Second Life Gets Funded

It was a matter of time before someone stepped up and funded Linden Labs and it was announced yesterday that Globespan Partners along with some big name entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Mitch Kapor, and Pierre Omidyar put $11 million into Linden Labs.  That's great news. I think the Globespan guys are great and think they'll make excellent partners for Linden Labs.

But the bigger story is what's going on inside Second Life.  It's a virtual economy where anyone can build anything and it is amazing what is being built.  It is also amazing how much money is being spent there.

As I said in prior posts, I am spending some time in Second Life.  My name is Flat Plasma and I am mostly checking it out right now.  But even so, I have to say that I agree with Scoble.  Second Life is a platform (he calls it an OS) to build a lot of interesting businesses on.

So congrats to Linden Labs on their financing, on Globespan for making what seems to me to be a good bet, and to the Second Life community for creating such an interesting environment.

Comments

[Tom W.]

Fred, you may have noticed - as I did when I played around with it a while back - that the sex/porn trade there s flourishing: seems to be the biggest SL sector! Aways the early adopters of new media technology, eh?

[Nicholas]

I've been reading the Second Life Herald for a while -- it's absolutely fascinating. Escorts, gangsters, socialists, Larry Lessig -- clearly an amazing sociological phenomenon's happening there.

[Jason L. Baptiste]

Awesome funding move. I've briefly played around in Second Life. It's an amazing creation, something that still boggles my mind. Any thoughts as to whether they'd port it over to the consoles (xbox,ps,etc.)? That could bring forth mass adoption, especially if it were available on a portable device like PSP. Second Life is a company for the long term, which makes me happy. Imagine where they will be in ten years. Think the difference between Playstation 1 and Playstation 3.

-Jason L. Baptiste

[Michael Parekh]

To give him his due, I believe it was Dave Winer who first mentioned Second Life as an OS. Scoble then had some further comments on that idea.

Of course, credit for the original inspiration for "online worlds with avatars where you spend money for virtual real estate and other stuff", of course goes to Neal Stephenson, author of the seminal Snowcrash.

[Eric Rice]

I believe the number floating around is 30% of the SL world is sex-oriented, similar to the internet.

Now, if we can keep in check that it's not what it IS but what it represents and what we DO, we might grok it a little deeper.

Shout out: I'm Spin Martin. Glad to help anyone who needs a hand.

[Steve]

How did you get the name Flat Plasma? I set up a free account last night and saw a preselected list of last names, none of which was Plasma. Do you need a premium account to pick a completely unique name?

I made an avatar, Vinny Spicoli (watching too much Sopranos lately?) and played around for a while until for some reason my arrow keys stopped being able to move my character. A nearby person had a similar problem with a "stuck" character. After muddling through help and the typical FAQ's for a bit without an answer, I logged off. Definitely an intriguing world though, it's impressive how videos and music are integrated into each parcel of land.

[steve]

The Sims Online was a massive, painful flop. I'm curious: why does anyone think Second Life will succeed where The Sims Online cratered? What's the difference?

[fred]

steve,

there are several important differences between second life and sims online.

the first and most important is the users create the entire experience. it is an "open source" model.

second, you own what you create in second life.

third, you can operate a business and make real money in second life.

i am sure there are many more important differences, but those three seem pretty critical to me.

[james]

anyone interested in The Second Life as a social experiment should also check out Eve online. It has followed a slow growth modal, unlike most other MMORPGs out there. The second life is talked about quite a bit at a blog called www.terranova.com

I'm glad to see The Second Life getting funding. In other news, in the same industry, Shadowbane's parent company pulled the plug on Wolfpack, the developing company.

[hunter walk]

Philip Rosedale has compared the appeal of Second Life to something he noticed about kids.

A child sitting on a floor is happy until you close the door. The know a closed door means they can't leave. They might not intend to crawl out of the room but the possibility is captivating.

Second Life is an open door.

Or less poetic, it's like i say about karaoke. The only thing more fun than actually singing, is thinking about all the songs you could perform.

Second Life is about what you are doing today but also the promise of doing something even better tomorrow. Pretty cool, no?

(disclosure: I worked at Linden Lab for several years and am a big fan)

[steve]

interesting. so second life is a cool multimedia GUI on an ebay business model. (hence Bezos and Omidyar.) why did Union Square not fund it?

[Greg]

I'll admit I was skeptical about SL... It's basically Habitat plus a scripting language. And Habitat (and its ilk, like, say, There) fail precisely because they aren't games; there's no point in playing after a while because there's no -point-, no goals to strive for.

What's made Habitat work is a critical installed base of users who have created enough game-like content so that you can actualy -find- things to do--and games to play. The scripting language is fairly obscure, but not too much so. And I'm rather pleased that they've defied my expectations and proven me wrong.

Still, talk about it as a "platform," with the implicit notion that this becomes Gibson's vision of cyberspace and swallows the rest of the Net, strikes me as pretty far offbase. 3D space is not a good metaphor for most of the things you want to do online--e.g., I don't want to walk through the damn mall to by a shirt, the reason I'm online is to avoid going to the mall.

Kudos to Linden, sure. But let's not get too excited.

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