Short answer: It’s inconvenient.
Long answer: I love Twitter and Facebook in part because they’re very convenient. I can use them from my MacBook Pro or my iPad or iPhone. I usually check them only for a minute or two at a time, as a little break between whatever else I’m doing, like taking a sip of water.
Second Life, on the other hand, takes time. I feel like once I log in I need to be on for at least a half-hour at a time. At minimum. Because it’s happening in real time, and everybody else is there at the same time I am. If I just log in and log out abruptly it’s like going to a party and turning on my heel and leaving without saying good-bye. It’s rude.
Plus I need to be at my MacBook Pro to use Second Life, which in practice means I’m at my desk, which I already spend a lot of time at. Sure, Second Life has chat clients that run on the iPhone and iPad, but they’re very limited.
Plus, Second Life is buggy. Every time I log in, my session ends with a system crash or a freeze-up or some other fatal error. Might take a minute, might take an hour, but it happens every time. In practice, a single Second Life session requires two or three logins.
Plus, the less I log in, the fewer people I know in Second Life, and the less I know what to do in-world. And when I IM people in-world, they always seem to be in the middle of doing something else. I hate to interrupt.
So I’m logging into Second Life less and less, and the less I log in the less reason I have to log in. It’s self-reinforcing. A couple of times last week I’ve found myself thinking about shutting down the bridge between Second Life messages and email, which would be a huge step. I don’t think I’ve logged in for the last month.
I still believe Second Life offers benefits available in no other social media:
One is the opportunity to truly meet other people from all over the world, which I don’t get on Facebook or LinkedIn (but do get on older social media like mailing lists and discussion boards. I have friends I made 20 years ago on GEnie who are still friends today).
Another is the opportunity to have a shared experience in real-time, with the illusion that you’re all in the same place, which no other Internet social medium provides.
Yet another opportunity in Second Life is, of course, the opportunity to build virtual things in three dimensions.
But I think Second Life, and virtual worlds, may have gone as far as they can go, that maybe the whole avatar-in-an-imaginary landscape metaphor is the wrong metaphor to best achieve the benefits that Second Life provides, just as Usenet was the wrong metaphor for mass adoption of online discussions, and blogs turned out to be the right one.
I’d love to be wrong about this. Linden Lab, the company which built and operates Second Life, has a new CEO, Rod Humble, and people I respect seem to be very impressed by him. But I’ve been through this before, I liked and respected both of Linden Lab’s previous CEOs, and see no reason to be optimistic this time. I think the world may have simply moved on from virtual worlds (and maybe it moved on three years ago and those of us who continued to advocate VWs were stubborn).
Just as not logging in creates a re-enforcing reason to not log in further, so does logging in more create a compelling reason to log in again. Virtual environments have been around in one manner or another since the early 1990s, and I suspect that they will continue to be around well after the demise of Second Life. That’s not to say that we should base our dismay or ennui on a single platform or base the entire industry and technology on the fate of a single (or any) current company approach. Quite contrary, virtual environments will continue to evolve long into the future.
Environments like Second Life require much more engagement and time from the participant, and that is an expected outcome. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn are specifically designed for quick access and much smaller frames of time for use.
I agree, SecondLife is buggy, but I’m not quick to include the downfalls of individual systems as speaking for the entire industry and its future. The virtual environment industry as a whole is bigger than the companies that exist within it.
If ever Virtual Worlds would have moved on it would have been in 1997, yet we continually see a resurgence of better systems spring up time and again. This time is no different than any other time, and there will come again another wave of innovation and advancement after this.
I do think that the flipside of your explanation is that Second Life requires commitment, which by extension, applies to our real lives as well. We, as a society, are convincing ourselves that a blip on Twitter or an update on Facebook equals meaningful interaction. I admit that I’m guilty of it myself. It’s a little like passing your mother every day, waving, saying hi, and walking on.
Logging in and out abruptly is sometimes necessary. But, yes, there are times when you want to pop in and out and you get caught by a friend who wants to ask how you’re doing. And then another might do the same. Life is like that – first, or second.
I stay out a lot of the time for the same reason – I get overwhelmed very easily. But it’s not because I don’t want to be there, I do. I haven’t grown tired of it at all.
