Remember, that’s that virtual world that got a TON of hype back in 2005/6. It was on the cover of magazines. On CNN and other TV shows. It looked like it was going to be THE new thing of the decade.

What happened?

Well, a few things.

1. Corporations figured out that they’d need to spend a lot of money to build an island in Second Life (Microsoft spent somewhere around $100,000 if I remember right back then) but soon they figured out that each island could only hold 100 people. Not a good ROI.

2. It had game dynamics. Games are fun for a while, but eventually people get bored of playing games. That’s what happened. People who were very excited and evangelistic about Second Life eventually moved on.

3. It lost its “new and shiny” patina. That’s most of why the press forgot about it. We only pay attention to new and cool stuff. Heck, just look at Techcrunch. Do you read about older technologies there? No.

Anyway, one thing happened that I find very interesting: it continued to grow in users, time spent on the site, and dollars spent in it.

On Friday I sat down with Mark to find out why.

First, the users remained very evangelistic. Second, corporations like IBM found other uses for its islands and kept investing (they now use these islands for training and replacements of expensive conferences). Third, the technology has been steadily improving. Fourth, the company has found new ways to bring new users in and make the experience easier to get into.

But he admitted that they had been pretty quiet and avoided doing more PR work until just recently.

Why is that changing this week? You’ll see why tomorrow morning at about 11 a.m. on building43.

But to tease a bit, I find that their new direction, the first part of which you’ll see tomorrow in the video I did with Mark, is interesting and represents a new life for Second Life and its host Linden Labs.

To wrap this up, have you used Second Life lately? Even if you haven’t, see you on building43 tomorrow morning for more.

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It is possible that that will soon change, as the LLmedia API has been released to developers. This API lets developers create plug-ins for the Second Life viewer to bring more media-rendering capabilities to the virtual world. Linden explains on the Second Life Blog:

Currently, Residents who own land have the ability to specify a select set of media types to be used on their parcel through the Land Management settings.  This allows Residents to do interesting things like watch videos, show Web pages to visitors, or just add ambiance to inworld spaces with streaming music.  However, the types of media that could be used inworld has been limited to only those that could be rendered by the set of media rendering engines embedded in the Second Life Viewer, such as Apple QuickTime movies.

The LLMedia API will change this by enabling developers to create media rendering plug-ins for the Second Life Viewer. In the future, by installing these plug-ins, you’ll be able to enjoy a wider range of media inworld, without having to download new Viewers to do so. For example, when a plug-in is developed for rendering an additional video format, you’ll be able to view media in that format inworld after downloading and installing that plug-in, without having to wait for a new version of the Second Life Viewer that includes this rendering engine.

Is this going to create the buzz for Second Life that once existed in the days when it was even getting mentions on NBC’s The Office? I’m not sure I would go that far, but APIs tend to open up lots of room for improvement, and this one appears to be a step in the right direction for usability of the virtual world.

Linden says it’s going to take some time for Second Life to get to where it needs to be, but considers this an "important step" in the right direction.

Snowglobe will contain new Second Life features before they become available in the official release. That said, not all features will make it there.

The main feature that Linden Lab is highlighting is a new map. "Zooming out is fast and seamless," says Rob Linden on the company blog. "The icons only show up when you’re zoomed in close enough for them to be useful, and don’t clutter the view when you’re zoomed out. Map tiles load quickly with the right amount of detail for the view. In short, the map really works now."

There is also a mini-map, which lets the user zoom in for extreme close-ups. "Handy for those large gatherings where all of the avatar dots just seem to pile on top of each other," says Linden. "It’s also more fun than you ever knew you could have with your scrollwheel."

Linden warns that the viewer may be less stable than the official Second Life viewer because it is developed on a more rapid release schedule, and in a less formal manner.

A few months back you couldn’t escape media coverage of the brave new virtual world of Second Life. Major brands were building virtual HQ’s, holding virtual meetings and developing virtual marketing campaigns. Coca-Cola, IBM and even the NBA was making its second home there.

However, all’s quiet on the Second Life media front nowadays, and many have long been watching what they believe to be the demise of the once-hyped world. But is it really on the virtual scrapheap?

Not according to Linden Lab chief executive Mark Kingdon. "You read those stories; as CEO I have to shake my head," he said. "The reality is that Second Life continues to grow; every second someone joins. Second Life is hopping."

So what are the virtual world’s current stats? According to recent reports:

- There are more than 15,000 merchants selling virtual goods.

- Over US$1.3 million worth of transactions take place each day.

- In January this year, residents spent 41.5 million hours immersed in Second Life compared with 28.3 million in January, 2008.

- The virtual world boasts over 15 million registered users.

- On average, 70,000 people are logged on to Second Life at any one time.

