July 31, 2007
Anderson: Why I Gave Up On Second Life
There has been a spotlight on Wired Magazine’s editorial direction after making a u-turn on its support for virtual world SecondLife. At the end of 2006 Wired was very much in love with the idea and published a significant travel guide in its magazine, but in just over half a year Wired changed its tune with an article called How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life. On his blog, editor Chris Anderson explains:
Well, partly it was the whole “there’s nobody there” problem, which is of course just anecdotal. Like everyone else, I had fun exploring the concept and marveling at all the creativity. Then I got bored, and I started marveling at something else: all the empty corporate edifices. By day I’d speak at marketing conferences that usually had someone pitching SL services, complete with staged demonstrations (the “inhabitants” invariably paid employees). By night I’d go back to the same places, which had reverted to ghost towns once the demonstration was over. I couldn’t understand why companies kept throwing money at in-world presences. Were they seeing something I wasn’t?
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