I totally agree Mitch–It is sad because I love meeting in this environment but always have to make sure I am on my computer and I am always on the run! I am getting ready to take a Spanish class in there and one of the main reasons I am choosing this medium is to stay involved and learning about the changes in SL. I hope technology catches up to create ways to use immersive environments on the go soon.
Your performance issues are not common in my experience. I spend 12 hours a day working in SL and rarely crash. Maybe ditch that Mac crap and try running the viewer on a ‘proper’ computer
Lightweight social media today (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) is all about managing weak social ties in a way that is primarily asynchronous. Quickly check on your friends. Quickly update your status. In and out. Social network proprioception.
Virtual Worlds like Second Life are a completely different experience. It’s all about synchronous interactions and high emotional bandwidth. Becoming part of an ongoing deeply immersive story that you both experience as well as create on your own.
To put this into metaphors: Lightweight social media platforms are magazines. Virtual Worlds are participatory theater.
The trick, of course, is for someone to make participatory theater a lot easier to jump into. And that’s where I believe augmented reality will ultimately come into play with virtual worlds. The current interface technique for engaging in virtual worlds is clunky and completely inconvenient.
We need augmented reality glasses for everyday use that overlay the virtual with the physical. Sounds a bit nuts, but we have a history of scoffing at and then eagerly embracing portable devices that expand our virtual senses. 50 years ago, nobody believed we would be walking around today with portable phones and music players, experiencing a significant part of our daily auditory reality as “virtual.”
Dissolve the interface for virtual worlds into our daily perception of life. That’s the endgame.
I’ve expanded on my previous comment on my blog. Thanks for inspiring me to write more, Mitch.
http://wp.me/p11U98-BL
usenet died because large corporations like comcast decided to kill its acccess off as part of the 60.00 a month we pay.
silly scrapers like Quora are just VC ripoff techcrunch hyped replacements…. cause all speech MUST be monefied and censorable…..
LL made a bad model and offered unwise services for others to use a platform for their interests.. simple as that.. you dont go there, cause theres no money in it for ya..why pundit a dead horse..
if you want to play a 3d virtual world based game, theres many out there for free or subscription….
You dont make textured dresses or shoes to sell to a shrinking audience.. so why would you be still in LLs product-service?
its a gallery for a few artists/hobbiests who like to play creative and work in rt3d media. and their few fans…
thats what :”second life” tm is…
as to virtual worlds..and rt3d media.. thats another issue.
The second I found that I couldn’t be “Roblimo” in 2nd Life but would be Rothothityew or something, I lost 90% of my interest. Then I found out that it took a *lot* of work to make that moron-named avatar look decent. Then some other avatar wanted to have sex. I said, “The hell with this” and kissed my real, non-virtual 1st life wife instead.
I’m with you, Robin. The amount of time one has to spend getting up and running with an avatar, not to mention merely comprehending how to interact with a virtual world, has been a complete turn-off for me. There has not been a single day in the past 10-15 years when I’ve thought, hmm, I don’t have enough to do–what other time-wasting computer interface can I lose myself in and make sure that all my real-world connections suffer even more? The day worlds like Second Life become more of a priority than the real world around us is the day I start looking for a new planet to live on. (Of course, this ensures that I will one day be considered a curmudgeonly Luddite, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.)
There is only one life and we choose among the communication tools available to us to interact with people important to us in that life.
We can send a few words in a tweet, a fast Facebook drive-through posting. We can write them an email. We can give ‘em a Skype call. …. Or we can interact in live time in Second Life in avatars that we have clothed with our dreams and in environments furnished from our imaginations.
I know which I prefer.
Mitch — I totally agree with you, in that I’m also not spending as much time as I used to in SL. I do find it annoying when it crashes. (And, yes, I do use a “real” computer. It still crashes.)
But it’s not because there’s anything about the environment that’s turning me off. It’s just that I’m spending much more time on the phone these days doing interviews with actual users of virtual environments (for an interview, nothing beats a phone call).
