SecondLife 101

From our “friends” at Google, here is a video presentation overview of SecondLife. What is it? What does it look like? How do people make money?

Frankly, I’m guessing that the value to business is driven by “who” frequents the world of Second Life aka an opportunity to advertise interactively with users to promote products or possibly 3D head hunting. Or maybe product collaboration.

Second Life is an online world with a growing population of subscribers (or “residents”); currently, the community has well over 325,000 residents from 91 countries. By providing residents with robust building and scripting tools, Linden Lab enables them to create a vast array of in-world objects, installations and programs. Since its early stages, Linden Lab has allowed its residents to retain full IP rights over their own creations, thereby insuring that their contributions to the community remain truly their own.

Hang in there at about 13.30 minutes in to this video they provide an overview of the demographic.

• 43% female
• 32 is the average age
• age distribution is similar to the US population curve
• 25% reside outside US

Amazingly, some people make as much as $100K+ per year creating things like clothing, objects,etc for others to buy via PayPal accounts. Yes, that’s right.

• Other ways Business is encouraged to use Second Life according to Linden Labs:
• Presenting, promoting, and selling content to a broad online audience
• Collaborating and communicating in real time between multiple participants
• Researching new concepts/products
• Training and educating in virtual classrooms

Bob Sutor of IBM, a leading thinker on Second Life, posted in his blog that Linden Labs has released the latest statistics on the Second Life Community. You can find them here.