Either this is a belated April Fool's joke, or this is the new official homepage for Second Life. Which is an online virtual world with 3D graphics, but for some reason, now features not an avatar, but a real life model.
Yes, really: The flying elf is from an upcoming promo that Linden Lab teased late last year (watch below), featuring many more non-avatar models pretending to be avatars. Suggesting an implicit marketing pitch on the order of, I guess, "Sign up for Second Life so you can be a flying elf… but not the one here, as she's not 3D graphics, but you'll feel like this in your mind."
The explicit messaging on the new homepage also feels as if it emanated from a marketing company with no actual first-hand knowledge of Second Life, or virtual worlds in general:
Expect the Unexpected
With thousands of virtual experiences and communities, you'll never run out of places to explore and people to meet. Music clubs, roleplaying communities, virtual cinemas and more. Second Life is always wonderful, sometimes weird, and 100% wow-worthy.
This is not wrong, but then again, would also describe any number of other virtual worlds (IMVU, VRChat, etc. etc.) which have a larger and more active userbase, and are far more accessible, since they have a mobile app. Who exactly is this messaging for?
Missing from the new homepage (then again, this was absent from the previous homepage), are the actual unique and differentiating features of Second Life, including:
- Collaborative prim-based content creation.
- Largest explorable land mass with hundreds of new regions to explore every month.
- Largest user-driven economy with best revenue sharing deal of any competing virtual world. (For example, ROBLOX the company splits revenue with creators 50/50, whereas with SL the creators take the lion's share of sales.)
And so on. Another odd item is the homepage is actively promoting virtual meetings for real work:
Remote Meetings Redefined
Make meetings fun again with virtual hangout spaces, classes and conferences. For over a decade, leading companies and educators have trusted Second Life for branded social spaces for events and remote meetings.
Which, again, is not wrong, but sort of misses the fact that most leading companies and educators have left Second Life after trying it out for virtual hangout spaces, classes and conferences many years ago, and that the current client falls short against immediate follow-up questions most any company or educator would ask. Such as:
- Can I have virtual meetings with over 40 people in the same space?
- Can this work behind a corporate firewall?
- Is there a mobile app?
Does anyone at Linden Lab remember that "SL for RL meetings" was messaging that was attempted with little success during the Kingdon era over 12 years ago?
Also, finally:
There are literally 10,000+ Second Life users who could create a far more appealing image than this.
All in all, it feels like a homepage for a product in maintenance mode, owned by a massive holding company with no experience in virtual worlds. Which continues to obscure a still vibrant, still creative user community. I've been calling for years for a brand refresh for Second Life, but be careful, as they say, of what you wish for.
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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