I don’t think that virtual environments are about to disappear. You can’t charge any decent money for a video game these days unless it has a 3d immersive collaborative component. Educators are moving to virtual environment in a big, big way. Corporations will be next. Consumers will come when there’s something compelling for them to do there. And, given that the amount of stuff to do virtually is proliferating, that inflection point will come sooner than later.
A decent browser will help, of course.
There’s probably a kid in a basement somewhere creating the next Netscape right now.
– Maria
Mitch, your remarks echo what my 18-22 year-old students have been saying for a while: immersive environments are great when you need immersion, as with a game.
But for casual use, SL and similar are the wrong environment for texting, social media, checking the Web, etc. They told me the other day that for a 3D immersive Web to catch their interest, it would have to be completely intuitive and not require more layers than sending a text on their phones: just like walking into a holodeck
For me, SL has become a place for education meetings. I will still design targeted simulations for classes; students did enjoy that for the last few semesters and felt it worth the effort to log on and use the client.
@Porky, I’m running SL on a “proper computer,” and no SL issues on my Macbook
For what it’s worth, and at the risk of jinxing myself: I’m amazed by the stories of crashes, because they do not happen to me. I use both Mac and PC and I can honestly say that I have not had a single crash-out or a failed login, on either platform, in many months. (I’m running the current Phoenix on both; both machines’ OSes are kept fully updated and patched.)
I do agree that SL takes much more time than Twitter or FB, but to me it’s *worth* that time. I wouldn’t go to a RL café for thirty seconds either. YMMV.
Aeonix Aeon: If ever Virtual Worlds would have moved on it would have been in 1997….
Why 1997 in particular? Do you mark that as the time when the Web became mainstream? I’d put it earlier, at 1996 or 1995, but I won’t argue with you. (I still remember the first time I drove by a billboard with a URL on it and said to myself, “Holy crap, the Web really is mainstream” — I remember the occasion and where I was and where I was coming from and going to, I just can’t remember the date. I always waited for that moment to happen in Second Life, but it never did.)
yet we continually see a resurgence of better systems spring up time and again. This time is no different than any other time, and there will come again another wave of innovation and advancement after this.
We see those resurgences, and we also see predictions that this time, virtual worlds will go mainstream. But they never do.
Not that they have to — niche products can still provide value for people who value them. But that’s a whole ‘nother discussion.
Karla “Marx” Dudek – I do think that the flipside of your explanation is that Second Life requires commitment, which by extension, applies to our real lives as well. We, as a society, are convincing ourselves that a blip on Twitter or an update on Facebook equals meaningful interaction. I admit that I’m guilty of it myself. It’s a little like passing your mother every day, waving, saying hi, and walking on.
That’s not quite it, Karla. It’s not that I’m unwilling to commit — it’s that I’m unwilling to commit to Second Life, to doing something else on the computer, where I already a vast majority of my waking hours. I’d rather spend more time with Julie, or get out in the community and volunteer.
Porky – Maybe ditch that Mac crap and try running the viewer on a ‘proper’ computer
I know you were kidding — well, half-kidding — but you’ve pointed out another possible barrier to Second Life.
If the source of my troubles is, indeed, Mac compatibility, why would I want to switch to another platform just for SL when I’m perfectly happy with the Mac for all my other computing needs?
My usual disclaimer: I don’t work for Apple, I don’t sell Macs, I don’t personally care whether you or anybody else uses Apple products. But they’re best for me.
Tony & Roblimo – I can’t argue with your decision that Second Life isn’t right for you. And maybe it’s a waste of time. But all hobbies are a waste of time, it is the nature of a hobby that it should be non-productive. If it were productive, it wouldn’t be a hobby, it would be work.
Some people like to draw, is that wrong?
Plus, Second Life is buggy. Every time I log in, my session ends with a system crash or a freeze-up or some other fatal error. Might take a minute, might take an hour, but it happens every time. In practice, a single Second Life session requires two or three logins.
Its not the mac, its not SL, its most likely your viewer or if you have an antivirus loaded from your cable company ditch it. I had Norton on my mac from comcast and until I disabled it I wasn’t able to do much of anything in Inworldz or SL, never mind use software like Nicecast to broadcast. Change viewers, experiment. Phoenix works well with my imac in SL but not in Inworldz. Needed another viewer for that.