- The number of active users has risen 25% since September, 2008.

Just last week, Second Life’s blog announced plans to clean up the virtual streets by moving adult content and activity onto its own continent.  While estimates show that just 2%-4% of activity in Second Life would be construed as too sexy for minors, the move will mean residents can feel more comfortable about their environment, safe in the knowledge they won’t be tripping over avatars shooting-up or engaging in lewd sex acts. According to a report in the Washington Post, the “adult continent” will require age verification before it can be accessed. 

Perhaps, despite the lack of hype and media-coverage, there is still life left in the virtual world yet.

Land mass in Second Life has also seen a fair amount of growth, growing by 23% to just under 2 billion square meters:

Resident-to-resident transactions matched the previous high of $102 million:

And the volume on the LindeX (virtual currency exchange) was higher than ever as well:

Linden Lab is sadly expecting a slowdown in land growth in the fourth quarter, perhaps as people realize that first life problems might trump those of the virtual world. Or perhaps we should all just start living in virtual worlds.

"Lively," as the experience is called, may not fall in line with Google’s traditional values, but the service does live up to its name.  After downloading it for free to a computer running either Windows XP or Vista, would-be users are encouraged to create 3D representations of themselves and start embedding areas within websites.

 A Unique Lively Environment

As an entry on the Official Google Blog makes clear, "If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website, you can immediately get a sense of the room creator’s interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose.  You can also express your own personality by customizing your avatar’s look, showing people who you are without having to say a word.  Of course, you can chat with each other, and you can also interact through animated actions."

It’s even possible to display YouTube videos on virtual TVs and real photos within virtual picture frames.  What you can’t do is freely move from setting to setting; Lively isn’t a cohesive, Second Life competitor in that sense.  But there’s no reason it couldn’t become one, and early signs relating to My World (as Lively was called during a stage of testing) led us to believe that would be the end result.

Another interesting hint: Google’s using the word "rooms," from which there’s all sorts of ways to expand, to describe the current crop of virtual environments.

Who Has ‘Metaphysical Jurisdiction’ In Second Life?

See, I warned you.

This conversation comes courtesy of the Association of Internet Researchers‘ annual conference, which happened recently. Virtual worlds were a focal point at the meeting, as people are investing real time, energy, and money in creating and maintaining virtual worlds and virtual economies.

Thus, it begs the question as to whether virtual worlds need real-world regulation, or if they are capable of self-regulating via a type of free market economy and existence. But to answer that question, other questions about the nature of virtual worlds and the people who have an existence in them must be answered.

It’s not too late to get out, by the way, before we get into some really mind-bending stuff.

The gods of these worlds are by no means collectively imagined, nor are they anthropomorphic or democratic. Lawyers don’t deal in world-gods, so they label them differently: the virtual world providers. An example would be Linden Labs, which runs Second Life.

So, before we can get into the nature of the virtual world and the virtual people within it, we first must understand the nature of the creator/provider. The provider has the power to delete anything and everything that exists in the virtual world. As it is not in the interest of the provider to delete everything that exists, the provider holds a power it will not yield.

However, the provider can and has motivation to pick and choose on a singular basis what does exist, including avatars, currencies, and other objects. It is debatable as to whether the provider is held in check or self-regulated by a democratic process – i.e., too much tyranny unmakes existence as avatars choose not to exist in such an environment – or if the provider exists as a sort of benevolent dictator, maintaining an equilibrium that keeps avatars happy and motivated enough that existence proves fruitful.

A reasonable person might think it was a combination of both, but the model only applies to proprietary software-driven virtual worlds where all is controlled and maintained by mono- or even polytheistic entities. Some argue, though, that even if virtual existence were governed by open source – i.e., the avatars creating in concert their reality – " it still wouldn’t solve the normative determination of what’s fair to do to players."

Still with me? Good.

But what if a third party, an evil within, a devilish presence, runs amok as a hacker with the power to strip away virtual assets that could be ascribed value in the real world. Who is accountable? The hacker thief, of course, is primarily responsible, and punishment rests with the provider, who, ironically, created a world where the hacker thief could exist in the first place.

And if so, what responsibility does the provider bear for the allowable existence of the hacker-thief? Some might say the provider is absolved of all responsibility via the end-user license agreement, a document all within the virtual world have access to, but less than one percent have read. The avatars should have known better than to make risky investments in a mostly perception-based world.

Shouldn’t there be, then, some other arbitrator in this equation – a power higher than the virtual world provider to resolve how much responsibility, if any, the provider has to its avatar subjects? And if there is a higher power, who regulates him?

Ahem.

