Is there life in Second Life

I envy my friend who was able to visit this year’s Lift conference in Geneva in February (www.liftconference.com), a somewhat geeky example of the unconference to come with the Millennial generation. I have marked Marseilles 18 – 20 June in my diary.

Second Life is dead, was one of the main messages, he told me, It didn't change the world as they thought it would and won't do that in the future.

Don't you believe it! Just join me in a simple line of reasoning:

1. The Millennials play 3D interactive games, like World of Warcraft and hundereds of othes, they are at home in this virtual environment, they play and interact across the globe

2. Simulation and gaming is a growing trend for learning, it is extremely effective

3. The Millennials (gamers) are born after 1985, they were young teenagers when the internet became ubiquitous, 3D interactive gaming came later as they depended on widespread broadband.

4. So the 3D gamers are hardly in their 20's yet, they are in no position to introduce or use seriously the 3D virtual environment in work situations (except geeky companies with a young and internet savvy workforce)

5. Business application of 3D virtual environment (like second life) will become part of daily work life when the gaming generation comes of age.

I don’t know if Second Life will continue to develop as a business platform, and this is not the point, online 3D communities is the point. I know Second Life took a dip when gaming was banned and I recently heard someone say that it has become too seedy (apparently our avatars don’t have the usual sexual inhibitions), but this is also beside the point.

I just read that in January this year, residents spent 41.5 million hours in Second Life compared with 28.3 million in January, 2008 and the number of active users has risen 25% since September, 2008, now more than 15 mill., doesn’t seem like dying....