Second Life
Ok, this is something that really has been puzzling me for months. The Second Life hype. Today was the tipping point – i need to understand the dynamics of the hype – hope you can help.
A danish IDG arranged event called webchamp honoring great web solutions devotes about 80% of it’s full-day conference to Second Life. Rest aside that Second Life has got nothing to do with the World Wide Web (Web) it’s interesting how mass media is pumping/hyping up Second Life.
Overlooking the very low user numbers compared to for example gaming/sharing environments, ignoring that each decade have had it’s own graphical virtual worlds (the 80’s: Habitat, the 90’s: Active Worlds and ignoring more complex trends like participation, blogging, sharing, etc. Evidence-based the hype is so disproportional to the major trends that are seeing user adaption and the trends that are shaping us, our organizations and societies.
I think ideas like Second Life will have an impact in a 6-12 years time span – especially if they become open standards and open source.
So help me, what is it that makes Second Life so good to hype up?
Thomas, I wonder what the word hype means. I mostly hear the adjective about phenomenons and trends that people (you?) don´t want to see developing. Or about things that are not new – but SL is new – to a lot of people, who never knew Sim, 3D-universes or computergames.
I wouldn´t say there is hype aroung SL – there are a lot of people exploring it, as users, as presenters, as businesses. To mee, thats okey, that´s a good thing. Hype or not – i don´t know – does it matter?
I remember the time when a lot of people said: Whats the hype about the web, some people still say: whats the hype about blogs?
If I go to SL, I go to interact with people in a different manner than usual – not necessarily to meet new people or buy stuff – I think I like the feeling of presence. We are here now, I talk to you now, I leave now, and not, like we mostly to communicate in time-shift through articles, podcasts, blogs, wikis. I like the simultaneousness of SL.
Hype or not – does it matter?
Hype: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_hype
I think you’re misunderstanding me or i’m communicating badly.
I think Second Life and similar ideas are great – but that the short-term 0-6 year impact is so overvalued – an observation i share with many people. [updated post to reflect this]
And calling it is pretty easy if you look at the numbers, whether open standards are in place, relationship to other shifts, etc.
Remember vrml, wap, virtual reality, 3d worlds in the 90’s, etc.?
Well, he reason we’re taking interest in SL at Computerworld is because the major movers and shakers in the it-industry, such as IBM, and in business in general (Nike, Sony, Amazon, Reebok, Apple, Reuters, General Motors, Toyota, etc) are taking interest. This week in Davos top exs from all over the world meet with state leaders and experts to discuss the state of the world – guess what the hot ech topic is? Yes, they are going avatar in SL and setting up interviews with Davos-attendees in SL. Yesterday I attended a press meeting with the avatar of Peter Gabriel in the Reuters building.
I have no idea where the SL is leading to – maybe we’re looking at the next generation online 3D interface – but I know that the top decision makers in Davos and elsewhere have the power to make a technology or a phenomenon into a new world standard, and that decision is maturing right now very fast.
We’re of course there to report about it.
As far as numbers are concerned, the only interesting number in the stats is the “maximum online at the same time last 24 hours” which has gone from 10K to 26K in the last 6 months. Based on the number of people spending money in game one can make a guess that maybe 5 times that number at any given time are real users.
So they have gone from maybe 50K users to 125K users in half a year.
Clearly other types of phenomena have gotten much better traction in the same timespan which I guess makes this different from the old web hype – the web wasn’t competing for attention in the same way that Second Life is.
What it means is a big question though. Care to constrain the types of answer you’re looking for ?
@michael. thanks for clarifying all the hype that’s out there – i understand that. what i was interested in is why? is it interesting because other people think it’s interesting and it’s getting a lot of press attention – and therefore all companies looking for the quick pr spin is doing things in second life?
I think the Second Life Hype as you describe it has a lot to do with tangibility and immediacy.
It seems very easy and tangible to grasp what it is: an online world that very much resembles the real world we live in.
It also has a name with a rather immediate meaning that everyone can understand. Blogging as a phenomenon, for instance, may be much more widespread and cause more fundamental changes to the way people live than Second Life. But the name blogging is rather meaningless in and of itself — I still meet people frequently to whom the terms ‘weblog’, ‘blog’, ‘blogging’ make very little sense. When you say ‘Second Life’ to someone — even if they have never heard about it before — they get an instant idea of what it is actually about.
These things, however, are probably more helpful in trying to explain how the hype can happen. Less so when it comes to the deeper causes of this hype.
And all said with the disclaimer that I haven’t actually made my way to SL myself yet — I am somewhat curious, but I haven’t come accross anything about it yet that seemed so exciting that I just had to go.
Thomas – when you look back at the 90’s, you’ll see that Second Life is also an old paradigme. Ten years ago we had vrml communities with avatars that resembled Second Life very much. When I visit Second Life I’m actually a bit disapointed about how little has happened since then. The bandwith is better, but the graphics haven’t matured that much. The only big difference is the presence of big, mulitinational companies and a lot of reporters. Which makes it look like the novel “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson (1992) has come to life – ehh,,, 2nd Life
[...] God diskussion hos Thomas Madsen-Mygdal: http://bootstrapping.net/2007/01/25/second-life/ [...]
Føhns agree completely. But help us – since you’re a card carrying member of the clan called journalists
– what is it that makes secondlife fit so well into the narrative of mass media?
(niels all ready had a couple of good points – i’ll just add the easy one – the remarkable visual scenery of secondlife that makes it great for feature stories and tv reports).