1 minute “communication” via Twitter or FB is not my idea of interaction of any depth. its quick, in and out stuff. SL wasn’t designed for that. Kind of reminds me of my kids–they stop by to “visit” me on their way to do something else. I get 30 min if I’m lucky, they spend the rest of their hours with their friends. Join some groups in SL or start a business. Then you would have purpose and time would fly by. But if all you want to do is post 140 characters or a status, then SL isn’t the medium for you.
That doesn’t mean SL isn’t for the rest of us, however. So before you put RIP SL in your header ask those of us who spend and invest alot of time and energy into builidng a meaningful virtual experience for ourselves–and others to enjoy. We may have a different prognosis.
The source of your stability is probably the computer but not the fact its a Macintosh. It is possible to have depending on OSX level and the hardware in the machine issues with graphics or memory leaks. But the same issues can happen with a Windows based PC also.
Usually the issues are graphics. On Windows PCs its usually easy to update the video drivers but on a Mac you are up to Apple’s whim often on the video drivers. Still it would be worth verifying you have the most current video drivers.
Since its a MacBook Pro it should have video that supports OpenGL well. If it was a MacBook or Air it would depend on the model as some do and some don’t. The ones that don’t have Intel video. Thing is many budget Windows Machines which have Intel video have the same issues.
I happily use several Windows machines and my 4 year old MacBook Pro on Second Life. So the issue is not he is using a Mac. It would be nice if people could get past the Windows vs Macintosh blindness.
Second Life in 2011:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKd06s1LNik
I was with you until you talked about how the metaphor may be wrong, without giving any specific, direct evidence why the metaphor itself is wrong. Completely agree that SL isn’t easy, and doesn’t play nice with others, but this has nothing to do with how well the virtual world is the right or wrong metaphor.
John “Pathfinder” Lester gets virtual worlds.
Mitch, please read what John wrote carefully. If you don’t appreciate on a deep and heartfelt level the value of personal experiences obtained by thorough immersion in virtual worlds, then virtual worlds are not for you.
From your article, I am tempted to conclude that the shallow acquaintances and low-bandwidth experiences of the Web’s social networking are your territory.
If so, that’s fine (we are all different after all), but it wouldn’t make you an effective commentator on the role and future of virtual worlds. They go far beyond RL social networking in their capabilities, their purposes, and in the depths of experience which they can provide.
Well we miss you! We’re there every Thursday, 9pm.
Dahlia Lithwick tomorrow!
And Digby next Sunday, 9pm.
Why on Earth would I want to work to get into Second Life? I already work hard at my job, in my remaining time I’d like to spend time with my wife, get outside the house and away from my computer, work on my novel, write this blog, contribute to my writing group and — if I get some MORE free time — I’d like to get back into volunteering in the local community.
jayackroyd – You do a great job with Virtually Speaking.
Although you do raise another problem with me & Second Life — most of the events I’m interested in attending are at 6 pm Pacific time. That’s dinnertime here, together time with my wife, and I don’t like to reschedule that.
Ron Blechner – You’re right. I gave no evidence of my conclusion that the metaphor might be wrong. It’s just a gut feeling that I have, I have no evidence to support it.
Although virtual worlds advocates have no evidence to suggest VWs will ever be anything other than a niche. (Not, as Seinfeld said, that there’s anything wrong with that.)
“and blogs turned out to be the right one.” Actually that’s completely wrong. Blogs are not great for discussion. Forums are. Blogs are mostly one person’s point of view, with highly edited responses to it, skewing the perceived discussion.
Forums on the other hand, have most everyone on equal footing, all can participate, and nobody can ‘remove’ viewpoints that are counter to their own and skew the discussion.
Swing… miss!
But blogs are far more popular than forums.
Even so, let’s say you’re right. Substitute forums above for the word blogs. Doesn’t undercut the main point of that sentence. Sometimes Internet technologies have to go through a few iterations to get the user experience right.
From the outside looking in (I’ve an account, but only logged on a handful of times), Second Life looks more like a hobby than a social media.
