History of Second life
Second life, where you can choose your own avatar, build your own house and buy and sell clothing, is still the best-known virtual world in this country. Launch in 2003, it claims up to 20 million registered users, although only about 1.4 million have been active in the past 60 days.
Time line
In 1999, Philip Rosedale formed Linden Lab. He made Second Life, developing computer hardware allowing people to immerse in a virtual world.
In 2005 and 2006 Second Life began to receive a lot of media traction, including a cover story on Business Week magazine featuring the virtual world and Second Life avatar Anshe Chung. By that time Anshe Chung had become Second Life's poster child and symbol for the economic opportunities that the virtual world offers to its residents.
On December 11, 2007, Cory Ondrejka, who helped program Second Life, was forced to resign as chief technology officer.
In January 2008, residents spent a total of 28,274,505 hours "inworld", and, on average, 38,000 residents were logged in at any particular moment. The maximum concurrency (number of avatars inworld) recorded is 88,200 in the 1st qtr. 2009
In 2008, Second Life was honoured at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for advancing the development of online sites with user-generated content. Rosedale accepted the award.
In May 2009 concurrent users averaged about 62,000. As of May 2010 concurrent users averaged about 54,000. The perceived decline in concurrent users over this time correlates precisely with new policies implemented by Linden Lab reducing the number of bots and campers.
In June 2010, Linden Lab announced layoffs of 30% of its workforce.
In November 2010, 21.3 million accounts were registered, although the company has not made public figures for actual long-term consistent usage.
What are the conventions?
Avatars
On second life you get to create your own avatar to represent you in the virtual world. You can be a real animal, mineral, vegetable, fictional animal e.g dragon, or human, you can even make your avatar look exactly like you!
Economy
In second life there is a virtual economy, people trade in the currency linden dollar. There is a currency exchange so you can pay real money for linden dollars on second life, also you can exchange linden dollars for real money but it takes a lot of linden dollars to get much real money.
Distribution
It is distributed through the internet. This means literally anyone that wants to play it can, as long as they have internet connection. You can pay for a membership which gives you more freedom but most users just play for free as you are still able to do lots without a membership.
Audience
As second life is distributed over the internet it means that the potential audience is massive. It is aimed at people aged 16 and over but because it’s such a vast virtual world there is something for all ages to do which means some younger people use it.
Second life web 2.0 convergence
Second life users can use social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and twitter to keep in contact with virtual reality friends when they are not on second life. Also companies can advertise their merchandise on the virtual world and even have pixelated products for sale.
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