Do You Need A Second Life?

You might, if you feel incumbered by the politics of the current one! Guardian has done a nice roundup of the current state of affairs in the virtual universe, your chance to lead your life a second time.

Of course, the world's catching up. The Swedish embassy has opened its office, and Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life, claim that they have a daily turnover of $600,000, and have already created 6000 full-time jobs. UK government has started taxing money earned in SL (don't you remember... nothing's more certain than death and taxes!).

But then, SL isn't the only one, and the list is growing by the day. For the moment, the two biggest contenders are Entropia Universe and SL. In a year and half, there would be hundreds of businesses cropping up in trying to seamlessly merge the two worlds... or at least, import / export from one to the other. There will be virtual world and virtual existence mashups created.

Here's a bit from Guardian.

"This week may mark a coming of age for virtual worlds - the three-dimensional spaces on the internet where people have their own avatars, or on-screen characters. Last night BBC2's The Money Programme was screened in Second Life, the best known of the dozens of virtual realities that are springing up. This week Sky News opened a replica of its studio in Second Life and IBM sponsored a ballet.

Yesterday the Swedish virtual world Entropia Universe announced that it was teaming up with CRD, an offshoot of the Beijing municipality, to build a virtual universe able to handle 7 million users at any one moment. David Liu, chief executive of CRD, claimed that virtual worlds would generate about 10,000 jobs in China."

I am going to be hanging out for extensive periods of time in SL. Let's meetup, if you are going to be there!