How Long Til Second Life Sells to the Highest Bidder? My Bet is Three Weeks. What's Yours?

Dell has set up shop in Second Life to sell virtual computers to avatars and real computers to their alter egos. Will the virtual service suck as much as Dell's real world service? Is the island going to be nick-named Dell Hell?

Is Second Life for sale?The metaverse's creator, Linden Lab's Philip Rosedale, pimped himself out for the virtual Dell press conference. Looks like he's cozying up to the big boys, big-time.

How long til a big company buys SL and makes it work without requiring a software download that keeps big companies from being able to download it? Three weeks? That's my bet for the big announcement of Second Life's sale to the highest bidder. How many billion do you think they'll get?

Definitely before Christmas...

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What if spammers know the name of your dog?

ha! i was just talking about this to a colleague today. only we weren't talking billions...

I'd be impressed if LL got more than 10 per cent of the amount Youtube got bearing in mind their audience is a fraction of chad and steve's.

Ed

Ed: I completely disagree. SL has a better business model than YouTube and broader implications for the long term.

i guess that's where we'll have to agree to disagree.

i will say that myspace had way more users than SL does now and was more firmly entrenched in the cultural consciousness as well as being given momentum through the young hipsters who were using is.

I say this with the utmost respect but SL is being dragged into the business world by, primarily, the older crowd. the image SL has is of the dungeons and dragons crowd - not the sort of thing that i'd want to get behind to the tune of nine figures.

in "short" worse business models and more limited long term implications (I'm predicting a plateauing off of membership thanks to things like this - http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2006/11/15/linden-bans-copybot-following-resident-protests/)

Ed

So Ed, how much time have you actually spent exploring Second Life? I'm curious to know what your opinions are based on.

ah, you do have me there. the time i've been in SL can be measured in hours, not days, weeks or months.

in the few hours i have been in SL, i was impressed by the constantly crashing interface (even on the my office's network), despairingly poor control system and agonisingly slow pace to life in second life.

i'm certainly a fan of SL's potential (http://bloggingmebloggingyou.wordpress.com/2006/06/13/second-life/) but i am skeptical of the current reality - bugs galore, grifting and the backlash against culturally insensitive marketers impressing their view of the digital world on the long-time natives.

Ed

Hi again Ed: FYI, you can watch re-enactments of every yankee game in the SL Yankee Stadium. There already are arenas, fantastic theaters, and events that boggle the mind taking place in SL every day.

Is it perfect? Certainly not. Will it get better? Sure. When a big company acquires it and makes it work without requiring a software download. And, if you recall, that's what I said in the post. And my bet is that it will be sooner, rather than later.
BL

Apologies for not commenting earlier but I've just been pointed to this post by someone else. I am most likely being very dumb here but what advantage would not having to download a local software client to access SL bring to businesses?

people who work for large companies are not allowed to download outside software to their computers. therefore, big companies can't explore or participate in SL until it stops requiring them to install software to use it.