Second Life Will Offer Homes to Premium Members Starting Feb. 17

One of the styles of Linden Homes premium subscribers will be able to choose from. This looks to me a little like "Bag End."

Second Life is a place that, depending on your perspective, represents either the most successful 3D virtual world ever created or a cautionary tale of jumping on the technology bandwagon a little too early. Go to Second Life today and you’ll see what most users encounter most of the time: a huge, desolate virtual world that takes forever to load and is prone to stall and/or crash (though these problems have seen improvement over the last year). And yet, despite all the naysaying and doom-saying, Second Life saw $567 million in person-to-person transactions in 2009. $567 million! That’s about the size of an island-nation’s Gross Domestic Product for 2009. And, on the fronts of education, music, and the arts, Second Life continues to flourish — I myself participated in a writer’s salon promoting Interfictions 2 just this past December 7th, with an audience of about forty people. That’s a good turn-out for any reading, virtual or actual.

Well, now Second Life is doing something I think is very smart, and may help it attract more users. Lately, some folks have accused Second Life of focusing too much on “super-uses” (die-hard fans) at the expense of newbies. Well, that is poised to change, as Second Life announces that all premium users will now receive a home as part of their premium package, starting on February 17.

A more modern neighborhood of Linden Homes

For those who don’t know, the real estate market in Second Life has been a confusing enterprise and marred by shady business practices pretty much since Linden Labs started selling pixilated plots. For many of the uninitiated, buying real estate in Second Life was a little too much like buying real estate in “First Life.”

And I think Second Life is making the right move here by building in home ownership with premium memberships. A membership can cost as little as $6 a month (if you pay for a year at once), which is less than the subscription of most MMOs out there by 50-66%. And once you own a home, you will want to occupy it and furnish it and invite your neighbors over. If you are an educator, it gives you a base of operations for your classes, which is especially important if your institution hasn’t splurged for its own island yet. If you are a musician, artist, etc., and want a place in Second Life to hock your wears, a built-in home allows you to set up a place that can let people see what you have to offer even when you’re not online. And users beget users: the more popular Second Life becomes, the more popular Second Life becomes.

Linden Labs is taking the reaction from the community and implementing changes for the kickoff of the program. I wonder if this might not be the spark that generates a Second Life renaissance, so that even the naysayers will have to admit that, for all its quirks, Second Life is the real deal.

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