A recent blog item "What happened to Second Life?" poses the question of whether or not the current social networking (Facebook etc.) have stolen the scene from SL.
As many of you know, I have an account on dozens of social networks and have had a passion to better understand 'why' and 'when' they might actually become important. I'm an early adopter. For example, a recent visit to http://howlonghaveyoubeentweeting.com/ shows @davidsteelerose tweeting since 2 years, 8 months, 1 week, 2 days, 18 hours, 38 minutes, 59 seconds. I'll bet you didn't even know Twitter was that old!
My participation in Second Life goes back much further, but certainly more sporadic. I tend to visit for awhile, walk around in circles and then leave. Most recently, however, I began investigating the potentials of online learning and online conferences in Second Life. The concept of mixing Moodle, an open source online learning system, with SL was extremely appealing to me. The mix is called Sloodle (go figure).
It had been awhile since my last SL visit and the platform certainly had improved. With the help of my 14 year old son, Sam, I was actually able to travel past my familiar circle. Together we visited island after island and took tours of several college campus's (campi?) We found an instructor holding weekly classes on how to use Sloodle and we quickly setup courses using our Moodle server connected to the Sloodle sandbox online. Yea, it works!
Which brings me back to my assessment of the blog article. I agree with a statement made about half way down: "The key to anything online is to get a broader reach of people," says Jim Clark of market researchers Mintel. The learning curve required for Second Life prevents many general users from returning regularly."
The learning curve is what has kept SL from taking hold on a Facebook scale, BUT it will be the training of the masses that Facebook is now transforming that will eventually allow SL to reach the potential the original hype predicted. The people participating in FB will get more skilled at using their computers and SL will continue to improve and somewhere (someday) the two will meet.