A big part of my web background is in virtual worlds. When I was first getting started in commercial website publishing I was involved in creating an interactive virtual world. Unfortunately the project fell apart. However, my strong interest in this side of the internet has remained.

I was very suprised to read on Slashdot about how far along Second Life has come. If you are not familiar with SL, it is a 3rd or 4th generation 3D virtual world which was launched in 2002. Other than popular online role-playing games, SL dominates the virtual world market right now.

The thing that has made Second Life so unique is that their foundation is user created content. Programmers and artists are able to build just about anything they can imagine in 3D & other people around the world can interact with it.

Up until now I was aware that people were making money doing land deals in Second Life. Today I found out just how far that market has come along. There is a site called SL Exchange which allows people to buy and sell custom items. Just by taking a few glances at some of the things for sale it is clear that huge amounts of time and effort has gone into third-parties developing SL.

The thing that really caught my eye was this — “Soon after Second Life crossed the 100K subscriber mark in January, there’s been a rush of big companies itching to develop and promote their brand in the world: first it was MTV, then Coke, and now with SL at 225,000+, they keep coming: this week, for example, Twentieth Century Fox had a virtual world premiere of X-Men III in Second Life.” May be Stephenson’s vision of the metaverse wasn’t so far off?