What Happened to Second Life?

Mark Kingdon here...I’m the CEO for Linden Lab and I wanted to offer a little more perspective about where Second Life is right now.

To echo Wagner James Au’s comment, Second Life has continued to grow significantly and has a healthy, flourishing user base. Lauren Hansen’s comments suggested that we measure user growth by looking at total registrations, which would of course always increase and build on itself over time, but this is not the case. To track the number of users engaged with Second Life, we look at the number of Residents who log-in more than once in a given month, and you can see the growth of this metric for yourself here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-13722-1899... . For example, from September 2008 – September 2009, repeat log-ins grew more than 20%.

As I noted in an interview with Lauren for her BBC piece (full text of the interview, and my response to her article is here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/press/blog/2009/11/20/m-linden-s-... ), every month, approximately one million people from around the world log-in to Second Life, where they spend about 40 million hours inworld, and participate in a virtual economy that will exceed USD500 million this year.

It sounded like Lauren found it difficult to believe that companies would use Second Life in a professional setting, but the fact is that today, more than 1,400 organizations around the world, including major universities, nonprofits, and large companies are using Second Life for collaboration, learning, training, meetings and events. These organizations include IBM, Northrop Grumman, and the University of Texas, which just began a system wide roll-out of Second Life for their entire student population. Second Life allows organizations to meet and collaborate virtually without the cash and carbon cost of real world travel, and organizations are seeing real-world benefits from using the virtual world. Our new product, Second Life Enterprise, is a standalone version of Second Life that organizations can host themselves for an additional level of data security. It’s currently in beta, but we’ve already seen strong demand for the product and have 14 major customers, including the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. There’s a lot more info on this at http://Work.SecondLife.com

Finally, I wanted to address the point Chris Dahlen made about usability. Making Second Life easier to use is one of our most important strategic initiatives. 18 months ago when I joined Linden Lab, I started a top-to-bottom renovation of the experience and the platform. We've brought some of the best minds in the software business into the Lab to work on this effort. In several months, you'll see some substantial improvements to the user experience.

There’s something in Second Life for everyone, whether that’s visiting virtual recreations of real world locations, shopping and socializing with friends, learning new languages, attending concerts, or even going to work. Linden Lab is hard at work to make it easier than ever for new users to get started in Second Life, and we invite you to visit http://SecondLife.com to learn more and try it for yourself!

Lauren Hansen observations on Second Life are typical of someone who hasn't done basic research on Second Life, she is going for a sensationalist headline That is that.. Second Life has failed. Not only is she skimming old news from back in 2006-7 it seems like she has been told to write this point of view of SL failing, no matter what...possibly to stir up a reaction which she has indeed. As a person who has interviewed over 300 people in Second Life about what they are doing there and what why they stay I can confidently say that most are not "programers" very few are actually programers...I certainly am not, have no interest in gaming at all, and never been in IT...Second Life is a platform that allows people to reach a global audience and possibly start afresh without prejudice, or the tyranny of distance or ability.

The companies that flocked to SL that did indeed pull out, treated this platform as a 3D web which it is most certainly not. They didn't know how to use it, or make it work for them. The ones that took time to understand it. stayed and are prospering.

As a user of Second Life personally I could care less about big corporations coming into Second Life, its the ordinary people who use Second Life who are important. The Artists, the ordinary housewives, the photographers the charity workers the musicians the actors the IT geeks the teachers the professors ect..

Lauren said so many things wrong in her interview both in the Article on the BBC website, and now on your program. It is patently clear she has absolutely no idea about Second Life. If she actually made some correct and relevant judgements she could be worth taking to task, but she is so out of date with where SL is now. Her observations clearly show her to be very inexperienced in S.L and therefor its pointless to ask her to comment. Its like asking you or I to comment on the state of the Royal Family in the U.K unless your'e an insider what do we know?...If Lauren had watched any of my TV shows filmed in SL...sorry for the plug...she might have seen the culture and amazing diversity of people who use second Life who are not Geeks or programers but just people with a little perseverance to work something out that has been of such great value to them. Second Life user-ability was no more complicated to me than it was working out how to use Microsoft World (which I still struggle with) .You have to need or want to use SL to take time to benefit for sure. Its not a world for quitters.

