What gets me about cretins like this is that (a) they don’t bother to do any research and (b) they don’t even have the decency to hide their lack of research. They’re very upfront about the lack of research they did. It’s like they don’t even know that failing to do research is something to be ashamed of.
The fact is, Second Life requires an pretty intense amount of time investment. Admittedly, I’ve only spent limited time “inworld,” but the time I did spend was mostly wasted trying to figure out how not to walk in circles and how to find anything but my feet to look at. In otherwords, unlike other “social” platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Second Life isn’t exactly the easiest to use. You need to put in the time to figure out how it works, and to find your own “inworld” niche. And even when you do, I’d estimate you’d need to spend a good hour to two hours at a time time really get anything meaningful out of your experience.
“I’ve only spent a limited time inworld,” he says.
If I wrote an article about Afghanistan, but had only spent “a limited time” in Afghanistan, and hadn’t talked to anybody who’s spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, I’d at least be smart enough to try to keep quiet about it.
This seems to be the standard for Second Life journalism. I’m not surprised to see this kind of thing at TechCrunch, which sometimes does great journalism but often shoots from the hip too. But I expect better from the BBC, which relies on two-year-old reporting for its research.
Update 11:11 am: I had some difficulty posting this — I mistyped the HTML for the blockquote, which made the formatting funny, and in the course of correcting that, I accidentally double-posted this. As a matter of fact, I’ve spent days configuring this and my personal blog. Blogging “requires a pretty intense amount of time investment.” It “isn’t exactly the easiest” thing to do. You “need to put in the time to figure out how it works.” I guess that means blogging has no future. Somebody let Arianna Huffington know about that.
Its just part of the hype curve that I wish so many journalists would recognize and adjust for. First things get over-hyped then there is a backlash when expectations are not realized.
Now, more objectively, Second Life has not taken off they way that it might have and potential virtual world competitors have mostly missed the mark in doing a better SL (See my last blog post if you really want my opinion
).
However, in the end, immersive technologies like Second Life offer a 3D experience you can’t get from other social mediums.That engine will keep things running for a long time.
The incredibly steep learning curve involved in using the arrow key interface to navigate and to actually key the mic or type text in main chat to ask a nearby resident for assistance in Second Life tends to ensure only people with at least a 60 IQ and reasonably developed social skills (such as asking rudimentary questions or not being afraid to say “help”) are what composes the Second Life residents.
Yea. Second Life suffers because it is a few million really smart people involved in advanced graphical and programmed 3D content creation, running online businesses (sometimes empires), cashing out money to real life, and in general having a good time meeting other really smart people from all over the world. It is difficult but someone has to do it.
Proclaiming the passing of Second Life has become something akin to the internet equivalent of “cold readings” by psychics – there’s a chance that one day someone may be right but no-one cares about the millions of misses. We watched as Google Lively became less lively and we can now join in with Metaplace’s “Happy New Year -not!!” closing down party on 1st Jan.
Despite all the things Linden Lab is allegedly doing wrong, the company continues to grow, albeit slowly, and seems to have a viable business model. Spurious articles that pop up to predict the shutting of Second Life are little more than knee-jerk “let’s see what i can toss off in 20 minutes” affairs with limited investigation and even less insight.