Lin­den Lab CEO Mark King­don and me chatting

At the end of this past June, I wrote a sim­ple blog post for Dig­i­tal­Next address­ing why I per­son­ally believe that the cur­rent hype around Twit­ter will be more sus­tain­able than the short-lived Sec­ond Life craze. Bot­tom line, “Twit­ter is light, cheap, open and per­ma­nent, whereas Sec­ond Life is heavy, expen­sive, closed and ephemeral.

Twenty-one com­ments and a series of response posts later, I was invited by Sec­ond Life roy­alty to return to the same vir­tual world that I stopped vis­it­ing back in 2007. My com­plaint, and the rea­son why I never returned, is that the client (the “viewer” in SL par­lance) was too resource-intensive and quite incom­pat­i­ble with my exec­u­tive lap­top that favored light­weight and slim­ness over horse­power and graph­ics cards. Not to men­tion it required too much band­width, prefer­ably a LAN con­nec­tion instead of Wi-Fi.

Well, after vis­it­ing the site sev­eral times, noth­ing has changed in terms of the resource-intensity. How­ever, this post is not going to be about the bar­ri­ers to entry but rather what one finds once inside the walled gar­den of Sec­ond Life.

The rea­son I was salty about Sec­ond Life when I first arrived had lit­tle to so with my hard­ware, soft­ware or con­nec­tion, but rather my ini­tial expe­ri­ence. I looked like a dork — a n00b — and didn’t have any friends on Sec­ond Life. Even worse, I didn’t know how to find any. I may be the king of the geeks, but many of my friends are just Lud­dites while I explore the cut­ting edge of inno­va­tion. I was lonely and just didn’t get it — and when it comes to tech and com­mu­nity, it often boils down to “get­ting it.”

Back in the day, I did have an incen­tive to visit Sec­ond Life. My client, Crayon, had an island there and every week held a “cof­fee with Crayon.” We would stand there, ges­tur­ing in all of our Avatari­ness, and just type at each other. I didn’t see why Inter-Relay Chat (IRC) wasn’t a bet­ter solu­tion if I had to type my responses anyway.

Soon after writ­ing the arti­cle in June, Doug Thomp­son of Cana­dian firm Rem­edy Lim­ited, aka Dusan Writer in-world, reached out to me and offered a tour of Sec­ond Life through his sea­soned, pas­sion­ate and pro­fes­sional eyes. In-world I am called Chris Ebi, and I indeed vis­ited Dusan as he showed me around a pretty fan­tas­tic and beau­ti­ful realm resplen­dent with Eames and Barcelona chairs and giant Jum­boTron and fash­ion­able rock­stars sport­ing beauty and couth. Dusan wanted to show me how Sec­ond Life has really grown up since its inception.

When I met Dusan in Sec­ond Life, he tele­ported me to some­place called Immer­sive Work­spaces, which high­lighted some of the most pro­gres­sive cre­ations. He intro­duced me to Jon Brou­choud, who invented Wiki­tec­ture. It allows laypeo­ple, inte­rior design­ers, devel­op­ers and archi­tects to col­lab­o­rate on vir­tual spaces as they might relate to the real-world build­ing of some­thing such as a clinic in Nepal, an actual exam­ple he demon­strated and cited. The expe­ri­ence of Wiki­tec­ture and Immer­sive Work­spaces reminded me of the scene in The Matrix when Neo and Trin­ity enter the Load­ing Con­struct, a white room that pro­grams crew mem­bers’ items into the Matrix. The room asks their operator/programmer, Tank, for “Guns, lots of guns.” At Tank’s com­mand, end­less shelves of assorted firearms from uzis to pis­tols are spawned in the load­ing con­struct. Out scroll an infi­nite num­ber of weapons deliv­ered via an infi­nite num­ber of racks. It was sort of like that but instead of Uzis, Glocks and M4s, there were ideas, inno­va­tions and architecture.

Sec­ond Life as post­mod­ern museum

Then Dusan’s tour led me to eye-candy — some­thing that one must expe­ri­ence in a sim­i­lar way as when play­ing with Google Earth or the first time. In many ways, Sec­ond Life can be explored as a post­mod­ern museum where some of the paint­ings are bet­ter than oth­ers. One excep­tional artist is Bryn Oh’s Immer­siva, a very bizarre series of work that feels like it is very Steam­punk, as if I were even cool enough to know what Steam­punk is!

