype with success. I am sure you are as aware of Gartner's Hype
Cycle as I am: Second Life has been through the over-hype, where it suffered
particularly from corporates completely missing the point - they could hardly
do anything but fail. Today, Second Life seems healthily on what Gartner called
the Slope of Enlightenment, on the way to the Plateau of Productivity. Where
Second Life really scores today in my view is as a teaching environment, and as
a venue for virtual conferences and events which are far more cost-effective
and environmentally sound than flying people across the world. As far as
teaching environments are concerned, look at the Frideswide region where the
University of Oxford's WWI Poetry Digital Archive has established a stunning
presentation of aspects of their collection in a simulated Western Front.
Richard E, Cambridge UK
I set up a Second Life account and spent a few hours trying to figure out how
the whole thing worked - I failed and gave up and have never been back. As with
any technology or service usability is important. Ed, London
Second Life is boring! You can't do anything without spending money, so for the
person casually checking it out, there's absolutely nothing to attract them.
And despite the comment in the article about "talking to weirdos", it's
actually quite difficult to find anyone in there to talk to at all. Vince,
Croydon, UK
I have been visiting Second Life on and off for three years and it is what you
make of it, like anything else. I do not consider myself to be a weirdo and I
am certainly not looking for cheap thrills or an extra-marital affair. I have
SL friends who I regularly chat with and they range from university professors
to gardeners and from teachers to artists. A wide social mix of people visit
Second Life, which is certainly the best virtual world without a shadow of a
doubt. As a building tool Second Life is terrific eg: I designed a kitchen
extension online that you can walk around as opposed to paying an architect a
fortune to draw it for me. It is not for everybody but to write it off now
would be incredibly premature. RC Robjohn, London
It's better than any social networking or chat room. It's more interactive.
Although there are a lot of rude people on there especially new users/avatars.
I met my wife on there. However you can grow bored of it and its speed
sometimes is slow. I now go on it once every couple of weeks. Rob H, Wolves, UK
Second Life is STILL huge... any search on the web will prove that due to the
reams of blogs, articles and content generated by the metaverse. The problem is
it faced a lot of negative press, which detracted from the actual user
experience. It's not all about geeks and perverts - many people use Second life
as a way to perform their music in a live environment. It's also a great outlet
for creators, I know of many people who make living wages from the items they
sell in-world. That said, it's not all about money, it's all about user
experience. I've made lots of new friends and learned new technical skills from
my time in world. People who want to try it should research it first and assess
their expectations - sure you can use it as a social networking tool, but you
have to build up that network first of all unless you already have friends in
world. Basically, if you go into the metaverse with no clear ambitions then you
are going to struggle, but if you want to use Second Life as a creative outlet
then you'll find it a very rewarding one indeed. Kitty O'Toole (Lisa Millar),
Jasper Islands, Second Life (Chesterfield, UK)