Second Life - A whole new world!

Recently we began work on our own Island on Second Life. What is Second Life you say? Second life is an online 3D virtual world with ecommerce built in. Its popularity has grown from 1.2 million users to 4 million within the last four months and it’s continuing to climb. This new online platform has already produced its first millionaire and will continue to be a new moneymaker for many online prospectors from all over the world.

How does it work? At Second Life you can register for your free Avatar, a 3D virtual representation of you. You also have the option of plugging in your credit card information for making any online purchases of virtual products. Once you're in you’ll find yourself flying around in a virtual world, exploring places, watching musical events, playing games, strolling through a shopping mall and chatting with all kinds of people.

Like dressing up a Barbie doll, people are dressing up their avatars from skeletons, robots and soldiers to runway models, princesses and fairytale beauties. You can rent property or a storefront or buy a whole island. You can buy a house or build it yourself and furnish it and then sell it. You can design your own combat tank and enter a war zone. The possibilities are endless.

Think this is just a fad? Just like the Internet was a budding phenomenon ten years ago, online virtual worlds are now gaining serious momentum. Big corporate companies are creating their own islands and selling anything from virtual Toyota cars to Nike shoes. Other big named corporations to list a few are: IBM, Telus, Reebok, American Apparel, Warner Music and even CNET Networks (parent company of CNET News.com).

Google and Microsoft are both developing their own competing metaverses to cash in this growing market. Many experts are predicting that the metaverse may be the successor to the Internet, as we know it. Although Second Life may not necessarily be the platform that everyone ends up on it is the first one to incorporate a built-in and easy to use ecommerce platform.

Second Life isn’t the only metaverse
out there. There are others but it is the most popular non-gaming platform around. Although many see Second Life as a test bed for future development, there are a lot of people that are making a living on this virtual world. It is very fascinating to see all the different things that are going on in this metaverse but for what its future holds out, anything is predictable. With creativity and computer savvy anyone could turn this into a major opportunity.

Another surprise coming from eBay on this topic is the ban of selling all virtual items – except Second Life objects. The change in policy comes from a reconsideration of what the company considers a "game." An eBay spokesperson says that there is a question as to whether or not Second Life is actually a game, so it will refrain from pulling listings for the time being. This is just one of the many examples in how a virtual world is making leaps and bounds at how we are dealing with technology's advancement.

You can check out some screen shots of our island under our Graphics & Multimedia > 3D Rendering section of our website. If you would like to visit our island on second life, go to www.Secondlife.com and sign up. Our island is called "Ambassador Travel". We hope to see you there!

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