Wait, Second Life still exists? And universities still use it?

I was sur­prised to read in the Chronicle of Higher Education that uni­ver­si­ties are still using Second Life, a “vir­tual worlds” sys­tem I hon­estly thought died in 2007. No one I know ever used it. Why is this, con­sid­er­ing the peo­ple I know tend to be early adopters of pretty much every­thing technological?

Second Life always seemed to be the dar­ling of tra­di­tional orga­ni­za­tions — com­pa­nies or uni­ver­si­ties — who seemed to like that it recre­ated “real space” online, unlike other online approaches (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) that required new ways of think­ing and interacting.

Now, finally, these orga­ni­za­tions are begin­ning to real­ize they might need to reconsider:

Some col­leges that have built vir­tual class­rooms in Second Life — the online envi­ron­ment where peo­ple walk around as avatars in a car­toon­like world — have started look­ing for an exit strategy.

The vir­tual world has not lived up to the hype that peaked in 2007, when just about every day brought a new announce­ment from a col­lege enter­ing Second Life.

via After Frustrations in Second Life, Colleges Look to New Virtual Worlds — Technology — The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Interestingly, the com­ments from edu­ca­tors in the Chronicle com­ments are gen­er­ally quite sup­port­ing of Second Life, and many say vir­tual worlds are effec­tive teach­ing envi­ron­ments, and crit­i­cize oppo­nents as sim­ply not under­stand­ing Second Life sufficiently.

Fair enough. Any tech­nol­ogy, even one that attempts to recre­ate phys­i­cal space via key­boards, mice and screens, has a learn­ing curve. But I just don’t see a learn­ing curve as being why Second Life hasn’t “made it,” beyond die-hard fans (who do seem to love it). Perhaps it’s the “griefers” and the anonymity, or the lock-in to a sin­gle ven­dor and their tech­nol­ogy.  Perhaps there’s some­thing else. But, unfor­tu­nately or not, Second Life sim­ply hasn’t suc­ceeded. It’s out of step with a Web 2.0 world.

To suc­ceed, I think, you need to get buzz with the early adopters of tech. These are the peo­ple who will advo­cate for you and help you inno­vate — but they won’t make your prod­uct a suc­cess by them­selves. You also need to make your value clear — and not by explain­ing it — to newer adopters who may not be as “into” tech­nol­ogy. Everyone needs to see “what’s in it for them,” as it were.

Perhaps a more suc­cess­ful approach would be to lever­age Facebook’s app infra­struc­ture and build a more lim­ited “vir­tual world” in that space. Maybe Linden Labs can even port Second Life into this envi­ron­ment. But regard­less, uni­ver­si­ties need to recon­sider their approaches now, and they need to look out­side of their own com­fort zone to do it.