Public interest in virtual worlds, especially Second Life, is booming. I can diagnose that, for example, just by looking at the access logs of this blog. This week, the numbers exploded - especially for those visitors which come in through searches on Google, Yahoo and T-Online. This seems to be no accident. The following Diagram from the British web analystics company Hitwise shows the current trend: a literal explosion in searches for "Second Life" - and a change in age structure happening in parallel.
Technorati Tags: virtual worlds, second life, web 3.d
Looks like the decisions by Sony BMG, Nissan and especially Reuters, to open up "offices" and other projects in Second Life, did launch a PR avalanche. But thats not the only interesting aspect of the Hitwise data. There are interesting changes in age structure of visitors to the Second Life website.
LeeAnn Prescott of Hitwise writes
Hitwise demographic data shows that the age range of visitors to SecondLife.com did indeed change [...] Note that this data is based on visitors to the Second Life website, not necessarily players of the game.
As said: these are visits of the site, not users of SL. But the current demographic data from Linden Lab shows the same trend - even though with less dramatic numbers.
Developments like this are typical for the growing acceptance of formerly cutting edge technologies. Similar developments could be seen a few years ago with the growing adoption of the internet or mobile phones - or applications like Email, IM and short message services.
It seems like slowly, slowly Second Life is becoming mainstream ...
Just now, the most important challenge for Linden Lab, IMHO, is to make sure that the platform does not reach the Peak of Inflated Expectations (according to the Gartner Hype Cycle) too fast - and the fall after the peak will be too deep.
As a resident of Second Life you certainly live in interesting times.
But for how long will the hyper growth continue?
I am a believer in Second Life. It is certainly a phenomenon that will grow and a great place to test out marketing campaigns - if the fit is right. However, I remain skeptical that Second Life will grow at the same pace that podcasting, blogs and other forms of social media did because of the hurdles involved. Not only are there download and processing requirements. But there is also a cost if you want to do more than just explore.
There is truth in that. On the other hand: I am not sure at all, if future versions of SL and the changing society in Second Life will make it necessary to invest more time and effort in learning Second Life, than is needed for "getting to know he web" today. If you go back a while and try to remember the internet of 1994/95 it was a rather complicated beast, too. You needed a lot of expertise and additional knowledge to get anything useful out of the web then. And look at where it is now!
To judge the growth potential of the web based on a snapshot of the situation at that point would have been rather prematurely. And maybe it is premature to judge the potential of online virtual worlds just by looking at the Second Life of 2006, too. :)
I am optimistic that future versions of Second Life and maybe competing platforms will adress the issues of usability, especially learning curve and "searchability", too.