Characterizing Second Life

In an attempt to understand why I like Second Life and why I think that it has a great future, I wrote down a long list of descriptive terms. Each of these could very well become a paragraph or two, but I don’t have time for that. A bunch of these happened to start with the letter “C” for some reason, but a few didn’t and I didn’t want to be overly cute.

Here’s what I came up with:

• **Community ** – You can hang around with people that share your interests.
• Commerce -Friendly – It is easy to create objects, and to buy and sell them. Buying is relatively casual, and as friction-free as you can possibly imagine.
• Communication-Oriented – One of the main activities is talking to and otherwise communicating with other people.
• Context – The 3D virtual environment provides a context for communication.
• Commonality of Experience – Similar to context, but when more than one person is at the same place or event, the commonality of the experience is important.
• Clothing – There’s a huge selection of clothing available for purchase, some for men and tons for women. This is a very important aspect of customization.
• Coolness – Once you can get around, it is hard to say that it isn’t cool.
• Control of Environment – You, as a content creator, can create a complete experience of your choosing.
• Content Creation – It is a great creative outlet.
• Compelling + Engaging – The word addictive comes to mind.
• Persistent – You make a change in the world or in your avatar, and it “sticks” across login sessions.
• Cost-Avoidant – I strongly believe that some real-life face to face business meetings could be conducted in Second Life, therebye avoiding travel costs.
• Fun -It it fun.
• **Customization of Self ** – You can decide who you want to be, and how you want to look and behave.
• Info-edu-tainment – This is a word I made up, and addresses the fact that it combines information, education, and entertainment in one ball of wax.

That’s what I have so far. Anyone have more to add?