Six years old is that time in the life of a child when he/she starts getting the hang of education through pre-school, with elementary school coming up. Six years old is also the present age of one of the stand out among the field of commercial and free virtual worlds – Second Life. At this point in their development, let’s check on this virtual world with what they are doing.
For one, Second Life, powered by the company Linden Lab, has been successful in embedding itself in the consciousness of popular culture as one of the premiere brands when it comes to virtual worlds. Presently it has an estimated user base of 650,000 active residents as of May 2009 and its chief product officer Tom Hale believes that interest has continue to be solid if not spectacular.
As far as popularity is concerned, Second Life is still lagging behind Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. But there is a marked difference between the two. World of Warcraft, or WoW to its fervent followers, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) while Second Life focuses more on the social aspect of the virtual world interactivity. Second Life even ranks ahead of Lord of the Rings Online and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic so it must be doing something right.
So with this high ranking, is Second Life falling into the trap of complacency?
Well, not quite. Second Life is still following through the success which it cultivated when it started in 2003. Hale details the battle cry of Linden Labs as:
“We want to make Second Life more accessible to anyone to communicate and share Second Life through the Web”
There is actually nothing new with this development curve but hey, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
So what are they up to for their sixth birthday?
Linden Lab has just released the beta of their new dashboard. Again, nothing revolutionary here but if it enhances the virtual world experience of users then that can only improve the flow of virtual citizens. So the battle plan here is to just expand on the success.
By that, Second Life plans to hook itself up with more dating sites. Now that’s really upping the ante when it comes to virtual socialization. Second Life is just planning to turn itself into one huge hub for the archipelago of dating sites in the web. So you see how brilliant a company can get by introducing convenience to an old but interesting concept.
Another enhancing in place would be to augment the voice services of Second Life. As a glorified matchmaking service, Second Life has seen its consistent share of users by integrating voice services within the world. Now Linden Lab plans to make it easier for “families and friends” to communicate with each other.
I’m thinking it will lean more on those who wish to create families and total strangers. But it’s all cool. That’s what social virtual worlds are known for, by the way.
Furthering the “social” in social networking, Linden Lab also launched the adult-only part of Second Life which goes under the term Zindara. Apparently, the only boundary protecting young children and adults is the age verification service called Aristotle. Let’s hope this service is top notch and as intelligent as its namesake or we can find several loopholes for child protection online – definitely a no-no for many vigilant online groups for child safety.
For its sixth year, this is a phase in the development of the virtual world Second Life where they may find that it is more difficult to sustain getting to the top spot than getting there in the first place.
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