http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5078444/Second-Lifes-span-is-virtually-over-as-firms-decide-to-get-real.html is a good article describing the decline of Second Life. As someone who was talking about future markets for virtual environments as early as 1991, I find it sad, but not surprising. Second life was a good idea, but the novelty has worn off. It is essentially a combination of an exploratory computer game, a role playing game, and chat room. With many excellent computer games that add excitement to large-map virtual environments and many of those offering networked multiplayer options, the game and virtual world side of it has very strong competition. With the glut of social networking sites offering lots of bells and whistles on top of chat capability, it has lost this battle too. As the telegraph article points out, it still has a lot of visitors, but the market will continue to decline as awareness and availability of high quality competition increases, and as it starts to fall below critical mass, people will abandon it very quickly. It is sad, but Linden Labs started with a great idea, which at the time was pretty much state of the art. but they have failed to adapt and evolve fast enough, and in the rapidly evolving jungle that is the web, that is usually fatal. They could still reinvent it, but the signs are that it is too late.
What was it the Bond film was called? You only live twice? This is Second Life already in this case. The interesting question is whether Linden Labs can take the money, run, and build something else that is as new and fresh as Second Life once was. I hope so, and I wish them well.
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