Shall we meet in Second Life

Everybody is talking about Second Life, The Economist, the Financial Times and every other reputable business journal or newspaper is writing about it (for example http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7963538).

Membership is exploding, approaching 2 mill, adding several hundred thousands a month.

Marriot just had a grand opening of the new Aloft Hotel brand, not to appear in real life until 2008. I attended the opening and the following rock concert and mingling party, met a couple of interesting business journalists.

So what is it?

Second Life is a computer simulated reality on the web where real people move about in the shape of their avatars, meet other people, make impressive buildings (like the Aloft Hotel), vehicles and any other artifact you can think of.

It is free to join (www.secondlife.com), but you can spend real money buying land, buildings, services, etc.

Companies like Marriot, Toyota, Sun, and others spend big money building their presence in Second Life. They don’t do it just for fun.

You move about in Second Life by walking, flying or ‘teleporting’, the latter takes you anywhere in seconds. You can also drive a car or a motorcycle, if you have one. Someone took me for a ride in his helicopter the other day, amazing.

I don’t build things in Second Life, it would have to become a hobby for which I don’t have the time at present. I mainly go there to meet people, and unlike real life I can check their profile before approaching them. I can chat by typing, this works very well in small groups, I have also installed a voice plugin, but so far I have not been able to make it work. You can make free telephone calls from phone booths in Second Life to any US phone number.

Will meetings take place in Second Life? Of course, they already do. What is the point? I don’t think I will be able to attend the opening of the first Marriot Hotel in real life, unless I happened to be where it is going to be, and I would not have met some interesting people, some of whom I have met again on later occasions. When I speak with people in Second Life I get this feeling that our telephone conferences or webmeetings are so terribly old fashioned.

Why don’t you go there, have a look, let the mind boggle. Teleport to ‘aloft island’ for the Marriot hotel, or search for ‘campus’ for some interesting university sites, or ‘sandbox’ to see how people experiment with making things. Have some fun, be amazed, it is allowed, you know. (Marriot Aloft Hotel and me in the foyer below)