Reuters in Second Life

Reuters has now a special channel for Second Life — http://secondlife.reuters.com, brought to us through the amazing work done by the ever so bright Electric Sheep Company. I don’t know exactly what that means. Again, all I can say is that worldwide, news snippets are being sent to the media world-wide with the tag SECOND LIFE, Oct 15 (Reuters) and that Adam Reuters is their in-world journalist, paying attention to what goes on in this strange new world with its booming economy and exponential growth.

Somehow, this fits very nicely into the critical mass concept. For some reason, as we approach a million users (yes, I know, many are alts, but that’s actually irrelevant), things are just “bubbling” towards that mythical mark. Something is going to happen, and people are maneuvering towards that something. Perhaps it’s Second Life that enters its first stage of maturity — not technological maturity (as the past few days have shown, anyone with a borrowed script can bring the grid down to its knees), but a conceptual maturity. This is like finally placing a sign in the middle of the grid and saying: “So there. We’re not childrens any more. From this day on, we’re part of human history.”

We can’t foresee what will happen with Linden Lab and Second Life in one year, much less ten years or twenty. Dot-com burnouts are much more careful these days with their “predictions”, even if they still are enthusiastic about SL’s growth. I’m definitely an enthusiast, and one that has seen SL grow faster than expected — somehow, it seems that things are happening “too soon” instead of at a more leisurely scale. I fully embrace that change, and the enthusiasm that drives this change to happen sooner rather than later. For me, the worst case scenario will be LL’s downfall and disappearance, but people still being able to point at Reuters’ website and say: “well, at least a Reuters journalist was there to report the downfall”.

In a sense, Second Life might disappear some day, but it won’t be forgotten. Not any more.

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