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…

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”,)

We really need a first argument to what the substance of the hype is and why it’s valid.

But it’s mostly hype, because as Claus cleverly clarifies when analyzing numbers, the spread is much, much lower than many other online communities…

(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).

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.

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.

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.?

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?