TechRadar has a fairly balanced article regarding what happened to Second Life and where it’s heading, which you can read here. What I like about this article is that it doesn’t end by saying Second Life is going nowhere, it also has quotes from people like Tateru Nino and current Linden Lab CEO RodVilla Humble.
The article is realistic, there was too much hype, big brands thought they could come in, build something and people would come. I have long maintained that the big brands should have intergrated more, I understand that this is tricky in a user generated content world, they lose some control and maybe didn’t want their brand side by side with a store with a huge phallus on the top of the building (I saw stores like this when I first arrived and they made me cringe). However brands should have been looking to sponsor more gigs, sponsor art galleries, plant adverts in sims, generally engage with the Second Life public.
Then there’s the issue of the learning curve and whereas more experienced Second Life users find it hard to understand that the learning curve is steep, it simply is for many people. I joined Eve-Online earlier in the year for a while, they have superb tutorials, they email you with more tips when you’re new, Eve-Online has a steep learning curve too but they do try harder to keep new users engaged with those tutorials but in a user generated world where Linden Lab have less control than the creators of a world like Eve-Online, it’s harder to guide people.
