Runs on about 2000 CPUs in SF. Second Life is a virtual world, about 4000 people online at the moment.
As the pain of creation and participation gets harder, participation goes down – but in Second Life the pain is high, but lots of people make things from scratch, building objects or textures.
35% of adults say they spend more time online than working.
Second Life is not a game – no winning or paths or anything. Everything is built by the residcents in second life. Not a subscription model – you pay for permanence. 240k items were bought and sold in the last 30 days. The average transaction price was > $1 US.
Unanticipated consequences – some users created alien abductions, and they’d then give you a t-shirt that said “I’ve been abducted and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”.
They have about 90k hours of use per day. They’re growing at about 15% per month.
About 15% of users write code, in a c-like language with lists – not an easy environment.
UC Davis – virtual hallucination project, to simulate the symptoms of schizophrenia – created by one resident in two months.
Use is gender-neutral, median age is 36.
Virtual worlds seem to embody good learning practices – there are hundreds of classes a week in how to use Second Life.
There’s lots of legitimate peripheral participation as a way to learn.
There are 17 universities teaching classes in second life.
Party 906 10oth Ave 9 – 11 tonight for those interested in being recruited.
Oren Sreebny 
Microsoft Launching its new mp3 player name Zune.
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