Please talk to someone in future with a rudimentary understanding of Second Life, not some sensationalist junior journalist who has obviously been told to write something negative about Second Life just to stir things up. regards Paisley Beebe

I realize that the premise of the "Word of Mouth" column allows the latitude to conduct "he said, she said" journalism, which perpetuates myths in the same way that urban legends do, without the hassle of conducting first-person research, but the tired old "diss Second Life" angle is now passe (for example, read Chris O'Brien's article of 10/10/2009 in the San Jose Mercury News entitled "Twitter, Meet Second Life" at http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_13517103).

As another commenter mentioned, I also find it tiresome when technologies are measured by their "business quotient" (as if earning power was their only viable measure of value) or by the degree to which media report on it (worse yet because media hype is self-perpetuating and has nothing to do with the technology itself).
--- As for the business angle, some businesses followed journalistic hype during early 2007 and assumed a "build it and they will come" attitude about virtual worlds without conducting any market research of their own or understanding this new medium, and then bailed when they discovered that virtual worlds are just an extension of the physical world and not some new world with naieve natives. For those who took the time to explore this new technology (like IBM, as mentioned - see http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/11/05/second.life.virtual.collabora... - buy also many others), they have found it an unparalleled medium in which to conduct internal business and to reach the public, and now, with products like Second Life Enterprise, the use of virtual worlds will become part of doing business for many global firms.
--- As for media hype, the best way to understand this phenomenon with regards to technologies is to see Gartner's hype cycle report on 1650 technologies at http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1124212. This graph will explain why virtual worlds are not as prominent in the media as two years ago and also how they are on their way towards becoming more accepted as they mature and perhaps why even the popular media is starting to sing their praises.

Let me share my experiences this last week in Second Life so you can get some idea of the utility of this rich convergent medium.
--- I am a member of a virtual team exploring how interdisciplinary approaches can find unique solutions to today's problems. The head of this group is at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies, but frequently attends a weekly meeting, as do other virtual members, from various locations in the world in which they find themselves, including several locations in the United States, plus Scotland, the Netherlands, Japan, and Thailand. We hold workshops during the week on topics in the sciences and the humanities. I facilitate an interdisciplinary science seminar each week. Recently topics of discussion have included from where the Earth's oceans orignated, why we need sleep, and the new field of plasmonics. This week I had an expert in plasmonics show up and help my understanding, as well as that of the others. I publish group notices about the meetings to a variety of groups which are received by members and these notices appear in my e-mail, as well as any IMs from Second Life acquaintances. My university is currently planning to use Second Life for a variety of purposes, including conducting a Spanish class for optometrists in a brach campus, simulating the physiology of pharmaceuticals and enabling student pharmacists to solve problems interactively while observing patient vital signs, conducting patient interviews and performing triage for nursing students, simulating chemistry lab safety, and conducting mandatory training for faculty members. This Spring I will teach my fourth international class using Second Life. In the last class I co-taught with a professor in France and his students and mine learned Project Management concepts and practices and formed international teams to imagine, design, build, and script a functional object. We used a scavenger hunt with clues about French and American culture to promote teamwork. Our university owns an island in Second Life.
--- Outside of class a student employee of mine from Morocco reported on his first impression of Second Life - he created an avatar, went in, looked around, thought it looked like a game, and left. I decided to show him Casablanca in Second Life. He immediately recognized the Hassan II mosque. We walked in, took off our shoes, and he explained to me about how worship was conducted there. Another avatar walked in and my student commented that he had a Moroccan first name. He greeted me in English but asked if I spoke French. I responded in French that I could, a bit. I found out that my student as fluent in French and Arabic, so I was able to work with him to talk with the other avatar. He was also able to translate the combination Arabic, French, and Spanish we heard others in the area speaking (a combination I learned is common in Morocco). We observed other avatars and looked at their profiles while walking around in the marketplace where I learned about the items on sale there from my student. I noticed that one avatar was recommending a horse ranch in Second Life owned by a someone with a Moroccan name, so we teleported to that place. There were horses dressed in American Western gear (Western saddle, lariat, rifle) and in medieval armor and there was a black Arabian stallion dressed parade gear (Moroccan saddle, triangular stirrups). Another avatar showed up from Bordeaux, France (from her profile) and we talked about her horses in First Life (I avoid the term Real Life because Second LIfe is just as "real" as the physical world because everyone you meet is a real person) and I found she really wanted a Second Life horse but could not afford one (she was working as a dancer in Second Life but the wages were low), so I talked with the owner of the horse ranch about buying one for her as a Christmas gift. As a businessman, he tried to talk me into a deal to buy three horses. I said I would buy two. He suggested a price. I made a counteroffer that he accepted. While he was making up the gift box with the horses he gave to the French avatar, he said he would include in a third horse and I thanked him for his generosity. Now think about this encounter for a minute - in a short period of time I talked with people from a couple of countries, heard Arabic as it is spoken in Morocco, learned about Islamic practices in a mosque, visited part of Casablanca, learned about Moroccan saddlery and accessories, conducted international business, and improved international relationships with Morocco and France at a micro-level. At the same time I shared with with my Moroccan student in the physical world and convinced him of the worth of virtual worlds and he agreed to explore how international business is conducted there and report to our Spring class. Where else could I have accomplished all this, for next to nothing (the horses cost an equivalent of US$4 each)?

