![]() Second Life exists because Linden Lab, a private company, runs it.A full ensemble of men’s clothes can fetch $2,500 Linden. For reference, a customizable avatar shape can go for ten Linden dollars. Linden dollars would not have been a good investment… Is $320 Linden a lot or a little? It depends-prices for digital assets and services vary widely on the Second Life marketplace. Fortunately, Second Life has its own currency, Linden Dollars, which trades on an open exchange.In 2007, stories exploded about people who had side businesses in Second Life that earned them well into the five and six figures. Avatars hawk their wares and services which range from the expected (house builder, landscaper, fashion designer) to the bizarre (surrogate mom for a virtual baby).dollars per year) which gives one a “ready-to-move-in” virtual home, the opportunity to visit exclusive areas of the grid, and enhanced technical support, among other benefits. One can upgrade to a premium account (ninety-nine U.S. However, unless one is particularly talented at using the world’s building/scripting engines, money is necessary to buy fancy clothes for your avatar, buy virtual land, and buy virtual furniture and art to furnish your virtual home. Spending time in Second Life is free, and there are lots of free virtual items to find. ![]() Finding places to go involves searching key words, events, and topics similar to navigating the web. To travel in the virtual world, one teleports to various destinations on a virtual “grid” (the technical term for the server-driven digital rendering of the world).In 2007, I became Jonathan Sellers and no matter how much I tried to look like me, I always bore a striking resemblance to Harry Potter. Users can decide their first names but pick from a long list of last names. An avatar can be a virtual resemblance of one’s real-life physique or something totally different.Everyone begins as a stock avatar but is free to customize their appearance. Users create an account on, download an application to their computers (Second Life does not run on tablets or phones), and then login.There is no goal other than to experience the virtual world itself. Rather, it is an alternate reality platform accessed via a computer. ![]() ![]() Although Second Life is a virtual world, it is not a virtual reality platform.In case your memory of Second Life is hazy or you have never even heard of it, it is important to understand what it is and what it’s not. What happened? Why did an application, where the likes of Starwood, Reuters, and Cisco had a presence, become back page news? And where is it now? The magazine even ventured that Second Life could mount a challenge to Microsoft’s dominant Windows operating system.Īnd then, in a flash, it seemed that Second Life vanished from the headlines. ![]() The May 1, 2007, Business Week cover story chronicled Anshe Chung, an avatar who had amassed virtual land holdings worth more than $250,000. While the equally obsessed business media saw it as the epitome of Web 2.0 technology, I saw it as a potentially game-changing market research platform that would give new meaning to online qualitative especially.Ĭompanies were developing “virtual world strategies” in a manner reminiscent of the euphoria surrounding the web in 1997 and TikTok’s momentum right now. From the fall of 2006 to early 2008, I was obsessed with Second Life, a virtual world where users could create and customize an avatar, purchase virtual land plots with real money, and build virtual structures bound only by the limits of their imaginations. ![]()
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