I think the BBC got word of your post http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8367957.stm :) Looks like you’re not the only one who left their avatar hanging on a park bench.

Cheers!

I really enjoyed reading this post! Please keep us posted on Goffman’s state. I wonder if he looks like you. :)

Claire-Voe

I agree that Second Life is probably not the be all and end all of collaboration tools. One new feature that interests me is the new voice capability because I have never been a fan of IM. Thanks for sharing your Second Life experience. Anyone else want to tell us about their Second Life?

Mike

I’m glad to hear that SL is picking up some steam again. It helps that I’ve recently been asked to consult on an SL specific project; something I haven’t done for over a year. Without having intimate knowledge of their technology improvements the biggest reason I soured on SL, after a few years, were the limitations. I’m willing to bet a fair amount still exist. The one thing I love about Twitter and Facebook is the ability to simultaneously communicate with thousands of people simultaneously and quickly gather information. SL, with it’s 100 person on an island at one time limitation (which you could never achieve if you actually built something on the sim) was a HUGE problem. It killed so many great ideas and was probably the single biggest reason many brands shied away. For the longest time I couldn’t get HTML or Flash inside of SL so the integration non-SL, but online, related initiatives was impossible. Limitations in design; i.e. not being able to use readily available 3D design software to import inside were a huge strain on costs. You had to find specialists or retrain those folks who were experts in existing software. That led to there being a lack of 3rd party integration. If collaboration is what SL is best at then we should have a plethora of tools at our disposal to utilize for those purposes. Marketing and sales don’t have the time to wait for the improvements and now Twitter and Facebook exploded due to its accessibility. They aren’t the best tools, but they are certainly easy to use.

Fortunately I have met and worked with many folks from Linden Lab. I wish them nothing but the best. They are great people and have a powerful product in their possession. I just don’t think it’s the software platform I always hoped it would be. I hope they can prove me wrong.