Second Life

What is Second Life?
Second Life is an 3D virtual world, which is developed by Linden Lab. Launched in 2003¹ it provides a fully customizable world, where the users (Residents) are able to navigate through it and interact with each other by their avatars.

Linden Lab
The company behind Second Life is as mentioned Linden Lab. It was founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale with the aim to create a new form of shared experience.² The company’s headquarter is situated in San Francisco and has over 330 employees spread all over the world.³

The Grid
The platform which is necessary to enable the virtual world is called “GRID”.
A GRID is defined as:

“Interconnected computer systems where the machines utilize the same resources collectively. Grid computing usually consists of one main computer that distributes information and tasks to a group of networked computers to accomplish a common goal. Grid computing is often used to complete complicated or tedious mathematical or scientific calculations."⁴

The Second Life GRID provides the presentation of land and many other services like inventory management.

Client-Software
The Client-Software is a viewer which renders the 3D graphics based on the Open-GL technology⁵ and allows Residents to use different tools to design their avatar, landscape, buildings and objects. It also awards the opportunity to navigate comfortable and communicate with other Residents.⁶

Linden Dollar
Second Life has its own currency called Linden Dollar (L$). Residents have the opportunity to buy clothes, land and many more. To get it he is able to replace it by US-Dollars (US$).
The replacement is possible on LindeXTM, the official platform from Linden Lab⁷ or by independent traders like VirWox or Ace Money.⁸
The exchange rate varies under 270 L$ per US$ because Linden Lab tries to establish a fixed exchange rate.⁹

Economy
A logical conclusion caused by L$ is a virtual economy. Unskilled Residents, who are not able to design an avatar on their own, can buy textures to customize it. They can also buy land and buildings. Skilled Residents like programmers have the opportunity to earn money, because they can sell their digital goods and change their L$ as mentioned into US$.
The support of Second Life has made a Guide for Jobs¹⁰, which shows the variety of possible jobs and gives a little overview of the ways a Resident can earn money.
This fact generates a complex virtual economy connected to the real economy, which causes a raise of the gross domestic product.
The following graph shows the value of all user-to-user transaction made in the period of 2006 and the second quarter of 2009.
As you can see value increased constantly to currently 144 US$ per quarter.¹¹ In comparison to the second quarter of 2006 it is an increase of 94%.

Linden Lab generates a turnover in different ways. The first one is generated by a monthly charge of 9,95US$ for premium users. The second one is generated by renting land to Residents. The monthly fees (Tier-Fee) are within the range of 5 and 295US$ per month.
Residents with a premium account may buy private regions, which causes an initial charge of 1000US$ per region.
According to estimations Second Life made a turnover about 11 million US$ in 2006.¹²

Concerning the investments made in the sector of Web 2.0 based virtual worlds it has been invested 594 million US$ in 63 companies in 2008. Compared to 2007 the sum of all investments has decreased significantly about 800 million US$.¹³
This fact shows that the hype about virtual worlds declined notable.

Anyhow there are still companies which are using Second Life in different ways. IBM and some other companies replace real conferences into Second Life. IBM’s Academy of Technology held in late 2008 a so called Virtual World Conference and the Annual Meeting with over 200 participants.
But the most important point of this conference, especially of the Annual Meeting, is that it caused just one-fifth of the costs a real world conference would.¹⁴

Beside cost-cutting factors there are also non-profit organizations like the Goethe-Institut active.
They have built a community, where they offer various projects free of charge.
Some examples are free language classes in German, digital exhibitions, videos and art projects.¹⁵

Conclusion
Second Life is an innovative form of a community with up to 88000 users daily¹⁶ and a number of more than 13 million registered accounts worldwide.¹⁷
The media says that the boom is over, but statistics show that Second Life still breaks records and is constantly growing.
All that remains to say is that it has many facets and offers numerous ways of usage for each active group.

Cite Notes
1) http://work.secondlife.com/whyslwork/whatis/
2) http://lindenlab.com/
3) eb.
4) http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/grid-computing.html
5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life#Economy
6) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life#Grundlagen
7) http://www.second-life.com/linden_dollar.html
8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life#Economy
9) http://www.second-life.com/linden_dollar.html
10) https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417
11) https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2009/08/12/the-seco...
12) http://www.faz.net/s/RubE2C6E0BCC2F04DD787CDC274993E94C1/Doc~E12E25A9D4E...
13) http://www.handelsblatt.com/virtuelle-welten-erleben-ihr-second-life;242...
14) http://secondlifegrid.net/casestudies/IBM
15) http://www.goethe.de/frm/sec/deindex.htm
16) https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2009/08/12/the-seco...
17) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

Graph
https://blogs.secondlife.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-13282-1240...

References

Blogs Second Life
https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2009

Business Dictionary
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/grid-computing.html

Frankfurter Allgemeine
http://www.faz.net/s/RubE2C6E0BCC2F04DD787CDC274993E94C1/Doc~E12E25A9D4E...

Goethe Institut
http://www.goethe.de/frm/sec/deindex.htm

Handelsblatt
http://www.handelsblatt.com/virtuelle-welten-erleben-ihr-second-life;242...

Linden Lab
http://lindenlab.com/

Second Life
http://www.second-life.com

Second Life Grid
http://secondlifegrid.net

Support Second Life
https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417

Wikipedia (de/en)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

Work Second Life
http://work.secondlife.com/whyslwork/whatis/

All Reference accessed at:
11. September 2009