I guess Second Life is easy and “real” enough to understands for the type of people who normally are the last to discover new phenomenons – Execs and Journalists
Finally there’s a (very) small meme they understand and you can even spend money there – wow let’s hype.
But it’s mostly hype, because as Claus cleverly clarifies when analyzing numbers, the spread is much, much lower than many other online communities…
Lessig recently had a which links to some interesting numbers. Also note that SL recently went Open Source and that apparently they have a flexible view on IP – see their recent to the (an equally hyped spoof – what is with these journalists??) site owner. These are reasons why I personally am interested in SL, although I do prefer playing World of Warcraft to walking around in there..
But apparently many SL´ers ex. WOW-players. Oh brave new world.
Claus – why do you multiply with 5?
I guess SL is hyped because they wanted to be. They probably hired a really good PR agency to hype them. It’s a rather small insignificant “phenomenon” on the internet. The fact that they have managed to hype it all the way to Davos doesn’t change that. I doubt Nike is selling a lot of real world sneakers in there. The fact that big brands are entering SL doesn’t mean anything outside the fact that they are entering. Whether it is worth doing time will tell, but currently I think there are more sales in buying a few extra keywords rather than setting up a sneaker store in SL.
@Føhns: The multiply by 5 is an empirical observation that has held true for the last 6 months or so.
It’s not hype Thomas. Let’s meet and I’ll tell you why not.
Føhns comment show me that neither of you understand this.
I did the same publicly in Computerworld a few months ago
Gunna, would love to meet – but shouldn’t we give the others here a chance to participate in the discussion?
We really need a first argument to what the substance of the hype is and why it’s valid.
Linden Labs -> cute idea, easy to understand -> 19.000.000 venturedollars -> no succes -> hire Flashpoint PR -> bored journalists -> hype -> Corporate execs want to be hip engage -> more hype -> Media execs want to be hip (ML) -> massive hype -> webdesigners day off at Radisson ;o)
The hype is NOT valid. Second Life is empty. Both in spirit and commercial value. John Lester from Linden Lab talked about his ideas of letting disabled people have a fully functional body in Second Life, when he visited Copenhagen last week. Beutiful idea – let’s keep it there. The bizz-bullshit from IBM about value-adds for costumers and others at the same conference was …. yeah – the worst I have heard since the overheated dotcom days…. I have now spent a couple of hours in SL every day for the past week. On any day I will prefer Skype with video and chat to this slow moving, bad graphics, hard to navigate and TOTALLY empty pseudoworld, where the only life is avatars having sex. It is extremely boring and timeconsuming – like early days www, where you could make your coffee waiting for at website to load…… Linden Lab – if you make this work – please tell me and I will revitalise my avatar.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddqgdn4g_23ds2qsf
In my opinion there are two things to consider about SL.
The first is of course the earlier mentioned ability to be anyone you like. Being very beautiful, running around with large muscles, small bikinis etc. We are all humans, and social accpetance is the most motivating factor for us. Furthermore it is very cheap to be the king. I mean I have seen real eastes for 3 USD and a fancy shirt for less than 1 USD. If you want to, you can have anything you want – also the stuff you cant have in 1st life, and opposite to earlier systems/worlds, they look like the real thing. Another important thing about the money is that we are greedy, and if we do not want social acceptance (by looking very good in SL), we at least want a lot of money. Therefore you see all the empty shops and all others sorts of sales and services. Also I have seen several examples on pyramid gaming structures. Something which I have not seen in 1st life for many years, but in all new territories the cowboys appears to make easy bucks.
Secondly I am sure that everybody, reading blogs like this, read and remembers William Gibsons early works. This is the closest thing to his matrix I have ever seen. And being in a company, like myself, represented in 50 countries, I would love to have a site inside SL (or somewhere similar), where everybody logs on when they come to the office, or turn on their computer anywhere else, and uses this as a gigantic intranet communication forum for the full corporation. I am aware that this functionality has been seen a lot of times before, but not in this package. And as people get bored of the big breasts and all that I think the use will be more professional and “normal”, as seen earlier in history.
And just a small comment to Henrik Føhns – I think the emptiness is caused by the large overrepresentation of US citizens, they sleep we we log on, and vice versa.
Just my five cents …
c”,)
The main problem is that it’s so much slower to navigate in a 3D environment than in a 2D environment. When they perfect the interface it might just be a tad quicker than real life, but compare that to the lightning speed on the flat parts of the internet.
It might take off as entertainment though – many silly ideas did just that – (the hoola hoop, the yo-yo to name just two.)
I’ve been asking myself why I’m so annoyed with the SL-hype. Gunnar Langemark is talking about this at http://www.computerworld.dk/blog/sl/533?cid=3&q=18028&sm=users&a=cid&i=3&pos=1.
I think the reason is that it just seemed that the internet was finally maturing, and that it was taking off as the social, democratic, wonderful medium it has the potential to be. Second Life is like the revenge of the 90ies. It is proof that people (including corporate executives) still just doesn’t get it.
According to Linden Lab only 31 procent of the inhabitants of SL are Americans.
The name “Second life” is good. It generates easy recognisable stories. You can make a Story about the dangers of getting too involved in the game – Like Don Quixote got in the stories of Chivalry he read, and You can describe the things that happens there. Old stuff that can fill a bit of the space between the newspaper adds …
Second Life – the dynamics behind the “hype”.
I read Thomas Madsen-Mygdal’s blog a few days ago. He’s a very clever guy and I enjoy reading what he has to say! Your should too.
One of his latest posts is about Second Life (SL) and all of the attention (and hype) it’s getting. Fro…
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