Finally dur­ing our explo­ration, we took a walk along a broad, mean­der­ing path. Dusan Writer (aka Doug Thomp­son, but who knows what is real any­more) told me that Sec­ond Life was even an amaz­ing plat­form for rais­ing money for char­ity. This vir­tual path rep­re­sented a relay race to raise money for the Can­cer Soci­ety. Called the Relay for Life, peo­ple can pre­sum­ably run their avatars around these wind­ing boule­vards while deposit­ing Lin­den Dol­lars into cof­fers, all real monies being used for can­cer research. And all with­out break­ing a sweat. Because “all of the plan­ning, serv­ing, host­ing, walk­ing and fundrais­ing are done entirely online … and most of which is done inside the vir­tual world of Sec­ond Life, it is an excel­lent tool for bond­ing as a com­mu­nity in exactly the same mean­ing­ful way they’re used in the ‘real’ world.”

Pre-Interview for my upcom­ing Meta­nomics interview

On Sept. 30 I will be inter­viewed live in Sec­ond Life by the gang from Meta­nomics at noon Pacific time and 3pm East­ern time — be sure to check it out as I am sure this will be a rare occur­rence, indeed. There will either be an “angry vil­lagers with torches” motif or an aca­d­e­mic slant because of the con­nec­tion between the hal­lowed home of Carl Sagan of Cor­nell and Robert Bloom­field, Editor-in-Chief, along with Meta­nomics. Maybe we’ll see a lit­tle of both. I just par­tic­i­pated in my pre-interview, and I can tell it will surely be an excit­ing event. It was a very pro­fes­sional pre-interview, as JenzZa Mis­fit (@JenzZa) hooked up my pathetic N00b avatar with some hair and makeup. Now I’m ready to take Sec­ond Life by storm — but only time will tell if I really take to it. Lord knows I received some seri­ous Love-Bombing.

My Sexy Boy Band Hot­tie avatar, thanks to JenzZa Misfit

Even today I still get all sorts of com­ments about fly­ing penises and furry sex every time I men­tion Sec­ond Life to adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives. Dusan reas­sured me that things were rather dif­fer­ent — that far from burn­ing out after the hype faded, Sec­ond Life took the rev­enue and momen­tum granted by the land rush and has inno­vated, inno­vated, innovated.

One of the most excit­ing things I noticed when I logged in to Sec­ond Life is that it sup­ports the most intrigu­ing VOIP inno­va­tion. Not only does Sec­ond Life allow you to voice chat, but it also sup­ports true sur­round sound by allow­ing the abil­ity to track where peo­ple are located based on their voices. When peo­ple are close, their voices are loud and clear. As they walk away, voices dimin­ish, and when they cir­cle around you, their voices shift from ear to ear, rep­re­sent­ing phys­i­cal place­ment — loca­tion aware­ness. This is really cool. It really makes things much more dynamic and cer­tainly offers a more real­is­tic cin­e­matic expe­ri­ence that truly sep­a­rates Sec­ond Life from being just a very resource-intensive IRC.

Much of what Doug/Dusan told me about was that Sec­ond Life has insti­tu­tion­ally wig­gled out of its col­lec­tive Furry cos­tume and has donned a slick suit from King for Men or one of the sundry haute cou­ture bou­tiques. Fash­ion and style is indeed impor­tant for men in Sec­ond Life and it is dou­bly so for women. And cool stuff is why until now Sec­ond Life has been smugly keep­ing its head down and doing busi­ness: peo­ple make a lot of money by pro­duc­ing super-cool stuff and sell­ing dig­i­tal copies of ren­dered code for real money to real peo­ple again and again with­out any pro­duc­tion, inven­tory, or ship­ping costs.

In fact, I have been reminded again and again that if an archi­tect, shoe­maker, fash­ion designer, inte­rior designer, or indus­trial designer were really smart, he or she would be bet­ter off to design for in-world, pay some­one a nom­i­nal fee to ren­der that design in world, and then set up shop! Make it once but sell it a mil­lion times is the way to go. And, since Lin­den Dol­lars (L$) have a real world value: $1 is worth around L$270. Your wares, your code, your vir­tual kit, and your cool mod­ernist chairs don’t even have to be sold for Lin­dens but can be bought, sold, and traded using real dol­lars over Pay­Pal or via credit.

Sec­ond Life has always been rock­ing the mul­let — busi­ness up front and party in the back — but now, it seems, accord­ing to Lin­den Lab CEO Mark King­don, Sec­ond Life is grow­ing up and has vis­ited the bar­ber, chop­ping off some of the party and plung­ing in feet first into civil­ity. To wit, accord­ing to a press release posted to Lin­den­lab on Sept. 22, “the vir­tual world Sec­ond Life today announced that Sec­ond Life Res­i­dents have trans­acted the equiv­a­lent of more than one bil­lion US dol­lars with each other while spend­ing more than one bil­lion hours in Sec­ond Life — sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones for the vir­tual worlds indus­try. The com­pany also shared a series of addi­tional sta­tis­tics that reveal the scale of Sec­ond Life and its vir­tual goods econ­omy, as well as the activ­ity and engage­ment of its Residents.”

