The phony economics of Second Life
Original article here , posted on Tue 20 Feb 2007 ANALYSIS Two weeks ago, business leaders at Davos gave their blessing to Linden Lab's Second Life. They hailed the spectacular growth of its virtual economy while politicians spoke of democracy itself moving into its online world. But little of this coverage questioned its true popularity, or how sustainable its "virtual economy" might be. Second Life went live in 2003, burning through $8m of venture capital investment over the next three years. And it remained invisible until recently - with a few mentions on enthusiast weblogs. But in March 2006, Linden Lab used some of an $11m additional investment from VC firms, and from Amazon's Jeff Bezos, eBay's Pierre Omidyar, and the Open Source Foundation's Mitch Kapor, to hire a professional agency, Flashpoint PR. It was now business journalists who began to spread the word. The Wharton School, Business 2.0, the Harvard Business Review - all wrote approvingly of Se