Albany, NY -- A Second Life? I Wasn't Done With the First One!
Somehow it wasn't until today that I found out about Second Life.It's an online environment where you play/exist as an avatar (character that represents you), exploring the world and interacting with other avatars.
850,000+ people have signed up (how did I miss this?), including politicians (Mark Warner, for one), bands, and even news organizations.
It's really nuts... Popular Science did a feature story on it last month:
Launched in 2000, SL counts among its largest backers Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Today a session in SL usually means play: meeting new people (everyone who’s logged in is somewhere in the SL landscape), building a rocket, even having sexual liaisons in specially marked adult areas. But increasingly, people are logging on to work, shop, or go to class. Of course, the same thing could have been said about the Web 10 years ago. Like the Web, all but the basic infrastructure in SL is built by the people who populate it. Want a conference room where you can swap blueprints with a team around the world? Create one, and other avatars can come inside. Want to sell your band’s music? Build a jukebox, fill it with MP3s, and charge SL residents in Linden dollars (SL’s currency) to download them.
I played around with it a bit today (I'm kind of wondering how I can make money off of it or do something Jewish in it that would positively affect my company). I found myself really bored, but maybe there's something to it. I'm not sure yet.
Has anybody else reading this tried it?
posted by jbrzoska @ 1:01 AM Trackback Link
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