I understand that some feel that somehow Second Life should be able to already accommodate a million concurrent users (perhaps they are thinking of World of Warcraft or another largely client-resident program instead of globally distributed world created entirely by users) but any new technology must go through a period in which it is not as "user friendly" as hoped, and a combination of less than adequate laptops (like the one I use right now) and inadequate bandwidth (like I sometimes experience at work and home) can result in some really frustrating moments (like when I crashed at the beginning of a conference presentation recently). Just like the early Web, I am willing to wait and anticipate and to be a part of the changes in this new technology as it goes through its growing pains.

I hope earlier commentators do not mind, but I would like to echo a couple of comments with which I particularly agree:
--- "There’s something in Second Life for everyone, whether that’s visiting virtual recreations of real world locations, shopping and socializing with friends, learning new languages, attending concerts, or even going to work." Mark Kingdon
--- "As a user of Second Life personally I could care less about big corporations coming into Second Life, it’s the ordinary people who use Second Life who are important. The Artists, the ordinary housewives, the photographers the charity workers the musicians the actors the IT geeks the teachers the professors etc..." Paisley Beebe

I had seen Reporter Hansens' request in a Help A Reporter Out post specifically for people who "had used Second Life, and now no longer wanted to." The reporter had her slant on the story well before she conducted her interviews, in fact, she looked ONLY for stories to support this myopic notion of Second Life. Adam Reuters, notoriously stated he could find nothing more than louche events. Adam Reuters also did not aim high enough and did not do his Homework.
What this reporter does not cover could fill a book, or a library of which there are dozens in Second Life. The University of Texas just opened 30 islands for educational purposes. The SciLands have an incredible amount of rich science and educational activities and buildings, including NOAA. University of Oxford's First World War Poetry Digital Archive was recently featured inworld and covered by the network I have my science quiz show on, Treet.tv. http://www.the1stquestion.com/ Second Life has a huge creative and thriving pulse.
Yes, network, PookyMedia http://www.pookymediafilms.com/ uses Second Life as a media platform for award winning Machinima (cinema done on machine) and there was just an International Machinima Expo and Sundance is including a documentary on Second Life this year. The 48 Hour Film Project deemed Second Life important enough to make it a separate city in it's competition. Businesses did fail without understanding that you can not just put up a building and not have any support staff or events there to bring people into it. Would anyone build something in First life and not have any staff in it? Those businesses who have an understanding of customer service are still here and thriving.
I sincerely wonder what Reporter Hansens' article would have looked liked if her headline for stories had read "Looking for people who use Second Life effectively." She was biased and unfair from the start.
The press needs the hype cycle to sell news, better reportage would generate better coverage not sensationalism.