The virtual world Second Life is a media darling. It's eaten up tons of column inches in major newspapers and magazines. But you know how these things go; as soon as something is built up, it's big news to tear it down. Earlier this week Boston research firm Yankee Group made some waves by announcing that Second Life's adoption rate has been plummeting since last year, and declaring that the 'hype outweighs its impact' on mainstream consumers. Lots of gaming media websites have picked up on the news.

But put away the funeral pyre -- let's take a look at the numbers in context. It's easier to have 30% monthly growth when you've got less than a million users; of course Second Life couldn't maintain that pace. This summer the service is still growing by 10-15% month-over-month, which isn't earth-shaking but it's still very healthy. And wouldn't you expect growth of an online service to slow during warm summer months when everyone is outside? It goes to show you: anybody can whip up a chart that'll show lines going down in order to shout doom and gloom.

Another statistic that's hard to parse out is the fact that Second Life users average 12 minutes of time in the game per month. Sure sounds low to me; but it depends on the ratio of active to inactive users. You don't need for every user to be active to have a dynamic, interesting online community.


So what's the deal with Second Life? Look, we all know it gets way more press than user activity in the game probably warrants -- I blogged about that ten months ago. That's not news. The truth is that Second Life is interesting to the media -- and to us! -- because it's exploring issues that will come up in future virtual worlds. It's a pioneer. It's an experiment.

But Yankee Group's Press Release, which has an agenda of its own, misses the point. "For virtual worlds and metaverses to achieve greater potential in the marketplace and grow beyond early adopters, the experience must be untethered to meet the needs of the Anywhere Consumer™." (Yes, they trademarked that term.) "Companies that provide remote access -- through mobile devices or other means -- to their web experience will have a greater impact than pc-centric companies."

In other words, if only Second Life were browsable on a mobile phone, it would be a massive cultural touchstone. That creative leap of logic makes no sense -- Perhaps someone should tell that to Habbo Hotel, a virtual world that has over 80 million accounts and no mobile phone tie-ins.

The real reason Second Life isn't bigger is because it's not easily accessible for your mainstream user. It's too hard to understand how to navigate and interact with the world. It's cluttered and scary. It's too hard to find the really good content. Second Life is immensely powerful as a virtual toolset: you can build or code a dizzying array of neat stuff if you have the skills. But it's just too complex to attract huge numbers of casual, impatient, non-computer-savvy, non-gamers. And as I said earlier this week... Simpler is Better!

The Yankee Group's report underscores one thing, though -- there's a huge opportunity still for someone to build a mainstream online virtual world, the kind of place that'll pack in tens of millions of active users. The opportunity is out there! And the things we learn from Second Life will get us there.

      -Fargo