Social media, to me at least, is there to enhance communication. I don’t think I’m alone in using it primarily to stay in touch with people I know via some other means (work, hobbies, family, etc) I don’t “commit” to reading blogs or checking my Facebook account any more so than I “commit” to reading the morning paper or using my cell phone.
It sounds like some of you get a lot of the Second Life thing– from my casual experience with the platform, it’s clear that it hosts some really talented 3D modelers, if nothing else. But if it requires a few hours a week to get anything out of it, it starts competing with other activities that have similar time commitments. And the minute it does that, it stops being something that the everyman will use.
I’m not sure I agree with some of the conclusions you’ve drawn here, specifically that Second Life, let alone virtual worlds in general, have gone as far as they can.
As much as I love Second Life, and I do, Linden Lab has rarely made good decisions regarding its development. The good decisions they have made, such as choosing not to restrict content development and the amount of customization potential they’ve given avatars, have been key to what success they’ve enjoyed.
However, Second Life leaves much to be desired in a variety of areas. Such as social networking. As you’ve pointed out, Linden Lab has not made socializing convenient in SL. It lacks many of the tools which have been standard with social networks for years now. Groups are poorly implemented, profiles are lacking, and there is very little tying communities to locations in SL.
Not to mention there could be more options to interact with SL without logging in. One should be able to send messages, money and inventory via the web. One should be able to manage land and groups that way, too. Perhaps even “log in” via a chat box from the SL website or a phone application and communicate with either voice or text.
Yes, there are some third party applications for logging in via phones and even text based clients for your laptop or home computer, but they don’t seem as well developed as they could be.
Exploring SL is no simple matter, either. The search utility is unreliable to the point where searching for a location by name is no guarantee it will turn up as a search result.
The SL “Destinations Guide” seems like a random collection of places, with no consideration for quality or amount of traffic.
Even those places Linden Lab uses to advertise Second Life. Today I saw the Nemo sims being used on the SL home page to highlight the creativity and potential in SL. Nemo did all this very well, but it no longer exists. The Nemo sims closed sometime late last year I believe.
As a creative professional I could write volumes on Linden Lab’s failures in marketing and presentation, both of which have been obstacles to SL’s growth and popularity. This has directly affected both the number of people using SL as well as the saturation of avatars across the grid, leaving the impression that much of Second Life is a ghost town.
I would also suggest there remains a lot which could be done with the content creation tools to allow content creators to craft more interactive experiences. It should be possible to make even an otherwise empty sim into an entertaining single-person experience, beyond admiring the artist’s modeling work.
There is quite a bit of improvement Linden Lab could do to make SL a much more engaging social and entertainment experience.It seems to me that the Lab has lacked focus and in certain areas they appear to lack crucial experience.
To me, their new CEO seems like a very good choice. A background in videogames could provide much of the experience and direction Linden Lab has lacked up to this point. Of course, we’ll see if Mr. Humble leverages that experience properly.
Time is a fair point to make, this isn’t an issue just for Second Life though, some of my friends have started playing World of Tanks instead of World of Warcraft because they can have a fun twenty or thirty minutes there, whereas WoW is more time intensive.
I disagree that virtual worlds have gone as far as they can, but they will for the foreseeable future attract a different demographic to Facebook or Twitter, whereas there is some crossover, virtual worlds require more time commitment for them to be enjoyable, but they will progress and eventually a balance may be reached.
Part of the problem with Second Life is the communication system, it’s easy to catch up with a conversation on Twitter, the inworld communication tools are not as rich as forums, blogs or other social media.
Second Life however still has potential and can still provide a far richer experience for inworld events such as live music, art galleries and storytelling, it is head and shoulders above Facebook and Twitter in these areas.
If you look at all the problems that there are in First Life: the Seven Deadly Sins, suffering, death, etc…., then Second Life doesn’t look so bad. The time and trouble to work it is worth it to many of us as a break from First Life or supplement to First Life.
And First Life was created by God! No wonder the Lindens need more time to get more right.
Planter – Good points.
OTOH, God only had six days to work. LL has had more than ten years. Heh.
WELL I miss u . and your show !
I deleted a couple of comments from this thread because they pissed me off.