Yesterday night I was having a Look at my Second Life inventory trying to put some order in a complete mess.
Over the years I have collected thousands of items between objects, scripts, clothing, notecards and landmarks. I decided to do some spring cleaning.
I went through all of my landmarks. They were something like one hundred and I decided to check most of them. Not really as as surprise I found that only ten or twenty were still valid, mostly from corporate presence. As a test I went through my friend list.
It has grown to something like 250 different people I have met in the last two years and a half. Now it has no more that 25 entries, and they are the most recent people I have met. Most of the people I used to talk with are no more in SL.
What I discovered, with no surprise to be honest, is that Second Life changes at a very fast pace. Places, people mutate their interests in days, not month or years.
I am still thinking what is the reason for this but I have not yet found a good answer.
The interesting thing here is how this behavior will affect business in Second Life, specially traditional business brought to Second Life.
If you are a traditional company you will probably put together a business plan to approach the Second Life metaverse.
Which will be the timeframe of the business plan? One quarter, two quarters, more or less?
Why do I blog this ?Once again I discovered that the dynamics in Second Life are much more different from those in Real Life and if you want to have success you have to remember this.
I think the key learning from this is that, although SL mirrors RL, everything in SL happens quicker. You meet people quicker, you visit more places quicker, you have many more experiences in a much shorter timeframe.
Even in real life, you have almost certainly collected many business cards and contacts, but you probably only interact with a small proportion of them on a regular basis, and over time, if they are not interesting to you, you delete them or file them.
The reason for this happening in SL, I think, is that it is easier to create something, change it or even delete it. You can create a shop, try something and then delete it – it’s so easy and with almost zero risk. Real life is not the same, and there’s generally a trade-off to be considered.
Steve, I agree.
The main point is that you can easily get a third life very easily. You can start over again at no price.
Slightly different from what happens in Real Life.
At least one thing is slow in SL as in RL: making money. 🙂