Second Life still living its first one

 

In our culture of hype, the Second Life virtual world had its day in the sun. Almost a year ago, I contributed to the hubbub with a big story in Fortune about how even IBM CEO Sam Palmisano was calling virtual worlds a major future trend. More recently, with all the buzz about Facebook and social networking, you may have heard less about Second Life, or even assumed it was waning. But in a recent interview, Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, which operates it, insists that both company and service are thriving.

Second life: unreality check

It doesn’t look like much, at least not from the outside. A pair of double doors on a quiet San Francisco street leading into a converted warehouse. The low morning sun casts shadows across the street, accentuating the edges of the surrounding buildings and making everything look sharper, more real. Once inside the double doors, though, reality effectively ceases to exist. Here there is no death, no disease, no pain, no gravity and no sex – or not as we know it. Here you can be anyone you want to be. Nine years ago a brown-haired, bug-eyed, boundlessly enthusiastic man in his late twenties called Philip Rosedale founded a website called Second Life. The principle behind it was simple enough. Using the latest technology, people would be able to enter a virtual world. There, they could create a new identity for themselves – an avatar. If they wanted to change sex, that was fine. If they wanted to have two heads and a tail and give themselves a silly name like Aurora Lunarsea, that was fine too. There were no limits, except the limits of users’ imaginations, and next to no rules.