Not so diverse- the article indicates almost all activity is porn.
Normally new media is initially funded by porn (printing, photography, phonograph, moving pictures, wire recorders, the internet) and evolve into something else. Second Life has done the opposite. Sounds like a dead end to me.
Normally new media is initially funded by porn...and evolve into something else. Second Life has done the opposite. Sounds like a dead end to me.
Second Life is only one instance of a new medium. That's too small a sample to declare the whole medium non-viable. MMOs are really another example of the same medium. (Though the structure of most "games" devolves into exploitation of variable reward schedules and everything becomes pretty much a resort-casino.)
Didn't Linden Labs provide a subsidy for Second Life users who built up areas of the world that attracted lots of users? The idea being to give people interesting things to do in SL without having to build content themselves. Inadvertently this created lots of gambling and strip clubs because this was an easy way of attracting people and earning your subsidy.
The subsidy (monthly lot population -> payout/discount) that danw is referring to happened many years ago now (2005? 2004? earlier?), long before they outlawed gambling. The lot-use subsidy DID result in a lot of casinos and 'strip clubs', but it also resulted in shops creating community events - weekly giveaway parties, etc.
While it can be argued that the subsidy resulted in some shady areas of SL, it should be noted that the massive decline in SL's popularity happened after they were removed, gambling was banned, age verification happened, etc etc. So it's hardly arguable that the subsidies killed SL.
As long as Second Life can continue to exist (ie make money) then it won't be a dead end.
It's quite possible that the online world will stop having single hyped winners but a series of semi-successful ventures.
The change might happen once the majority of the human populace is online. Folks online will likely continue the habits they formed initially until something much, much better comes along. This will be higher bar than the online-versus-not-online bar.