Eric Goldman, who bears direct responsibility for the above virtually metaphysical exploration, says (paraphrased) "that’s just life." His take on whether virtual worlds should be regulated:

• no evidence of market failure. Investments still growing rapidly
• We can rely on existing consumer protection laws (such as false advertising) [to] provide substantial protection for any [virtual world] provider deception

If only it were that simple in the real world.        

Google Earth Could Go After Second Life

The word, as such, is “Gmail.”  Arizona State University students have been given the opportunity to test “a new product that will be publicly launched later this year,” and a survey related to this mystery product asks, “Do you have a Gmail account?”

The next question inquires about non-disclosure agreements, so we don’t expect to see a lot more details in the immediate future.  Still, there are mentions of 3D modeling and videogames, and ten diverse avatars seem to point to the social nature of the offering.

“My World,” as the product’s called, is quite real, then; it just remains to be seen if it’s tied to Google.  But as Ionut Alex Chitu points out, “Arizona State University has a very close relation with Google: it’s one of the first large universities in the US that uses Google Apps, the site search is powered by Google Search Appliance, the university uses Google Maps and the ASU campuses already have 3D models in… Google Earth.”

He then continues, “But there’s actually more than this: the university offered photos for the Google Mars project, Google employees serve as guest speakers or adjunct lecturers at ASU and Google has an office on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University.”

If My World is indeed a Google product, don’t worry that it would take over Google Earth – the search giant would likely leave some layer of that intact and untouched.  In any event, the year’s only got about 95 days left in it, so before that time runs out, we should get some more definitive My World answers.

As The Motley Fool’s Tony Shute (affectionately) puts it, “Honeywell Geeks Out.”  Shute then goes on to explain how each of the two projects have affected the company.

Social bookmarking may be the clearer case, so we’ll start there.  “Using software from startup Connectbeam, Honeywell employees can bookmark and tag documents, see which other users tried similar searches, and create knowledge groups through social networking,” writes Shute.

He goes on to compare Honeywell to – gasp! – the king of Mountain View.  “Thinking about my own frustrating experiences as a cubicle dweller, I can see this approach clearing up a lot of problems with information flow.  Google Enterprise Search doesn’t go nearly this far.”  Google sometimes fails – we all know this.  But for one of its search products to get “beaten” is very unusual.

Yet Honeywell’s Second Life-related endeavor may not put it in quite the same distinguished company.  As the corporation joined the virtual world, Second Life’s own Eloise Pasteur wrote, “Honeywell have taken a cautious approach compared to many large companies, with a couple of small builds to see how things work in Second Life, and what is possible.”

Still, Honeywell appears to be doing some things that put it ahead in the virtual game.  I’m now going to think about how to apply the company’s name to a MySpace- or Facebook-type website.

The nastiness continues. Warning: The following will detail (in part) some rather offensive stuff. There may be jokes cracked, too, just so you know. We’ll do it on a graduated scale – funny to weird to really weird.

The iGasm

Apple’s apparently not too happy about this, but everybody else seems to be. In England, an online merchant is selling the "iGasm," an iPod attachment that, er, well, let’s quote the site:

…hooks up to your iPod, MP3 player, laptop or CD player and vibrates in sync with the beat. Go at it hard and fast with a pounding drum and bass track or chill with the ambient classic. Just turn up the volume to increase the strength of the vibrations and believe us when we say that full whack is PHENOMENAL.

Yeeeow! Is it hot in here? Are you embarrassed? I’m embarrassed – is my face flushed?

According to News of the World, Apple is "iRate" over the use of their signature silhouette look and feel. I wonder how the iTalians feel about it.

Ooh. Sorry about that. By the way, the term "iGasm" was coined in London in 2006, according to Urban Dictionary.

Filed Under ‘Get A Friggin Life’

Or a Second Life. I mean a real second life. The Fuzz over in England, Holland, and Belgium are scratching their heads trying to decide if avatar-on-avatar sex crimes are punishable in the real world. "Online rape" on Second Life could be violations of harassment laws in those countries.

Here’s a virtual "wet willie" to the Euro Po-po. Gonna arrest me for thinking next?

Stop Here If You Want To Keep Your Faith In Humanity

A Maryland Webmaster was convicted for engaging in forced labor and sex trafficking. Glenn Marcus did horrible things to an apparently willing "Jodi" and posted the BSDM footage on his bondage website.

Nothing too deviant, you know, just carving the word "slave" in her stomach and the usual flogging. According to testimony, Jodi moved in with Marcus and lived to "serve Him, to please Him."

I’ll give you second to shake off the heebie-jeebies.

Anyway, Marcus was found guilty of the sex trafficking and forced labor charges and was forced to shut down his Website, SlaveSpace.com. On the site, Marcus called the charges "scurrilous," but the judge has a hard time reading from behind the leather mask.

Really, really sorry about that.