Second Life’s Second Life - Through To Sustainability

It’s official, Second Life is no longer sexy. Newspapers don’t want to write about it and its newsworthiness has gone.

No longer the darling of the games and entertainment industry, people are saying ‘it’s finished’. But that is not the way I see it. From a long career as a business and IT analyst, I have observed many organisations’ ups and downs over the years.

Oddly enough in my own experience I have found that press coverage and revenues are often inversely correlated, that is - they are opposite. High press exposure (good or bad) = lower income. Lack of press coverage = increased income.

Typically when a company is no longer ‘sexy’ it is either dead or sustainable. Linden Lab has been through a tumultuous couple of years, where it has been trying to find itself in the marketplace.

Like many fledglings that are trying to fly, it has tried different methods to take off. Many of which have now been discarded along with inappropriate business models. However the organisation seems to have found some sustainable models to move forward with.

The key here is ‘sustainability’. An associate of mine, a CFO from a mainstream organisation, has very recently been asking about Second Life as a platform for corporate use. This indicates a change in perception. Corporates play safe, they don’t want to be seen as ‘risky’ and therefore have a thing about sustainability, governance and compliance when looking at technology.

These two things  tie up (lack of newsworthiness and corporate interest in a technology), because often after a technology and company have crossed the adoption gap, they are no longer ‘new’ and newsworthy, so there is a lull - a disinterest - from a news point of view. Then, if the company survives the lull, mainstream people and their organisations take it up and we are into the realm of mass adoption.

Many new companies and products fall into the sinkhole of ‘The Chasm’ never to return. This is where restructuring takes place, jobs, strategies and even businesses may be lost. Within surviving companies this is where a sustainable strategy is devised and pursued.

Products that succeed in making the leap out of the chasm can make it in the big time. Survivors then face the adoption phase – the mass-adoption phase, with it's own different set of trials and tribulations..

Second Life has undergone the final climax of The Chasm and appears to have made it to the other side. Curiously within Second Life, I see growth occurring not falling away. As part of a team that runs a significantly sized community within that environment, we have more users and greater satisfaction.

Providing Linden Lab keeps its eye on sustainable growth, and that means supporting the people and organisations that use it, it might enjoy the rise in early majority and growth of a strongly sustainable business.

This means Linden Lab will need to behave as a sustainable IT vendor, such as Microsoft, Apple and Oracle, taking care of the people that promote it and its products (such as  Second Life), and supporting its value added resellers.