To prove this sense of deco­rum offered up to us Sec­ond Life expats and naysay­ers, it seems that the default viewer down­load doesn’t even sup­port the infa­mous adult Sec­ond Life expe­ri­ence. While mas­sive avatar orgies still exist, you need to explic­itly down­load the porno-viewer. The other day when I logged back in after quite a few weeks, Sec­ond Life told me so in so many words — if I want to party, I need to explic­itly com­mit myself to that lifestyle; oth­er­wise, I had bet­ter just be happy with, I guess what? PG-13? R?

This neigh­bor­hood cleanup is not unlike what New York went through in the 90s, tak­ing Time Squares from hook­ers and peep shows to lounge chairs and Dis­ney; from elicit affair-friendly to family-friendly; from Cin­e­max to the Fam­ily Chan­nel. I am in NY as we speak, writ­ing from the New Yorker Hotel’s lobby. This hotel used to be mighty dodgy, right next to Penn Sta­tion on 34th street, but now it offers Wi-Fi, leather couches, a cof­fee bar, and is a ren­o­vated value hotel.

I tease and com­mend Sec­ond Life. They didn’t kick out the broth­els and porno the­aters, they just put them onto a dif­fer­ent plane of exis­tence, if I under­stand it fully — it’s all there, you just can’t see it, or some­thing. It is like hav­ing the V-Chip acti­vated by default in your new televisions.

A Giant N00b Kept for Pos­ter­ity by Lin­den CEO Mark Kingdon

All of this ren­o­va­tion and moti­va­tion and pas­sion is, appar­ently, aimed to woo com­pa­nies back into Sec­ond Life, and here’s why: Now that broad­band, advanced proces­sors, and head­sets are com­mon­place, it is now fea­si­ble to choose Sec­ond Life as a much more pleas­ant and invit­ing place to host your meet­ings and con­fer­ence calls, espe­cially in a world rife with Swine Flu and chopped travel bud­gets. You can eas­ily set up an office space or a con­fer­ence room and all meet up in-world, together, to engage in nego­ti­a­tions and col­lab­o­ra­tion. What’s more, you’ll soon be able to loop in all the folks who can’t make it to SL using some­thing like SkypeIn and Skype­Out; mean­ing, you will be soon be able to call in to a meet­ing that is hap­pen­ing on Sec­ond Life using a telephone-to-Second Life num­ber. Alter­nately, you’ll be able to call out to some­one who isn’t online at the moment and loop them in via a call-out fea­ture. Poten­tially, denizens of Sec­ond Life will be able to send and receive SMS text mes­sages via their in-world cell phone to their friends who’re out­siders, at least accord­ing to CEO Mark King­don, in the short– to mid-term.

The com­mu­nity reaches out

While all of these inno­va­tions are indeed cool, there is the issue of feel­ing aban­doned once you arrive in Sec­ond Life for the first time. Now that I made such a big brouhaha back in June, every­body wants to be my friend and show me a good time, a good expe­ri­ence, and be my pathfinder. This is the big secret and the rea­son I was cru­ci­fied after I wrote some­thing less than com­pli­men­tary back in June: Sec­ond Life is a real com­mu­nity of real peo­ple who are fiercely-devoted to Sec­ond Life and fiercely loyal to each other. While they may have fallen off our col­lec­tive radar in the last three years, the denizens of Sec­ond Life never received the memo that Sec­ond Life was a fad and that nobody goes any more.

What would I do to improve the Sec­ond Life expe­ri­ence for new­bies? Well, I would rec­om­mend Sec­ond Life does that same thing with new­com­ers that my church does with new­com­ers: make sure there are plenty of expe­ri­enced greeters to wel­come new Sec­ond Lif­ers who arrive as though fresh from the womb. There is no such thing as a killer app — even Sec­ond Life has dis­cov­ered that — and so it is essen­tial to select folks — online facil­i­ta­tors, online com­mu­nity man­agers, etc. — to open their arms and their expe­ri­ence to men­tor new mem­bers. A Sec­ond Life big brother or big sis­ter to at least offer their help — not manda­tory. I know that I would prob­a­bly have been sucked in a long time ago if some­one took the time to help me get a bet­ter wardrobe, under­stand real estate, under­stand the script­ing and buy­ing and sell­ing, show me a few good “nights out” and some impres­sive vis­tas and eye-candy, I would have been hooked. I mean, I am the per­fect mark — I am a huge fan of Wild Palms, William Gib­son, and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, sup­pos­edly the sci­ence fic­tion novel that inspired Sec­ond Life in the first place.Chris Abra­ham is co-founder and prin­ci­pal of Abra­ham Har­ri­son LLC, an inter­na­tional con­sult­ing group with spe­cial­ties in online word-of-mouth/conversation mar­ket­ing and online busi­ness & tech­nol­ogy strat­egy advis­ing. See his pro­file, con­tact Chris via email, Twit­ter, or leave a com­ment below.